
Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, addresses the press after a meeting with Norway's Foreign Minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo. AFP
Despite serious international concerns, Israeli lawmakers have passed laws to bar UNRWA from operating in Israel and east Jerusalem.
The agency has faced criticism from Israeli officials that has escalated since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
"We will ... stay and deliver," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told a conference in Oslo on Wednesday.
"UNRWA's local staff will remain and continue to provide emergency assistance and where possible, education and primary health care," he said.
Lazzarini said the absence of communication between UNRWA and the Israeli authorities that will result from the ban will make the agency's work even more dangerous in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army has been carrying out military operations there for 15 months.
With no visas, UNRWA's non-Palestinian employees will not be able to enter Gaza and those there now will have to leave, he explained.
"Continuing to work will come at considerable personal risk for our Palestinian colleagues," he said.
"This is due to the exceptionally hostile operating environment created by Israel's disregard for international law and fierce disinformation campaign against the agency," he added.
UNRWA is considered the backbone of humanitarian operations for Palestinians.
It provides aid to some six million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel's brutal military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 46,707 people, most of them women and children, with more than 110,265 others injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry figures that the United Nations considers reliable.
* This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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