The engine of the paper crusher resonates in the already almost deserted offices of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in East Jerusalem, under Israeli occupation, whose authorities have announced the prohibition of this Institution as of this Thursday. In recent weeks, numerous documentation has been drawn, the file has been digitized and many other papers are destroyed, such as those that leave the machine looking like white spaghetti before being introduced in black garbage bags. “Not even in my worst nightmares I wanted to see this,” he laments in tears, while putting personal objects in a cardboard box, a European used for almost two decades and is not authorized to give his name.
The new legislation approved three months ago in the Israeli Parliament foresees various prohibitions, both in its territory and in the Palestinian, since January 30 on this UN Institution, the main support of millions of Palestinians in the region. Everything, in the middle of Gaza War, where UNRWA distributes half of the aid to deal with the emergency, according to data from the agency itself.
The Israeli measure will be “disastrous” and “will endanger the international humanitarian response” at a time when “it must be significantly increased” so as not to “worsen the already catastrophic living conditions of millions of Palestinians,” said Tuesday before the Council of UN security responsible for UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini. In his speech, he recalled that the mandate they meet, which also covers health and education, is non -transferable; It is not in the hands of Israel, but of the United Nations.
“We do not know if UNRWA personnel are going to be prohibited from performing humanitarian operations. We are facing a riddle game, as a great shadow about what will happen in the next few days, ”says one of the agency’s spokesmen to El País, in Jerusalem. It emphasizes that it is the UNRWA that in these first days of Alto El Fuego has managed to move food for almost one million people, as well as blankets and thousands of tents, “what the population needs to live and get ahead in their land ” The dead in Gaza during the contest released in October 2023 officially amount to more than 47,000, most women and children, but the UN believes that this estimate is approximately 40% downward, according to data set out on Tuesday by Lazzarini.
The new US administration led by President Donald Trump, the main ally of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamín Netanyahu, has supported the measure of ending UNRWA. It is a “sovereign decision” of Israel that USA “supports”, said from the United Nations headquarters the representative of that North American country, Dorothy Shea, who has implied that there are other alternative ways to attend the Palestinians .
On the one hand, the Parliament of Israel orders the closure of the facilities in Jerusalem; on the other, it prohibits all contact of the agency with the authorities of the Jewish state. In this way, the measure that is about to be implemented, if nothing prevents it at the last minret The truce that has been in force for a dozen days and that, according to Lazzarini, has an important pillar in its maintenance.
That impossibility of interacting with the Israelis, a measure in the form of a “nebula”, little concrete and that the UN does not know how it will be applied, it throws serious doubts about the attention received by hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the strip. This is supported by the UNRWA spokesman Jonathan Fowler, in the agency’s offices in East Jerusalem. The measure, understands, also leaves in the air the presence of the institution in the West Bank, also occupied by Israeli military and Jewish settlers and where violence has increased coinciding with the high fire in the strip. Fowler does not doubt that we are facing an attack on “multilateralism” by Israel.
Up to 5,000 employees of the 13,000 available to UNRWA in Gaza are directly involved in humanitarian logistics, according to Fowler. He is one of the last to move to Amán, capital of neighboring Jordan, once the visas granted by the Israeli administration and that several buses evacues foreign workers have expired on Wednesday. The majority of employees are local, both in Jerusalem and in the rest of Palestine, but the veto also affects them even if they do not have to leave.
“We have nothing to hide,” says Fowler in front of the crushed paper bags, but it is made “as a precaution,” he adds without hiding the fear that the facilities in which they are assaulted are shortly. It does not matter if they depend on Jordan, whose administration the UN pays a “modest” rental since 1951 and on which Israel has not begun to press until recently.
Therefore, it is not uncommon for the group of Israeli attackers and fuss that has been promoted by the city’s vice mayor months, Arieh King, harassing the facilities and staff of the UNRWA in East Jerusalem, has summoned a demonstration for Thursday morning , when offices should be empty. King has announced that the act will serve to stage the “victory” in front of a “Nazi” organization, as the UNRWA qualifies, EFE reports.
“They will assault them,” says the foreign worker recalling violence involved in an impunity displayed especially during this contest. The City Council has a housing promotion in the plot with which to strengthen the occupation of East Jerusalem.
Only in this city up to 70,000 people, a large vulnerable population, benefits from the Free Health of the UNRWA. As for children’s schools up to 14 years or the Kalandia Vocational Training School, they have decided to close for security until Sunday. From then on they do not know if they can continue to operate or what type of pressure or action will be from Israel. “Will they send police to close the gate? We have no idea, ”says the spokesman.
The Jewish State supports its veto in the accusation of “terrorism” about a dozen Gazatis of the UNRWA, of the 33,000 workers of the agency, who does not accept those arguments when considering them, in part, unfounded.
In the midst of a dreary climate and indignation contained, the few workers who remain on one side to the other taking out their belongings from the offices of the Jerosolimitana headquarters. The aforementioned foreign employee takes several minutes to go through the crusher dozens of their personal cards with the letterhead and logo of the UNRWA that has taken from the drawer out of his desk. “I don’t want anything to stay here,” he says while offering his Palestinian companions a plant that has not taken care of and cannot take. It does decorate to accompany her, however, two framed posters in which drawings of the times of the British mandate appear, prior to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, where “Visit Palestine” is read.