Addressing the United Nations General Assembly (GA) on Wednesday, Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), urged UN member states to act to prevent the implementation of Israeli Knesset legislation targeting UNRWA. He also urged states to maintain funding for UNRWA and not to withhold or divert funds on the assumption that the organization can no longer operate.
“The Israeli Knesset’s legislative action poses an imminent and existential threat to the Agency,” Lazzarini said at the informal meeting, noting that he was addressing the General Assembly “at UNRWA’s darkest hour”.
“It is the latest move in a relentless campaign to delegitimize UNRWA and undermine its role providing development services and emergency assistance to Palestine Refugees.”
He said that since the beginning of the Gaza war, Israeli officials have described the dismantling of UNRWA as a war goal. The Knesset legislation served that purpose.
“However, its intention goes beyond undermining UNRWA and the United Nations. It seeks to end Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and aspiration for a just political solution. It advances efforts to shift, unilaterally, long-established parameters for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict,” the UNRWA chief added.
Without intervention by member states, he warned, UNRWA will collapse.
“The entire population of Gaza fears that their only remaining lifeline will be cut. Without intervention by Member States, UNRWA will collapse, plunging millions of Palestinians into chaos.”
On October 28, the Israeli Knesset passed two laws, which will take effect in three months, prohibiting Israeli authorities from having any contact with UNRWA and prohibiting the agency from operating in areas under Israeli sovereignty. If implemented, these measures would likely prevent UNRWA from carrying out its activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).
Lazzarini said he had three urgent requests to prevent this devastating outcome.
“First, I ask that Member States act to prevent the implementation of the legislation against UNRWA. Changes to UNRWA’s mandate are the prerogative of the General Assembly, not individual Member States,” he said.
Second, he called on member states to ensure that any plan for political transition outlines the role that UNRWA will play.
“The Agency must progressively conclude its mandate within the framework of a political solution, and hand over its services to an empowered Palestinian administration,” Lazzarini said
Finally, he asked member states to maintain funding for UNRWA and not to withhold or divert funds on the assumption that the UN agency can no longer operate.
The UNRWA chief also briefed member states on the situation in Gaza, reminding the General Assembly that UNRWA has been a lifeline for the people of Gaza, especially over the past year. His staff, he said, had worked non-stop for 13 months, amid immense personal hardship and loss.
“For decades, UNRWA has provided Palestine Refugees with services ensuring their access to basic rights. Despite this, and perhaps because of it, we have paid a heavy price. The Agency is under intense attack in Gaza.”
He reminded member states of the 239 UNRWA staff who have been killed. More than two-thirds of UNRWA premises have been damaged or destroyed. He called for independent investigations into these violations.
UN personnel and facilities, as well as humanitarian operations, enjoy special protection under international law. Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, facilities, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian mission is a war crime.
Humanitarian organizations and UN officials say UNRWA is irreplaceable and indispensable as a humanitarian lifeline and must be allowed to fulfill its mandate. They say the agency is the backbone of the humanitarian response and cannot be replaced by other UN agencies.
The General Assembly established the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in 1949 to assist some 700,000 Palestinian refugees displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which broke out after Israel became a state in May of that year. In the absence of a political solution for the Palestinian refugees, the UN General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA's mandate.
Today, UNRWA operates not only in Gaza and the West Bank, but also in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, where there are large Palestinian refugee communities. Nearly 6 million Palestinians are eligible for UNRWA services, which include education and health care.
Before Israel launched its war, two-thirds of Gaza's population, 1.6 million people, were Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA. The Agency employed more than 13,000 staff in Gaza, including more than 3,500 in emergency operations. In the West Bank, UNRWA serves 1.1 million Palestine refugees and other registered persons, including 890,000 refugees.
An external review of the neutrality of the UN organization responsible for Palestine refugees concluded that the agency has a number of procedures and mechanisms in place to ensure its neutrality.
Meanwhile, Israel's horrific war on the Gaza Strip continues, with humanitarian conditions in the northern part of the territory remaining particularly dire. North Gaza has been under almost total siege for the past month. An estimated 100,000 people in the North Gaza Governorate are completely cut off from humanitarian aid, with the UN condemning "unlawful interference with humanitarian assistance".
UN officials say Israeli ground operations have left Palestinians without the basic necessities for survival, forcing them to flee for safety on multiple occasions and cutting off their escape and supply routes. They say living conditions in North Gaza are particularly deadly, and civilians are starving while the world watches.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), some 100,000 people have now been displaced from North Gaza to Gaza City over a four-week period. It is estimated that between 75,000 and 95,000 people remain in North Gaza.
According to OCHA, the death toll there over the past month is believed to be in the hundreds, possibly over 1,000, with the Palestinian Civil Defense (PCD) estimating the death toll at 1,300.
The international humanitarian organization Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said in a statement on Thursday that after 13 months of relentless violence, Palestinians in Gaza have lost everything. On a visit to Gaza this week, NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland witnessed the almost unparalleled suffering of families there.
“The complete destruction I have witnessed this week in Gaza City and other urban areas of northern and central Gaza is worse than anything I could imagine as a long-time aid worker,” Egeland said.
“What I saw and heard in the north of Gaza was a population pushed beyond breaking point. Families torn apart, men and boys detained and separated from their loved ones, and families unable to even bury their dead.”
Egeland said some had gone days without food, drinking water was nowhere to be found. It was "scene after scene of absolute desperation."
“This is in no way a lawful response, a targeted operation of ‘self-defense’ to dismantle armed groups, or warfare consistent with humanitarian law. What Israel is doing here, with Western-supplied arms, is rendering a densely populated area uninhabitable for almost two million civilians,” he added.
“The families, widows and children I have spoken to are enduring suffering almost unparalleled anywhere in recent history. There is no possible justification for continued war and destruction.”
International humanitarian law (IHL) requires Israel to ensure that the basic needs of the population of Gaza are met. Among other things, it must ensure that Gaza is supplied with sufficient water, food, medical supplies and other basic essentials to enable the population to survive.
However, since Israel declared a full siege on the Gaza Strip on October 9, 2023, the amount of aid entering the enclave has never been sufficient to meet the needs on the ground. For more than a year, Israel has failed to provide or even facilitate the delivery of essential supplies for the survival of some 2.1 million people still living in Gaza.
Despite the scale of the crisis, Israeli policies have resulted in deplorable levels of aid reaching those in need. 91 percent of Gaza's population faces acute food insecurity, with 16 percent at catastrophic levels and likely to starve.
Some 1.9 million people - 90 percent of Gaza's total population - have been displaced by Israeli military attacks or Israeli evacuation orders, including people who have been forced to flee more than a dozen times. At least 1 million children are among those uprooted by the war.
Civilians in Gaza have nowhere safe to go. Palestinian families are still forced to move from one unsafe area to another. The 62 active Israeli relocation orders aim to confine Palestinians to just 20 percent of the Gaza Strip, with no guarantee of security or return.
NRC said this constitutes forcible transfer - a serious violation of international law.
“The situation in Gaza today is deadly for all Palestinians. It is deadly for those who are aid workers assisting people in need, and for those working as journalists trying to document the horrors on the ground,” Egeland said.
“Israel has repeatedly struck UN premises and imposed barrier after barrier – both physical and bureaucratic – to aid work. This week I have witnessed the catastrophic impact of strangled aid flows. There has not been a single week since the start of this war when sufficient aid was delivered in Gaza,” he said.
Since the country launched its war against Gaza in October 2023 and expanded its war against Lebanon in September 2024, Israel has become a pariah state in the world, with only a few influential countries continuing to provide political and military support to its government.
The war in Gaza has already claimed more than 43,000 lives and is characterized by grave war crimes and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israeli forces. These include collective punishment of civilians, use of starvation as a method of warfare, denial of humanitarian aid, targeting of civilians, indiscriminate killing of civilians, disproportionate attacks, forcible displacement, torture, enforced disappearances and other atrocity crimes.
The Israeli government has generally failed to comply with international law, including international humanitarian law, UN Security Council resolutions, and International Court of Justice (ICJ) orders and rulings.
Enforcing compliance with international law is the responsibility of the UN Security Council. However, the Council has not acted to enforce the rules of war, the rulings of the ICJ, or its own resolutions, resulting in a further breakdown of the international rule of law.
Further information
Full text: Statement of UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to the United Nations General Assembly, 06 November 2024, UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, statement, delivered November 6, 2024
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/statement-unrwa-commissioner-general-philippe-lazzarini-united-nations-general-assembly
Full text: Humanity is being erased in Gaza, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), press release, published November 7, 2024
https://www.nrc.no/news/2024/november/humanity-is-being-erased-in-gaza/