UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees Urges World to Save It from Israeli Ban

FILED - 10 February 2024, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Palestinians examine the damage to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) buildings on their way back to their homes in the wake of the Israeli army withdrew from North of Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ishaq/dpa
FILED - 10 February 2024, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Palestinians examine the damage to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) buildings on their way back to their homes in the wake of the Israeli army withdrew from North of Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ishaq/dpa
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UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees Urges World to Save It from Israeli Ban

FILED - 10 February 2024, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Palestinians examine the damage to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) buildings on their way back to their homes in the wake of the Israeli army withdrew from North of Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ishaq/dpa
FILED - 10 February 2024, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Palestinians examine the damage to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) buildings on their way back to their homes in the wake of the Israeli army withdrew from North of Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ishaq/dpa

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees urged the world Wednesday to save it from an Israeli ban that would have “disastrous consequences” for millions of people caught up in the war in Gaza.
Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the agency known as UNRWA, told the 193 nations of the UN General Assembly that they must take action to prevent Israel from implementing legislation that prohibits the agency's operations in the Palestinian territories. The laws, adopted by Israel’s parliament last month, take effect in 90 days.
UNRWA was established by the General Assembly in 1949 to provide relief for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment, as well as their descendants, until there is a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Associated Press said.
UNRWA has been the main agency distributing humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, where almost the entire population of around 2.3 million Palestinians relies on aid for survival amid Israel’s more than yearlong war with Hamas. Experts say hunger is rampant.
Assembly President Philemon Yang told members at Wednesday’s informal meeting that Israel’s legislation “constitutes an intolerable affront to the authority of this assembly, an affront to international law and, most importantly, an affront to the human dignity of innocent Palestinian civilians."
Yang said the assembly extended UNRWA’s mandate — most recently in December 2022 — by an overwhelming majority until June 30, 2026. He urgently called on Israel to comply with its international legal obligations, the UN Charter and UN resolutions.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly said there is no alternative to UNRWA, and Yang stressed that a halt to its activities “would exacerbate an already catastrophic humanitarian situation.”
Israel alleges that around a dozen of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. It recently provided the UN with over 100 names of UNRWA staff it claims have militant ties.
The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants among its staff. Lazzarini said the UN has asked Israel for details so it can investigate but has received no response.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon reiterated Israeli accusations that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of Hamas and educates Palestinian children to “hate.” He stressed that Gaza’s future cannot include Hamas or UNRWA.
Sitting next to released Israeli hostage Mia Schem, he strongly criticized the General Assembly and all other UN bodies for failing to condemn Hamas or to hold a single session dedicated to the hostages.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, echoed calls for countries to act collectively to save UNRWA, accusing Israel of an “open assault” against the agency partly aimed at stripping Palestinians of their refugee status and rights.
“As we gather here, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are facing imminent death,” he said of northern Gaza.
Acting UN humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya said Tuesday that northern Gaza has been under “a near-total brutal siege” for the past month and Palestinian civilians are starving while the world watches.
“These atrocities must stop,” Msuya said in a posting on X. “Israeli military ground operations have left Palestinians without the essentials to survive, forced them to flee for safety multiple times, and cut off their escape and supply routes.”
Lebanon’s UN Ambassador Hadi Hachem, speaking on behalf of the UN’s 22-member Arab Group, called on the General Assembly to confront Israel’s “dangerous precedent” and take urgent measures to defend UNRWA and uphold international law.



Stormy Weather Sweeps Away Tents Belonging to Displaced People in Gaza

Displaced Palestinians stand in front of tents along an inundated passage, following heavy rainfall north of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
Displaced Palestinians stand in front of tents along an inundated passage, following heavy rainfall north of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
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Stormy Weather Sweeps Away Tents Belonging to Displaced People in Gaza

Displaced Palestinians stand in front of tents along an inundated passage, following heavy rainfall north of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
Displaced Palestinians stand in front of tents along an inundated passage, following heavy rainfall north of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

Weather is compounding the challenges facing displaced people in Gaza, where heavy rains and dropping temperatures are making tents and other temporary shelters uninhabitable.

Government officials in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave said on Monday that nearly 10,000 tents had been swept away by flooding over the past two days, adding to their earlier warnings about the risks facing those sheltering in low-lying floodplains, including areas designated as humanitarian zones.

Um Mohammad Marouf, a mother who fled bombardments in northern Gaza and now is sheltering with her family in a Gaza City tent said the downpour had covered her children and left everyone wet and vulnerable.

“We have nothing to protect ourselves,” she said outside the United Nations-provided tent where she lives with 10 family members.

Marouf and others living in rows of cloth and nylon tents hung their drenched clothing on drying lines and re-erected their tarpaulin walls on Monday.

Officials from the Hamas-run government said that 81% of the 135,000 tents appeared unfit for shelter, based on recent assessments, and blamed Israel for preventing the entry of additional needed tents. They said many had been swept away by seawater or were inadequate to house displaced people as winter sets in.

The UNestimates that around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands are living in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services. Israeli evacuation warnings now cover around 90% of the territory.

“The first rains of the winter season mean even more suffering. Around half a million people are at risk in areas of flooding. The situation will only get worse with every drop of rain, every bomb, every strike,” UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote in a statement on X on Monday.