Jerusalem. Israel officially announced this Monday to the United Nations the end of its cooperation with the Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), which now fears a “collapse” of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is simultaneously carrying out an offensive against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, two pro-Iran Islamist movements.
Despite the harsh blows it has received from Israel, Hezbollah continues to fire rockets against the north of Israeli territory and this Monday it said it had launched “a large barrage of rockets” against the city of Safed.
The current war in the Gaza Strip began with the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023. The next day, and in solidarity with Hamas, Hezbollah opened a front against Israel, which since September has been has turned into open war.
Last week, the Israeli parliament banned UNRWA activities in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and this Monday the Israeli Foreign Ministry officially notified the UN “of the cancellation of the agreement,” according to a statement.
UNRWA was created in 1950 by the UN and provides social services to millions of Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories and several Arab countries, many of them descendants of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people caused by the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The agency’s agreement with Israel dates back to 1967, when the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as East Jerusalem, began.
Israel accuses “employees of the organization of having participated in the massacre of October 7,” according to the Ministry’s statement.
“The UN has received countless evidence that Hamas agents are employees of UNRWA and that its facilities are being used for terrorist purposes,” he added.
Fear of a “collapse” of aid to the Palestinians
“If this law is implemented, it risks causing the collapse of the international humanitarian operation in Gaza, of which UNRWA is the backbone,” warned Jonathan Fowler, spokesman for the agency.
But Foreign Minister Israel Katz rejects this argument.
“The vast majority of humanitarian aid in Gaza comes from other organizations and only 13 percent of this aid comes from UNRWA,” he says.
“For us it’s UNRWA or nothing,” says Shafic Ahmad Jad in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank, where residents fear for their future after the agency’s office was severely damaged during a bombing. Israeli.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after the October 7 attack, in which 1,206 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 people kidnapped, 97 remain held in Gaza, 34 of whom have been declared dead by the army.
In retaliation, the Israeli army launched an offensive in Gaza that has so far left 43,341 dead, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
Israel has continued to relentlessly bomb the Gaza Strip for more than a year, where approximately 2.4 million people live, most of them in conditions described as “disastrous” by the UN.
“Every hour there are killings, displaced people and hungry people, we have no water and no aid is being delivered,” laments Sumaya Al Zaanin, 40, from Gaza City, who has had to be displaced several times.
On the northern border, the Israeli army again bombed southern Lebanon on Monday, where Israeli troops have been carrying out a ground offensive since September 30.
The Israeli army said it had “eliminated” a local Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon, Abu Ali Rida, and argued that this man was “in charge of planning and executing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks against Israeli troops.” to “monitor Hezbollah’s terrorist activities in the area.”
Starting on September 23, Israel intensified its attacks against Hezbollah with the aim of allowing the 60,000 inhabitants of the north displaced by the rocket fire to return to their homes.
At least 1,940 people have died since September 23 in Lebanon, according to an AFP count based on official data.
Likewise, at least 72 people have been killed by rocket fire against northern Israel since October 7, 2023, and at least 38 Israeli soldiers have fallen in southern Lebanon since the start of the ground offensive on September 30, according to with an AFP count based on official data.
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