His diplomacy Israel vehemently succeeded yesterday Monday against the final report for the Office of Relief and Works of United States on Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is considered the backbone of the humanitarian aid delivery system in Gaza Strip.
Experts tasked with examining the UN agency’s “neutrality”, following Israeli accusations that 12 UN staff were “involved” in the raid by Hamas’ military arm against southern Israel on October 7, recommended yesterday that rules be tightened on “eight critical sectors’ in the text submitted to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Some 1,170 people, most of them civilians, died in the October attack, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data. At the same time, the text of the experts, headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, emphasizes that the Israeli authorities have not yet presented evidence that the members of the service they accused are actually members of terrorist organizations.
The report “defies the gravity of the problem,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmostaine countered via X (formerly Twitter).
“The problem with UNRWA in Gaza is not a few bad apples; it is a rotten and poisonous tree whose roots are Hamas,” according to the spokesman. “Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA so deeply that it is no longer possible to determine where UNRWA ends and Hamas begins,” Mr. Marmostaine continued.
The report is neither “authentic” nor “thorough”, it is “an attempt to avoid the problem and not face it head on”, the spokesman insisted.
UNRWA is “part of the problem and not part of the solution,” he continued. “There are other solutions. UNRWA cannot be part of the solution in Gaza, not now, not in the future,” he concluded.
During a press conference she gave yesterday in New York, Mrs. Colonna assured that “what needs to be improved will be improved”, stating that she is “sure” that the implementation of the recommendations contained in the text “will help” UNRWA to “fulfill the her command”.
The agency remains “critical to delivering vital humanitarian assistance” to Palestinian refugees “in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank,” the text acknowledges, despite “problems” with its “neutrality of” who “persist”.
UNRWA, which employs more than 30,000 staff serving more than 5.9 million Palestinians in the region, has been accused by the government in Israel of having “over 400 terrorists” in its ranks in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s spokesman Marmostein hit back yesterday, saying “over” 2,100 agency workers are “members of either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad” and that “a fifth of UNRWA’s school principals are members of Hamas.”
The Israeli accusations triggered the suspension of funding by UNRWA’s key donor states, although some have since restored it.
A spokesman for the UN Secretary General said that Mr. Guterres “accepts the recommendations contained in Mrs. Colonna’s text” and that “the action plan” proposed will be implemented.
For his part, the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, promised to “strengthen (our) efforts and (our) response in the face of one of the most difficult episodes in the history of the Palestinian people.”
Under pressure for months, he last week defended his agency before the Security Council, calling it the “backbone of humanitarian operations” in the Gaza Strip and denouncing the “insidious” campaign to end the work it does.
He warned against the “breakup” of UNRWA, as he noted that this would increase the risk of “famine” in the Palestinian enclave, where so far Israeli military operations have killed more than 34,000 people, the vast majority of them women and children, according to Hamas Health Ministry.
Source: RES-MPE
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