Barbed-wire covers the walls surrounding the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) West Bank Field Office in Jerusalem on October 29, 2024. Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP.
Jerusalem: An official from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, banned by Israel this week, said Tuesday the organisation was "irreplaceable" as its network helps sustain the people of war-ravaged Gaza.
Despite international concerns, including from Washington, Israeli lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to bar the agency, UNRWA, from operating in Israel and east Jerusalem.
For more than seven decades, UNRWA has provided critical support to Palestinian refugees.
But the agency has faced mounting criticism from Israeli officials, escalating since the start of war in Gaza after October 7 last year.
But Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA's spokesman in Jerusalem, called the agency the backbone of humanitarian work in the Palestinian territories, especially in Gaza.
"UNRWA is irreplaceable, UNRWA is essential. That remains a fact, whatever the legislation that was passed yesterday," Fowler, who called the bill "an outrage", told AFP in an interview at the agency's compound in east Jerusalem.
With around 18,000 staff the occupied West Bank and Gaza, including 13,000 education staff and 1,500 healthcare workers, UNRWA has delivered vital aid since 1949.
Fowler said UNRWA hopes the decision will be rescinded, and is "not in the mindset" of thinking of replacement.
"It is on the international community that if this moves forward, and on the Israeli authorities as members of the international community, to say what the plan B is", should the decision be enforced in three months.
Unlike other UN agencies, which rely on external partners, UNRWA directly employs teachers and healthcare staff of its own, including 13,000 staff in Gaza.
"The entire UN system and other international players rely on UNRWA's logistical networks, on UNRWA's staff to do what is necessary to try to keep the population of Gaza alive. We are the backbone", said Fowler.
"So the question is, who would be the people who would do this stuff?" he added.
'Very, very serious problem'
The Israeli bill would also bar UNRWA from communicating and coordinating with Israeli authorities, effectively blocking its operations in the West Bank and Gaza.
"On the coordination side, this is a very, very serious problem", Fowler said.
Like other UN agencies and international organisations, UNRWA depends on communication with the Israeli army or COGAT, the defence ministry body that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, to facilitate essential operations like staff movement and supply entry.
"In a situation of war," like the one raging in Gaza for over a year, "that's even more essential, the ability to move around, the ability to do our work in relative safety, risks being severely hampered by the possibility of not being able to do de-confliction anymore," Fowler said.
On a wider scale, Fowler warned about the broader implications for international cooperation.
"This is a blow against multilateralism", he said, adding "this is not the only place in the world where potentially a government may wish to do away with an inconvenient UN organisation, one that it deems to be inconvenient."
