Unrwa chief claims Israel seeks to shut down agency after school bombing

Gaza: Days after Israeli jets struck an Unrwa school in Gaza, killing eighteen people, the commissioner general of the UN relief agency for Palestinians, stated that a campaign was on to eliminate the organisation.

In an interview, Philippe Lazzarini stated that the Israeli government was attempting to shut down the organisation because it was unable to convince Western donors to cease funding on the grounds that Unrwa staff had ties to Hamas.

“This deliberate attempt to eliminate Unrwa and prevent it from operating would have devastating consequences for the multilateral system, the UN and the cause of a Palestinian transition to self-determination,” Lazzarini said.

Unrwa reported on Wednesday that two attacks on al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat, central Gaza, had killed six staff members, the biggest number of staff members to die in one incident.

Nine Hamas members were reportedly killed in the strikes, three of whom had also worked for Unrwa, according to the Israel Defence Forces. According to Lazzarini, the IDF had not previously disclosed to his organisation that the three employees were Hamas members, the Guardian reported.

“None of these names have ever been on any IDF list notified to us, so I have absolutely no way of being able to authenticate or not,” he said. “These people were working in the shelter … There was no indication they were military operatives.”

One of the biggest UN organisations, Unrwa, employs 13,000 people in Gaza and over 30,000 elsewhere in the region to provide health and educational services to Palestinian refugees. Lazzarini demanded an independent inquiry, pointing out that 220 Unrwa employees had been murdered in the fighting since October 7 of last year.

He said: “There is a deliberate attempt to eliminate and dismantle the agency and the reason behind that has nothing to do with neutrality issues, but there is a political purpose behind it. Ultimately there is a desire to strip the Palestinians of refugee status and beyond that to undermine the future Palestinian aspiration for self-determination. That is why Unrwa has become such a target.

“We should make absolutely no mistake that this is more than an attack on Unrwa, but on the broader multilateral system and on the UN. This is a campaign to dismantle Unrwa and push out the broader humanitarian community.”

Lazzarini cited three pieces of legislation going through in the Israeli parliament: one that would designate Unrwa as a terrorist group, another that would strip Unrwa employees of their immunity, and a third that would forbid Unrwa from entering buildings that are under Israeli control. He stated there was widespread support for the draft bill. He added that the Israeli government was not renewing visas for important Unrwa employees and NGOs.

“It is unconscionable that a UN member state call a UN agency whose mandate comes from the UN Security Council to be labelled a terrorist organisation. It will set a precedent for other governments to label UN organisations when they act in a way the state does not approve,” he said.

Lazzarini also issued a warning, citing the emergence of a generation of impoverished, unschooled children on the Israeli border, some of whom he feared would turn extreme.

“Education was the last asset these children had, but they live in the rubble and are deeply traumatised,” he said. “The more we wait to bring them back to the educational environment, the more I believe we will be sowing seeds for more hatred, for more resentment and for more extremism.”

While it has become a norm to claim that international law has been disregarded in Gaza, Lazzarini said that "it is hard to estimate how much they feel western double standards are being applied" following his meeting with Arab leaders this week in Cairo. He claimed that in response to the original Israeli accusations that 12 employees had participated in the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, his agency had acted both swiftly and seriously. He announced that two investigations, one led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, had been concluded and that ten employees had been fired right away.

“We have wasted no time in implementing her recommendations, including strengthening the screening of staff and the guidelines governing staff political advocacy. We cannot police what staff think around the family table, but we can set clear limits on what can be said at work, and seek to train staff in the principles of neutrality and work for the UN.”

With the exception of the US, he stated that all nations that had stopped paying the UNRWA have since resumed it, leaving a $450,000 (£340,000) shortage.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organisation, celebrated the success of the first round of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza on Friday after more than 560,000 youngsters received their first dose.