By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -Draft Israeli legislation that would stop the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency working in the Gaza Strip and West Bank would be a “catastrophe” if enacted, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday, adding he raised his concerns with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Such a measure would suffocate efforts to ease human suffering and tensions in Gaza, and indeed, the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory. It would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster,” he told reporters.
The Israeli parliament in July gave preliminary approval to a bill that would declare UNRWA a terrorist organization. Israeli leaders have accused UNRWA staff of collaborating with Hamas militants in Gaza.
In response to Guterres’ remarks, Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon told Reuters: “Israel works with humanitarian agencies that are actually interested in humanitarian aid and not activism or, in some cases, terrorism.”
The U.N. said in August that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, and had been fired. Then a Hamas commander in Lebanon – killed last month in an Israeli strike – was found to have had an UNRWA job.
UNRWA provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It has long had tense relations with Israel but ties have deteriorated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza and Israel has called repeatedly for UNRWA to be disbanded.
Guterres spoke to reporters a day after the one year anniversary of the shock Hamas rampage in Israel, during which some 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli figures. More than 100 hostages remain held in Gaza by the Palestinian militant group.
The Hamas attack triggered Israel’s retaliation in Gaza, sparking a humanitarian crisis in the besieged enclave where authorities say more than 41,000 people have been killed.
“There is something fundamentally wrong in the way this war is being conducted,” Guterres said on Tuesday. “Ordering civilians 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 all-out regional war, pitting Israel against Iran and the militant groups that it backs, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel’s military on Tuesday deployed more troops into south Lebanon, signalling an expanding ground offensive against Hezbollah.
Guterres appealed to Israel and Hezbollah to respect the safety and security of UNIFIL peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
He said that Israeli forces operating adjacent to a UNIFIL position – staffed by Irish peacekeepers – had left after he complained on Monday “to different entities.” A U.N. official later said Guterres had communicated with the United States.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Ismail Shakil and Cynthia Osterman)
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