Israel attacks UNRWA and promises that the UN agency will no longer be in Gaza after the war ends. The storm that has hit the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which has had to fire twelve of its staff in the Gaza Strip on suspicion of involvement in the October 7 massacre, continues to grow. After the USA, other countries – from Italy to Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Finland, Australia and the Netherlands – have also decided to freeze their funding to UNRWA, whose resources for its facilities in Gaza have been insecure for some time. A decision that Hamas did not like. “Israel,” said Foreign Minister Israel Katz, “will work to win bipartisan support in the US, the EU and other countries around the world for policies aimed at stopping UNRWA activities in Gaza.” And from this He therefore called on the UN to “take immediate action against the UNRWA leadership”. “For years,” Katz explained, “we have been warning: The agency is perpetuating the refugee problem, hindering peace and serving as the civilian arm of Hamas in Gaza. UNRWA is part of the problem.” Hamas responded by calling on the United Nations “not to give in to the threats and blackmail of this rogue Nazi entity.” And he then attacked UNRWA itself for firing the twelve employees “on the basis of information from the Zionist enemy” and for describing “the resistance of the Palestinian people as terrorism.”
“Nine countries have so far temporarily suspended their funding of UNRWA. These decisions jeopardize our humanitarian work throughout the region, particularly in the Gaza Strip. It is shocking that funding is being suspended in response to allegations against a small group of staff, particularly given UNRWA's immediate action by terminating their contracts and calling for a transparent and independent investigation.” As in a statement from the agency's Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, according to which “over 2 million people in Gaza depend on UNRWA for their survival alone.”
Palestinian families leave Khan Younis to reach Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip
“It is not the task of UNRWA,” stressed Hamas, “to announce political positions on the conflict,” but “to defend the rights of the refugees it represents.” The PLO also rejected the decision to freeze UNRWA funds. “A decision,” warned Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh, “that entails political risk. I call on these states to immediately withdraw the decision.” However, stopping funding for UNRWA does not mean the end of aid to the Palestinians. “We are committed to providing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian population and protecting the security of Israel,” Tajani said when announcing the Italian government’s decision. In fact, last December Italy allocated 10 million euros to help the Palestinian civilian population through other UN organizations such as the FAO and the WFP or through the Red Crescent. In Israel, the protest against the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is intensifying and there are calls for his resignation, with accusations that he did not do everything necessary for the more than 130 hostages still in Gaza and that a possible ceasefire was not taken into account for this result have . An accusation was rejected by the prime minister, who instead insisted on military pressure on the Gaza Strip as a solution to bring the kidnapped people home as part of the overall strategy to eliminate Hamas.
Palestinian families leave Khan Younis to reach Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip
“This is Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Arabic,” he said on television, showing the volume on Remembrance Day. “It was found in Gaza: This is how they raise their children.” And he again attacked the Hague court for not closing the case of accusations against Israel of possible genocide (the decisions that a UN Security Council is expected to make next Wednesday will meet). “In the name of the new Nazis, South Africa brought the charges, not threw them down the stairs,” he thundered. Finally, he denied a political cooldown toward Egypt, instead confirming his accusations against Qatar over Hamas while praising Doha's efforts regarding the hostages. Meanwhile, on the 113th day of the war, Israel continues to bomb Khan Yunis, the Hamas stronghold in southern Gaza, where there is intense fighting, even at close range, between Israeli commandos and militants from the Islamic faction. According to the military spokesman, over “100 terrorists were killed” last week. According to the NYT, the US, Arab countries and Israel itself are “working on a plan that would provide for the release of the hostages, a ceasefire, the revision of the Palestinian Authority and the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel in return for the creation of one Palestinian state”.
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