The Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, approved this Monday a bill to prohibit the activity of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in Israel, which will directly affect its activity in the Gaza Strip, where it is located. organization is the one that provides most of the humanitarian assistance to the more than two million inhabitants. The text has received the support of 92 deputies, both from the ruling coalition and the Israeli opposition; only ten have voted against.
The Israeli Parliament resumed its work this Monday after a break for the Jewish holidays and one of the first texts it put to a vote was the bill relating to UNRWA, which Israel has accused of having links with the Islamist organization Palestinian Hamas, in addition to denouncing that several of its employees participated in the October 7, 2023 attacks against the south of the country, in which more than 1,200 people died and 251 were kidnapped. An independent investigation commissioned by the UN concluded several months ago that Israel had not presented sufficient evidence to support those accusations.
The law approved this Monday night will affect all UNRWA operations in the occupied Palestinian territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza), since it will prevent its international employees from obtaining visas and work permits for locals; in addition to access to its offices, including its headquarters in the eastern part of Jerusalem, from which all activities are coordinated.
The legislation is Tel Aviv’s latest attack against the United Nations, with whose representatives and agencies the Israeli Executive has openly clashed since the beginning of the war in Gaza. Recently, the Israeli Government declared the UN Secretary General ‘persona non grata’ and banned him from entering the country.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has expressed his concern and warned that the UNRWA ban crosses “a red line” and that there will be no solution to the conflict “without resolving the refugee issue fairly,” according to a report. statement released by the official Wafa news agency before the approval of the law.
The Palestinian Presidency has denounced that it constitutes a “violation of international law and a provocation to the entire international community”, recalling that UNRWA was established “in accordance with a UN resolution.” That 1949 resolution stated that the agency would offer assistance and protection to Palestinian refugees until a “just and lasting” solution to their situation was reached.
In 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to leave their homes and places of origin after the creation of the State of Israel. Currently, there are some six million refugees in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories themselves, as well as in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. UNRWA provides education, healthcare and aid to these people, as well as managing 58 refugee camps (mostly in Gaza and the West Bank).
The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom issued a statement expressing their concern about the bill approved this Monday and another that Parliament will vote on. “UNRWA provides humanitarian aid and essential and vital basic services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and throughout the region. Without their work, the provision of such assistance and services, including education, healthcare and fuel distribution in Gaza and the West Bank, would be severely hampered or impossible, with devastating consequences for an already critical and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation. , particularly in northern Gaza,” they warned on October 26.
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, had also asked Israel to “reconsider” the approval of these laws: “We urge the Israeli authorities to reconsider to avoid interruptions in the vital services of UNRWA and guarantee the UNRWA’s continued and unimpeded humanitarian access to the Palestinian refugees for whom it was created,” he emphasizes in a statement cited by Agencia EFE.
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