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UNRWA head urges resumption of funding, says agency 'at a breaking point'
Lazzarini says Israel's accusation that agency staffers participated in October 7 was 'unsubstantiated,' but he terminated their employment anyway
Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said the United Nations agency for Palestinians “is at a breaking point” during an impassioned speech to the UN General Assembly Monday.
Lazzarini called for “urgent action” to continue funding UNRWA, after 16 countries withdrew their financial support in response to allegations that twelve of its employees took part in the October 7 massacre.
Since funding was cut off, he said UNRWA was “functioning hand-to-mouth.”
Despite not having seen the Israeli dossier himself, Lazzarini said he had terminated the employment of “12 out of 30,000” workers, and the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services launched an investigation, along with an independent review of UNRWA ordered by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
In the aftermath, the funding withheld totaled $450 million, Lazzarini said, despite “the unsubstantiated nature of the allegations.” On Monday, the IDF released recordings proving UNRWA staff took part in the October 7 attack on Israel.
Pointing to the Gazan death toll, with some 5 percent of the population dead, wounded, or missing, he called on Israel to abide by its obligations per the Genocide Convention, including “enabling the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.”
“It is impossible to adequately describe the suffering in Gaza,” Lazzarini said, calling UNRWA “the backbone of humanitarian assistance in Gaza.”
Read more updates on the Israel-Gaza war >>
Responding to Israeli calls for the UNRWA to be dismantled, he said this was shortsighted and could not be done without “violating a host of human rights and jeopardizing international peace and security.”
While UNRWA was not started to last forever, Lazzarini concluded that it was the international community’s obligation to secure a “political solution and a genuine peace” before the agency be dismantled.
In response, Israel's ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan told the General Assembly that he was "fine" with the possibility of the agency "disappearing tomorrow." Israeli officials have repeatedly stated that the agency is hopelessly tied to Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza, and that the agency's existence only perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a press conference later on Monday, Lazzarini was asked by i24NEWS how it had managed to compile 100 interviews with Gazans alleging they were abused while in Israeli military detention, but have claimed to be unable to investigate Hamas tunnels underneath UNRWA headquarters or schools and other wrongdoings. In response, Lazzarini said that whenever UNRWA inspected its installations and found evidence of tunnels, it would inform the Hamas authorities in Gaza as well as COGAT, the Israeli army branch in charge of civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories. He says that when the IDF informed him of the tunnel network, his response was: "You have more information than I do, you have the expertise, let me know if you believe that under a given school there is a tunnel.
Lazzarini repeated that he did not have the “expertise” nor mandate to look at what was occurring below the agency’s schools. He said when it comes to “peace and security issues,” a “mandate should be given to those who can inspect underneath.”
Lazzarini said 150 UNRWA premises have been damaged during the war, some of them completely destroyed, and 400 agency staffers killed and over 1,000 wounded. For these reasons, he said, there should be a board of inquiry set up to determine what happened. “We need an investigation if a tunnel has been discovered under UNRWA premises, and we need to understand why so many people were killed.”