The head of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has warned that an impending Israeli ban on the organisation would cripple humanitarian work in the Gaza Strip and undermine the Israel-Hamas ceasefire there.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UNRWA, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the ban, due to come into effect on Thursday, would “heighten instability and deepen despair in the occupied Palestinian territory at a critical moment”.
The move would also undermine recovery and reconstruction efforts for the enclave that has been ravaged by more than 15 months of war, and erode trust in the international community and jeopardise prospects for peace and security, he said.
The United States, a key Israel ally, supported the “sovereign decision” made by Israel to shutter UNRWA and cut all contact with it.
Dorothy Shae, Washington’s envoy to the Security Council meeting, said the agency delivering aid to millions is “exaggerating” the potential impact of the Israeli ban – which experts and UN officials have said would likely be catastrophic.
UNRWA runs the largest network delivering humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and to Palestinian refugee populations across the Middle East. It also works with a host of other agencies, and manages schools-turned-shelters housing displaced civilians in Gaza that were repeatedly targeted by the Israeli military.
Israel had told the meeting that within 48 hours it would cut all contact with UNRWA, ban Israeli officials dealing with the agency, and require the closure of the organisation’s offices in areas under Israeli control.
“UNRWA must cease its operations and evacuate all premises it operates in Jerusalem, including the properties located in Maalot Dafna and Kafr Aqab,” Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told the council.
“Israel will terminate all collaboration, communication and contact with UNRWA or anyone acting on its behalf,” he said.
The agency has been instrumental in delivering aid supplies to Gaza throughout Israel’s war and since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal took effect earlier this month.
“Since October 2023, we have delivered two-thirds of all food assistance, provided shelter to over a million displaced persons and vaccinated a quarter of a million children against polio,” Lazzarini told the Security Council.
“Since the ceasefire began, UNRWA has brought in 60 percent of the food entering Gaza, reaching more than half a million people. We conduct some 17,000 medical consultations every day,” he said.
Under the ceasefire deal, Israel has also opened some military checkpoints in the besieged territory, allowing thousands of Palestinians who had been displaced to southern Gaza to return to their homes in the north of the Strip.
Reporting from Salah al-Din Street, the main highway that runs from southern Gaza to the north, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the journey was overwhelming and exhausting for those making it.
“People who returned to assess the damage to their homes [in the north] told us they found nothing but destruction and the remnants of their previous lives,” he said.
“They’ve started again from scratch to rebuild what they lost. Many of them have set up their makeshift shelters again near the ruins of their destroyed homes.”
More than 47,000 people have been killed and more than 111,000 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023, according to Palestinian health authorities.
