OSLO: The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA will continue to distribute aid in the Palestinian territories despite an Israeli ban due to be implemented by the end of January, its director said Wednesday.
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, which was unleashed after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
“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.
The October 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 46,707 people, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas-run health ministry figures that the United Nations considers reliable.
Israel claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the deadly October 7, 2023 assault.
A series of probes, including one led by France’s former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA but stressed that Israel had not provided evidence for its chief allegations.
UNRWA chief vows to continue aid to Palestinians despite Israeli ban
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UNRWA chief vows to continue aid to Palestinians despite Israeli ban
- “We will ... stay and deliver,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told a conference in Oslo on Wednesday
- UNRWA is considered the backbone of humanitarian operations for Palestinians
Fledgling radio station aims to be ‘voice of the people’ in Gaza
- The electricity crisis is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip, says Shereen Khalifa Broadcaster
DEIR EL-BALAH: From a small studio in the central city of Deir El-Balah, Sylvia Hassan’s voice echoes across the Gaza Strip, broadcast on one of the Palestinian territory’s first radio stations to hit the airwaves after two years of war.
Hassan, a radio host on fledgling station “Here Gaza,” delivers her broadcast from a well-lit room, as members of the technical team check levels and mix backing tracks on a sound deck. “This radio station was a dream we worked to achieve for many long months and sometimes without sleep,” Hassan said.
“It was a challenge for us, and a story of resilience.”
Hassan said the station would focus on social issues and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains grave in the territory despite a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since October.
“The radio station’s goal is to be the voice of the people in the Gaza Strip and to express their problems and suffering, especially after the war,” said Shereen Khalifa, part of the broadcasting team.
“There are many issues that people need to voice.” Most of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people were displaced at least once during the gruelling war.
Many still live in tents with little or no sanitation.
The war also decimated Gaza’s telecommunications and electricity infrastructure, compounding the challenges in reviving the territory’s local media landscape. “The electricity problem is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip,” said Khalifa.
“We have solar power, but sometimes it doesn’t work well, so we have to rely on an external generator,” she added.
The station’s launch is funded by the EU and overseen by Filastiniyat, an organization that supports Palestinian women journalists, and the media center at the An-Najah National University in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The station plans to broadcast for two hours per day from Gaza and for longer from Nablus. It is available on FM and online.
Khalifa said that stable internet access had been one of the biggest obstacles in setting up the station, but that it was now broadcasting uninterrupted audio.
The Gaza Strip, a tiny territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under Israeli blockade even before the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to strictly control the entry of all goods and people to the territory.
“Under the siege, it is natural that modern equipment necessary for radio broadcasting cannot enter, so we have made the most of what is available,” she said.
