The commissioner general of the UN Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, told reporters at the UN on Wednesday that the attacks his agency is receiving are aimed at “removing (the millions of displaced Palestinians) their refugee status”.
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Lazzarini was thus referring to Israel's accusations, on January 29, that 12 of the UNRWA agents had participated in the terrorist attacks on October 7 against Israel as members of Hamas, accusations that led to the immediate dismissal of employees and the freezing of their funding by the agency's most important donors.
Israel has subsequently gone so far as to say that 450 UNRWA employees are “members of terrorist organizations” or that 17% of its workers are actually members of Hamas.
Israel has gone so far as to say that 450 UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations or that 17% of its workers are actually members of Hamas.
Lazzarini also alluded to the accusation that UNRWA perpetuates refugee status among Palestinians, in some cases for more than 70 years. For him, “what perpetuates refugee status is the absence of a political solution.”
According to him, in a possible future State of Palestine, that State could provide the education and health services that UNRWA provides today.
The agency of the UN has lost 178 workers in bombings during the war, of which 160 were attacked in the same UNRWA buildings that were used as shelters during the bombings.
Famine already threatens the northern Gaza Strip, where nearly 34,000 people, most of them civilians, have died since the start of the Israeli offensive, according to the Ministry of Health of the Hamas-ruled enclave.
“It would make the immense task of returning almost half a million girls and boys deeply affected by the conflict to school almost impossible,” he added.
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