"This would be a fatal step." Western countries criticize Israel's UNRWA ban
A host of Western countries have sharply criticized the move by the Israeli parliament to ban the UN agency UNRWA from operating in Israel and greatly hinder its humanitarian operations in war-torn Gaza.
“The governments of Ireland, Norway, Slovenia and Spain condemn the approval by the Knesset of legislation to prevent UNRWA from operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the four nations said in a joint statement Monday shared online by Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin.
Going on to describe UNRWA’s work as “essential and irreplaceable,” the four countries said the legislation “sets a very serious precedent for the work of the United Nations and for all the organizations of the multilateral system.”
Germany’s human rights commissioner Luise Amstberg warned that these laws if “implemented by the Israeli government in this form” would “effectively make UNRWA’s work in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem impossible.”
This would be a fatal step, vital humanitarian aid for millions of people would be jeopardized and our efforts to bring peace to the Middle East would be hindered.”
The United Kingdom said Israel had a clear obligation under international law to ensure that “sufficient aid reaches civilians in Gaza,” with the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy saying UNRWA was the only agency that “can deliver humanitarian aid at the scale and pace needed.”
Meanwhile, the Belgian foreign ministry deplored that the “strong appeals from the international community have been ignored,” saying that the “eviction” of a UN agency of UNRWA’s status “undermines the multilateral system and the United Nations itself.”
Some background: UNRWA was founded by the United Nations a year after the 1948 creation of Israel that led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in an event known by Palestinians as the “Nakba” (catastrophe).
The agency, which began by assisting about 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1950, now serves some 5.9 million across the Middle East, many of whom live in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel has long opposed the agency and sought to dismantle it even before October 7 last year, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 250 hostages. Israeli officials have rejected UNRWA’s definition of which Palestinians are eligible for refugee status, arguing that descendants of the 1948 refugees do not qualify and thus don’t have the right to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel.
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