Israel officially informed the UN on Monday of the ban on UNRWA, the UN agency “backbone” of aid to refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This in the middle of the war in the Gaza Strip plunged into a humanitarian disaster.
At the same time, the Israeli army carried out new attacks in Gaza and Lebanon, where it targets Hamas and Hezbollah respectively, two pro-Iranian Islamist movements.
Despite the hard blows inflicted on Hezbollah, this movement continues to fire rockets into northern Israel, which borders southern Lebanon. On Monday, he said he launched a salvo of rockets at Safed.
The war in Gaza was triggered by an attack carried out on October 7, 2023 by Hamas on Israeli soil. The next day and in support of Hamas, Hezbollah opened a front against Israel, which degenerated into open war last September.
Failed attempts
On the eve of the presidential election in the United States, Israel’s main ally, and despite international pressure, attempts to end hostilities remained in vain.
A week after Parliament passed a law banning the activities in Israel of the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Foreign Affairs “notified the UN of the cancellation of the “agreement between Israel and UNRWA”, according to a press release.
Repeated accusations
The agreement with Israel dates back to 1967, when that country began its occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as East Jerusalem, where UNRWA provided essential aid to Palestinian refugees for decades – education, health, social services, food and cash assistance.
Israel, which has long been very critical of UNRWA, has once again accused “employees of the organization of having participated in the massacre of October 7”, according to the Israeli press release: “The UN has received countless evidence on Hamas agents employed by UNRWA and the use of its installations for terrorist purposes.”
Such evidence has in fact never been provided by Israel, according to the UN. Only doubts concerning nine Unrwa employees led to the dismissal of these people.
“Humanitarian collapse” in sight
“If the law is implemented, it risks causing the collapse of the international humanitarian operation in Gaza, of which UNRWA is the backbone,” warned Jonathan Fowler, a spokesperson for the agency.
The law, which caused an international outcry on voting day October 28, is due to take effect 90 days after its adoption.
“Kill all the Palestinian people”
“Currently, the Palestinian people depend almost entirely on aid from abroad, especially from UNRWA, and interrupting it amounts to killing the entire Palestinian people,” said Abdel Karim Kallab, a resident of Khan Younes in southern Gaza.
“We only have Unrwa (to provide aid). People will die of hunger and will not be able to feed their children,” exclaimed Houria Abou Charkh, a displaced person from Gaza City.
For Hamas, Israel’s decision “is an attempt to deny refugees the right to return to their homes from which they were forcibly expelled by Zionist terrorist militias more than seven decades ago.”
New Israeli attacks
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its October 7 attack. In retaliation, the Israeli army launched a destructive offensive in Gaza which left 43,374 people dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
It constantly bombards the poor and cramped Palestinian territory where it has for more than a year besieged the approximately 2.4 million inhabitants, the vast majority of whom have been displaced countless times. On Monday, new attacks targeted the territory, according to witnesses.
Hospital shelled
The Gaza Health Ministry reported Israeli bombing of Kamal Adwan Hospital, the only facility still operating in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The army “continues to violently bomb and destroy the hospital, targeting all parts” of the establishment located in Beit Lahia, the ministry said, stressing that there were “many injured among the medical staff and patients.”
The hospital director, Houssam Abou Safia, said several staff members had been injured and no one could leave the establishment. He described a “catastrophic” situation when the army had not warned of these attacks.
The spokesperson for Gaza Civil Defense, Mahmoud Bassal, for his part indicated that more than 1,300 people had been killed since the launch of the military offensive on October 6 against the north of the territory where “there is a severe shortage medicine, water and food.
Israel continues to prevent aid
Help is still not arriving. According to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, the daily average number of trucks allowed by Israel to enter Gaza fell to 30 in October: “This is not enough to meet the needs of more than 2 million people, many of whom are starving and sick and living in desperate conditions.
On Israel’s northern border, new Israeli bombardments were carried out on southern Lebanon, where Israeli troops have also been engaged in a ground offensive since September 30.
At least two Lebanese Hezbollah fighters were killed in an attack on a neighborhood south of Damascus, where the pro-Iranian movement has a significant presence. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), the attack targeted “a house on a farm in the Sayyeda Zeinab sector used by members of Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards”.
Nearly 2,000 dead in Lebanon
From September 23, Israel intensified its attacks against Hezbollah, saying it wanted to neutralize this movement in the southern border regions and move its fighters north of the Litani River, located around thirty km from the Israeli border. Objective: the return of 60,000 inhabitants in northern Israel, displaced by Hezbollah fire.
At least 1,940 people have been killed since September 23 in Lebanon, according to an AFP count based on official data.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
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