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UNRWA Fears New ‘Tragedy’ as Lebanon Violence Adds Strain

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), speaks during an interview with AFP in New York on September 24, 2024. (AFP)
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), speaks during an interview with AFP in New York on September 24, 2024. (AFP)
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UNRWA Fears New ‘Tragedy’ as Lebanon Violence Adds Strain

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), speaks during an interview with AFP in New York on September 24, 2024. (AFP)
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), speaks during an interview with AFP in New York on September 24, 2024. (AFP)

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is bracing for a triple crisis as Israeli strikes on Lebanon add to the strain it is facing in Gaza and the West Bank, its chief told AFP on Tuesday.

UNRWA, founded in 1949, provides services, including education and healthcare, for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

With three of its area of operations turning into "active frontlines," the embattled agency already grappling with a severe financial shortfall is poised to come under even more pressure, said UNRWA's Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

"We already have Gaza, we already have the West Bank, so we have two fields of operation which have become active frontlines," he said.

"We (now) also have Lebanon, which would mean that basically three... contexts of operation will become humanitarian emergencies," he added, calling the situation a "triple tragedy."

Faced with mounting Israeli strikes, UNRWA has paused some operations in Lebanon as it converts its schools into shelters for hundreds of people displaced from the south of the country.

Displacement soared after Israel pummeled Hezbollah targets on Monday, killing at least 558 people in the deadliest day of violence in the country since its 1975-90 civil war, according to local authorities.

"The fear is that... we are going into a full-fledged war," Lazzarini told AFP as world leaders gathered at the United Nations for its annual diplomatic event.

"Another concern is that parts of Lebanon become like Gaza."

- 'More strain' -

The October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and the ensuing Israeli war on Gaza has piled threats on UNRWA, the only UN organization created to aid a specific refugee population.

At least 222 UNRWA staff have been killed and two-thirds of the agency's facilities in Gaza have been damaged and destroyed since the start of the Gaza war.

"Depending on how the war will be unfolding in Lebanon, we have thousands of staff there, it is not excluded... that staff will also be killed," Lazzarini said.

A new front in Lebanon "will put much more strain on us. The needs will increase and we will also need more support from the donors," the UNRWA chief added.

The agency saw a series of funding cuts earlier this year after Israel accused more than a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in the October 7 attack by Hamas.

Most donors have since resumed funding with the exception of the United States, UNRWA's largest financial backer.

"UNRWA has enough funding until the end of October," Lazzarini said.

With an $80 million shortfall for 2024, Lazzarini is hosting a donor conference on the sidelines of this UN General Assembly this week to shore up pledges from donors.

The main outcome the UNRWA chief is seeking is "to make sure that we can operate till the end of the year" but also to secure longer term commitments from donors.

"I'm very concerned about 2025 because there is a certain number of traditional donors who will go through austerity measures and who will reduce their oversea budget," he said, without naming any state.

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Israel’s Retaliatory Responses to Houthis Must Begin by Drawing Intelligence Plan

A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
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Israel’s Retaliatory Responses to Houthis Must Begin by Drawing Intelligence Plan

A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)

Israel is considering options to respond to repeated attacks fired from Yemen in the past few days, the latest of which was a Houthi missile strike that injured more than a dozen people in Tel Aviv.
But military experts say Israel should first consider an intelligence plan for confronting the new front after it faced significant difficulties in both defending against and responding to the Houthi attacks.
On Saturday morning, Houthis launched a missile that triggered sirens throughout central Israel at 3:44 am. It was the second attack since Thursday.
Israel's military said the projectile landed in Tel Aviv's southern Jaffa area, adding that attempts to intercept a missile from Yemen failed.
“The incident is still being thoroughly investigated,” the army said, adding that following initial investigations by the Israeli Air Force and Home Front Command, “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, both regarding interception and early warning.”
Israeli military experts say the recent Houthi attacks have revealed serious security gaps in Israel's air defense systems.
“The pressing question now is why none of the other of Israel’s air defense layers managed to intercept the warhead,” wrote Yedioth Ahronoth's Ron Ben-Yishai. “The likely explanation is the late detection and the flat trajectory, which prevented the operation of all available defense apparatus.”
He said these incidents might expose a critical vulnerability in the army’s air defense system protecting Israel’s civilian and military home front.
According to Ben-Yishai, two main reasons might explain Saturday’s interception failure.
The first is that the missile was launched in a “flattened” ballistic trajectory, possibly from an unexpected direction.
As a result, Israeli defenses may not have identified it in time, leading to its late discovery and insufficient time for interceptors to operate.
He said the second, and more likely scenario is that Iran has developed a maneuverable warhead.
Such a warhead separates from the missile during the final third of its trajectory and maneuvers mid-flight—executing pre-programmed course changes—to hit its designated target, he wrote.
And while Israel has launched initial investigations into the failure of Israeli defense systems to intercept the missiles, it is now examining the nature, date and location of its response.
When Houthis launched their first missile attack on Israel last Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned them, saying, “The Houthis will learn the hard way.”
But Israeli political analyst Avi Ashkenazi wrote in the Maariv newspaper that Israel should look at reality with open eyes and say out loud that it cannot deal with the Houthi threat from Yemen, and has failed to face them.
Last Thursday, 14 Israeli Air Force fighter jets, alongside refuelers and spy planes, flew some 2,000 kilometers and dropped over 60 munitions on Houthi “military targets” along Yemen’s western coast and near the capital Sanaa.
The targets included fuel and oil depots, two power stations, and eight tugboats used at the Houthi-controlled ports.
But the Maariv newspaper warned about the increasing involvement of Iran in supporting the Houthi forces.
“Iran has invested more in the Houthis in recent weeks following the collapse of the Shiite axis, making the Houthi movement a leader of this axis,” the newspaper noted.
Underscoring the failures of Israel’s air defense systems, Maariv said the “Arrow” missile defense system, Israel's main line of defense against ballistic missiles, had failed four times in a row to intercept missiles, including three launched from Yemen and one from Lebanon.
Yedioth Ahronoth's Ben-Yishai also warned that the threat posed by maneuvering warheads on Iran's heavy, long-range missiles would become existential for Israel should Iran succeed in developing nuclear warheads for these missiles.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 12 said that in recent months, the Middle East has changed beyond recognition.
The channel said that for the first time in more than half a century, a direct and threat-free air corridor has been opened to Iran through the Middle East. Israel will benefit from this corridor to launch almost daily attacks on the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, it said.
Channel 12 also reported that according to the Israeli military, the new threat-free corridor will help Israel launch a future attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
“From Israel's perspective, the fall of the Assad regime and the collapse of the Iranian ring of fire are changing the balance of power in the Middle East,” the report added.