On Nov. 4, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced it had formally withdrawn the recognition of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees, as established under the 1967 cooperation agreement. This update comes after the Israeli Knesset voted to ban UNRWA from operating throughout Occupied Palestine on Oct. 28. The ban is scheduled to take effect within 90 days of the decision. Simultaneously, the Zionist Israeli state has designated the UN agency, which serves over six million registered Palestinian refugees, as a “terror group.”- … Israel’s efforts to dismantle and delegitimize UNRWA are not a new phenomenon. The Israeli regime has been gradually building up to this decision throughout the last 13 months of genocide. In January, Israeli officials publicly targeted UNRWA, pushing forward the myth that Hamas had infiltrated the UN agency. Despite the absence of evidence supporting this claim, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported the story, effectively sealing UNRWA’s fate.
- Within days, UNRWA faced another setback when over half a dozen countries announced their decision to pause funding to the humanitarian organization. The overwhelming vote in favor of the ban is yet another tactic to isolate and condemn Palestinians to death by cutting off any last sliver of aid available to them.
… Since Israel began its genocide in the Gaza Strip, at least 237 UNRWA staff have been killed, with more than 200 of its facilities damaged or destroyed.
Continue reading at https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1656408