Israel’s bill that would halt the work of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would be a “catastrophe” if passed, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday.
Guterres said he had raised his concerns with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Such a measure would stifle efforts to alleviate human suffering and tensions in Gaza, and indeed in the entire occupied Palestinian territory,” he told reporters.
“It would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”
Israel’s parliament gave preliminary approval in July to a bill that would declare UNRWA a terrorist organization. Israeli leaders have accused UNRWA staff of working with Hamas militants in Gaza.
In response to Guterres’ comments, Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon told Reuters: “Israel is working with humanitarian organizations that are actually interested in humanitarian aid and not in activism or, in some cases, terrorism.”
The UN said in August that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and had been fired. It then emerged that a Hamas commander in Lebanon – killed in an Israeli attack last month – had had a job with UNRWA.
UNRWA provides education, health care and assistance to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The country has long had tense relations with Israel, but ties have deteriorated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza and Israel has repeatedly called for the dissolution of UNRWA.
Guterres spoke to reporters a day after the one-year anniversary of the Hamas shock wave in Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli figures. More than a hundred hostages are being held in Gaza by the Palestinian militant group.
The Secretary-General said there is still time to stop the spreading violence.
He again called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, the release of all hostages taken during Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the crowds in desperate need .
The Hamas attack prompted Israeli retaliation in Gaza, sparking a humanitarian crisis in the besieged enclave, where authorities say nearly 42,000 people have been killed.
“There is something fundamentally wrong in the way this war is being waged,” Guterres said on Tuesday.
“Ordering citizens to evacuate does not keep them safe if they have no safe place to go and no shelter, food, medicine or water.”
The conflict in Gaza has raised fears of an all-out regional war, pitting Israel against Iran and the militant groups it supports, including Lebanese Hezbollah. The Israeli army deployed more troops in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, signaling a widening ground offensive against Hezbollah.
Gaza is in a ‘death spiral’, says Guterres
Guterres appealed to Israel and Hezbollah to respect the safety and security of UNIFIL peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
He said Israeli forces bordering a UNIFIL position – manned by Irish peacekeepers – had left after he complained “to various entities” on Monday. A UN official later said Guterres had communicated with the United States.
About 2,000 Lebanese have been killed since Hezbollah began shooting at Israel a year ago in solidarity with Hamas. Most have been killed in recent weeks. Guterres said the death toll in Lebanon has already exceeded the number of people killed in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Guterres said that “the Middle East is a powder keg, with many parties in control,” adding that Lebanon is on the brink of “all-out war” and that Gaza is “in a death spiral.”
The conflict in the Middle East is “getting worse by the hour,” Guterres said, and every airstrike, rocket launch and rocket fired “pushes peace further out of reach and worsens the suffering for the millions of civilians caught in the middle.” “