The U.N.’s refugee company for Palestinians, which was banned by Israel this week regardless of outcry concerning the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza, stated it was working to maintain individuals alive.
Despite worldwide outcry, together with from Washington, Israeli lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to bar the company, UNRWA, from working in Israel and east Jerusalem.
For greater than seven a long time, UNRWA has offered essential help to Palestinian refugees.
In current months, the army has struck a number of UNRWA schools-turned-shelters, in blatant violation of worldwide regulation.
UNRWA stated 230 of its employees have been killed because the starting of the struggle.
Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA’s spokesman in Jerusalem, known as the company the spine of humanitarian work within the Palestinian territories, particularly in Gaza.
“UNRWA is irreplaceable, UNRWA is essential. That remains a fact, whatever the legislation that was passed yesterday,” Fowler, who known as the regulation “an outrage,” instructed AFP in an interview on the company’s compound in east Jerusalem.
With round 18,000 employees within the occupied West Bank and Gaza, together with 13,000 training employees and 1,500 healthcare staff, UNRWA has delivered very important help since 1949.
Fowler stated UNRWA hopes the choice can be rescinded and is “not in the mindset” of considering of options.
‘We are the spine’
“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,” he stated.
Unlike different U.N. companies, which depend on exterior companions, UNRWA immediately employs lecturers and healthcare employees of its personal, together with 13,000 employees in Gaza, a big majority of them Palestinian.
“The entire U.N. 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,” stated Fowler.
Jens Elder, a spokesman for the U.N. kids’s company, UNICEF, which is participating in a mass vaccination marketing campaign in Gaza alongside UNRWA, stated: “If UNRWA is unable to operate, it’d likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza.”
UNICEF can be “unable to distribute life-saving supplies,” he added.
Tarik Jasarevic, spokesman for the World Health Organization stated: “3,000 of their staff are health workers, it’s really unmatched, it couldn’t be matched by any agency, including WHO.”
Asked whether or not the Palestinian Authority might take over a part of UNRWA’s mandate within the West Bank, Fowler pointed to the truth that the company is meant to be folded into Palestinian establishments as soon as “a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee situation” is achieved.
But “we are nowhere near that situation now,” he stated.
‘Very, very major problem’
The Israeli regulation would additionally bar UNRWA from speaking and coordinating with Israeli authorities, successfully blocking its operations within the West Bank and Gaza.
“On the coordination side, this is a very, very serious problem,” Fowler stated.
UNRWA relies on communication with the Israeli military or COGAT, the protection ministry physique that manages civilian affairs within the Palestinian territories, to facilitate important operations like employees motion and provide entry.
He stated “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.”
On a wider scale, he warned concerning the world implications for the UN’s work and the multilateral order.
“This is a blow against multilateralism”, he stated, including “this is not the only place in the world where potentially a government may wish to do away with an inconvenient U.N. organization, one that it deems to be inconvenient.”
Fowler stated that it could take time earlier than all the consequences of the regulation, whether or not meant or not, grow to be obvious.
“It’s kind of a Pandora’s box that’s been opened here, and that’s what’s extremely troubling.”
Source: www.dailysabah.com