The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has suffered new threats this Friday after having to close its offices in East Jerusalem, under Israeli occupation, the day before due to arson, due to the violent acts it has suffered for months due to part of Israeli citizens. “There is no place for the enemy in our holy city,” wrote the city’s vice mayor, Arieh King, on his profile on the social network X (on Twitter). King is identified by the UN as the instigator of the attacks and threats, sometimes even involving firearms. The EU has condemned the events through the high representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell.
The double fire at the perimeter of the UNRWA facilities on Friday afternoon, fueled by a group of Israeli citizens and armed men, caused no casualties, but led the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, to announce that they were forced to close. In his statement he pointed to a Jerusalem municipal official as the instigator of these and previous acts of violence, although he did not mention names. This is King, who this Friday shared Lazzarini’s text on social networks and celebrated the attacks, in addition to issuing new threats against other headquarters of that UN agency.
“First, the UNRWA headquarters in Maalot Dafna,” King writes in his message, referring to the headquarters that has just closed. “Second, the enemy headquarters on French Hill”, another point in the city also under occupation not far from the previous one. It so happens that UNRWA does not have offices there. “And third, it will be the turn of the headquarters of the Nazi organization in Qalandia,” warns the vice mayor, referring to the passage, with an Israeli military and police checkpoint, that separates Jerusalem from the West Bank, where UNRWA does have another headquarters.
“The EU strongly condemns the attack on UNRWA facilities in East Jerusalem. “Those who carried it out must be held accountable,” Borrell has asked from his X account while demanding that Israel fulfill its obligation to “guarantee the safety of humanitarian workers.” “UNRWA is an irreplaceable lifeline for millions of people in Gaza and the region, added the head of European diplomacy.
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For Lazzarini “this is a scandalous fact.” “Once again, the lives of UN staff were at serious risk. In light of this second egregious incident in less than a week, I have made the decision to close our complex until adequate security is restored,” he added. Agency sources tell Morning Express that, for the moment, the vast majority of staff will telework and only a few managers will go to the office, where security agents remain.
It was the officials themselves who had to put out the flames, since it took a while for the police and firefighters to arrive, according to the testimony that Lazzarini published in burn the UN!”, according to the head of UNRWA, who calls for the facts to be investigated and those responsible to be punished.
This is not the first time that Arieh King has directly called for the closure of UNRWA headquarters. “They are building illegal buildings, they have gas stations in places where they are not allowed to have them, and it is time for the Israeli Government to allow us, the Jerusalem City Council, to pass a law against UNRWA,” he commented last February during a the demonstrations in front of the now closed offices of the UN agency, according to the local press. “We hope that the Government will expel them from Israel and specifically from Jerusalem,” added King, a well-known far-right defender of the Jewish settler movement and its expansion in the Occupied Palestine.
During this war, 182 UNRWA workers have died in Gaza and 160 of the agency’s headquarters have been attacked, where another 400 people have died, according to data that Lazzarini offered on April 30. He believes that beyond those attacks, the goal of Israel’s campaign against the agency is to strip Palestinians of their refugee status. It is the largest agency supporting Palestinians and has 33,000 employees working in Palestine – Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem -, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
UNRWA suffers from a discredit campaign by the Israeli authorities, especially since the war began on October 7. That day Hamas murdered around 1,200 people in Israeli territory and kidnapped around 250, according to official data. The Israeli army’s response has already caused almost 35,000 deaths in the Palestinian enclave.
The head of the agency insists that Israel still has not presented conclusive evidence of the accusations it made against some of the agency’s 13,000 workers in Gaza of participating in the attack that day or of their membership in the armed wings of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad. These accusations, however, led important donor countries to stop contributing funds to UNRWA, which lost half of its economic muscle. After the months, some have returned to funding the agency, but not the main one, the United States, which will not do so before March 2025.
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