US has ‘deep concern’ about Israeli effort to alter UNRWA legal status

Even by U.N. Security Council standards, Wednesday’s meeting of the global body was contentious.

The Palestinian Authority envoy balked at Israel’s comparison of the P.A. and Hamas, and Philippe Lazzarini, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency commissioner-general, said that eliminating UNRWA would upset global peace.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Washington’s U.N. ambassador, reiterated calls for a ceasefire and hostage deal in the Gaza Strip while chiding Israel for a reported slowdown of humanitarian aid crossing into the enclave in recent weeks.

“Colleagues, we are also concerned by recent actions by the Israeli government to limit the delivery of goods into Gaza,” the U.S. envoy said. “When combined with new bureaucratic limits placed on humanitarian goods arriving from Jordan, and the closure of most border crossings in recent weeks, these restrictions would only have the effect of intensifying suffering in Gaza.”

“We need to see fewer barriers to the delivery of aid, not more of them,” she said.

Thomas-Greenfield allowed that “Israel has alleged—and the U.N., in some cases, has confirmed—that a small percentage of UNRWA employees have ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups.” Washington shares Jerusalem’s concerns about Hamas “misusing” UNRWA facilities, she said.

“At the same time, we know that U.N. personnel, including from UNRWA, are vital to the humanitarian response in Gaza and face tremendous danger while performing their work,” she said. “Israel needs to provide UNRWA additional information regarding these allegations, and UNRWA needs to have in place a process to address these concerns seriously and urgently, and make faster progress on the much-needed reforms.”

“Simply put,” she said, “it is in no one’s interest for the neutrality of UNRWA’s personnel to remain in doubt.

The United States has “deep concern” about “the Israeli legislative proposal that could alter UNRWA’s legal status, hindering its ability to communicate with Israeli officials and removing privileges and immunities afforded to U.N. organizations and personnel around the globe,” Thomas-Greenfield added. “This legislative proposal reflects the significant distrust between Israel and UNRWA.”

End of international order

The Security Council session, ostensibly to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza, included calls from several countries to save UNRWA, the U.N. Palestinian-only aid and social services agency, which has come under fire for its ties to Hamas and the evidence of many of its staff members participating directly in terror activities.

Several pieces of legislation making their way through the Knesset would, if passed, shut down UNRWA’s activities in Jerusalem, declare the agency a terror organization and strip its staff of diplomatic privilege.

Lazzarini, the UNRWA head, claimed during Wednesday’s meeting that a failure to push back on the Israeli legislative efforts “will eventually compromise humanitarian and human rights law worldwide.”

The council has a choice to “enforce international law, including the Geneva conventions and the decision of international courts, without exception, or we can concede that the post-World War II-based international order is at an end,” Lazzarinis said.

The head of the UNRWA teacher’s union in Lebanon, who was also a school principal, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in late September. Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin was “the head of Hamas’s Lebanon branch,” the terror group said. Lazzarini denied knowing the principal was tied to Hamas, although a U.N. watchdog said that it had notified the global body about el-Amin’s terror ties.

‘A just solution’

Vassily Nebeznia, the Russian U.N. envoy who frequently criticizes the Jewish state, said something at the Security Council meeting that confirmed what U.N. leaders and agencies have long denied—that the collapse of UNRWA could threaten the ongoing “refugee” status of Palestinians, who maintain a “right of return.”

“Let me underscore that undermining UNRWA’s mandate threatens the maintenance of Palestinian refugees’ status, which could thwart efforts to achieve a just solution,” Nebeznia said.

U.N. officials have said that even shuttering UNRWA wouldn’t alter the refugee status of Palestinians.

‘Appropriate standards’

Pascale Baeriswyl, the Swiss ambassador to the United Nations and president, for October, of the Security Council, reprimanded the Palestinian “permanent observer” when Riyad Mansour interrupted remarks by Danny Danon, the Israeli envoy.

Danon criticized Mansour for failing in his address to the council to say that the remaining hostages must be released from Gaza.

“That’s why we are sitting in this room,” Danon said. “What started the war is a kidnapping of Israeli civilians, and I’m really disappointed, Mr. Mansour, not from Hamas. We had no expectation for Hamas, but from you, from the Palestinian Authority.”

Although his microphone was turned off, Mansour tried to speak over Danon. His interrupting comments were inaudible.

“The Security Council is a place of respect, and I call upon all speakers—all speakers—to respect appropriate standards in terms of time, choice of words and content in their remarks, and we don’t interrupt each other,” Baeriswyl said.

Danon continued his remarks, calling Hamas “savages” and saying that the Palestinian Authority is “the moderate, the educated.”

Yet, “you are not capable, after a year, to say, ‘We condemn the atrocities of Oct. 7, we condemn Hamas,’” Danon said.

The Israeli envoy questioned the view that Israelis differentiate between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, given that surveys suggest that about 70% of those under Palestinian Authority governance support Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7.

“You have to make a distinction between evil and good, and you don’t do that, Mr. Mansour,” Danon said.

The Israeli diplomat also addressed the slowdown in aid, urging more Security Council members to be more full-throated in their position that Hamas cannot retain power in Gaza.

“Hamas has exploited the suffering of its people, using the misery of Gaza as a propaganda tool while they line their pockets and boost their arsenals,” Danon said. “Our vision of Gaza is not an impossible dream. It is within reach, but it cannot happen while Hamas remains in control, diverting aid, exploiting resources and worsening the suffering of their own people.”