Boss writes fire letter to UN
UNRWA feels prevented from working by Israel
February 23, 2024, 2:51 a.m
The United Nations Palestinian Relief Agency is under suspicion of terrorism. Employees are said to have been actively involved in the massacre on October 7th. The head of UNRWA complains in a letter that Israel is disrupting his organization’s work. He doesn’t mention the allegations.
The head of the UN refugee agency UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, accuses Israeli forces within the government apparatus of concerted actions to hinder the work of the UN organization. The refugee aid organization may soon no longer be able to fulfill the mandate given by the UN General Assembly, Lazzarini wrote in a letter to the President of the UN General Assembly.
For example, according to him, Israeli authorities ordered UNRWA to evacuate a vocational training center in East Jerusalem allocated by Jordan in 1952 and pay a “usage fee” of $4.5 million. Efforts were also underway to oust UNRWA from its offices in East Jerusalem after 75 years. Customs authorities have stopped clearing UNRWA materials and a bank has blocked a UNRWA account. The visas for international employees who also work in the Gaza Strip have been limited to one to two months.
Lazzarini called on the UN General Assembly to reaffirm the mandate of the refugee aid organization and to provide the necessary financial resources. 16 countries had frozen their payments to UNRWA in the past few weeks. This was preceded by Israeli allegations that UNRWA employees were involved in the massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023. The UN General Assembly created UNRWA in 1949 and mandated it “to provide assistance and protection to Palestinian refugees until a just and lasting solution to their plight is found.” Israel is now calling for the organization to be dissolved.
Video shows UNRWA social workers during massacre
Shortly before, the mother of a young Israeli killed in the Hamas massacres on October 7th had blamed the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA for her son’s abduction. “How can the UN pay this man who dragged my son’s slender body across the ground and then brought him to Gaza like a trophy,” Ajelet Samerano said in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening after the release of a video, in which the body of her 21-year-old son Jonathan is dragged into a white jeep by a suspected UNRWA employee.
Jonathan Samerano from Tel Aviv was attending the Nova music festival with friends on October 7th, when fighters from Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the EU and the USA, entered Israel from the Gaza Strip, overran military posts and kibbutzes and the techno- Party attacked in southern Israel. The 21-year-old escaped the Islamists’ attack on the festival in the Negev Desert, but was killed in the nearby Kibbutz Beeri.
According to the Israeli government, the man seen in the video with Samerano’s body is a UNRWA social worker. The man was identified as Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami. In addition to his UNRWA work, the 45-year-old was also a member of a Hamas command unit and “involved in the kidnapping of a soldier from Beeri.” The government said he also coordinated “the transfer of weapons and trucks” on October 7th.