Israeli attacks against UNRWA ‘must stop,’ says head of agency

WASHINGTON 

The head of the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said Thursday that Israeli attacks against the agency have to stop. 

Philippe Lazzarini said the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip “has produced a blatant disregard for the mission” of the UN, including attacks on employees, facilities and operations of the UNRWA.

“These attacks must stop and the world must act to hold the perpetrators accountable,” he wrote in an opinion piece published in the New York Times.

He said UNRWA staff are regularly harassed and humiliated at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Lazzarini noted that at least 192 UNRWA employees have been killed in Gaza and more than 170 UNRWA premises have been damaged or destroyed.

“UNRWA is not the only U.N. agency that faces danger. In April, gunfire hit World Food Program and UNICEF vehicles, apparently inadvertently but despite coordination with the Israeli authorities,” said Lazzarini.

He said Israeli officials are threatening the work of the agency and delegitimizing it by “effectively characterizing it as a terrorist organization that fosters extremism and labeling U.N. leaders as terrorists who collude with Hamas.

“By doing so, they are creating a dangerous precedent of routine targeting of U.N. staff and premises,” said Lazarrini. “If we tolerate such attacks in the context of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, we cannot uphold humanitarian principles in other conflicts around the world,” he said.

He also said after the attacks of Oct. 7, Israel unleashed a campaign to equate UNRWA with Hamas and depict the agency as promoting extremism.

“In a new dimension to this campaign, the Israeli government made serious allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in the Hamas attack,” said the UNRWA chief. “We must meaningfully defend U.N. institutions and the values they represent before the symbolic shredding of the charter establishing the United Nations. This can only be achieved through principled action by the nations of the world and a commitment by all to peace and justice.”

Israel has launched a brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, killing more than 36,170 people and injuring 81,400 others.

Nearly eight months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

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