LONDON: British lawmakers warned Friday that an Israeli ban on the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency due to be implemented this month threatens to undermine efforts for peace in the Middle East.
A long-awaited ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas to end the 15-month war in Gaza is due to take effect this weekend.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Thursday that legislation barring UNRWA from operating in Israel and east Jerusalem due to be implemented by the end of January threatened the agreement.
“What we don’t want is this peace, that begins on Sunday, undermined by that legislation just a few days into its passing,” he told parliament on Thursday.
The chair of the UK parliament’s International Development Committee echoed his call on Friday.
“While news of a ceasefire is encouraging, the situation on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank remains alarming,” said Sarah Champion, from the ruling Labour party.
“Israel’s proposed ban on UNRWA would prevent aid distribution in Gaza, devastate Palestinian livelihoods and send disruptive ripples throughout the Middle East.”
Her comments came as her committee published a report urging the British government to “do all it can” to ensure UNRWA is able to continue its work.
The report concluded that if UNRWA were banned it would almost certainly lead to further conflict and displacement.
UNRWA provides aid to some six million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
But 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.
Israel claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the assault, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s ensuing campaign has destroyed much of Gaza, killing 46,788 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
A series of probes, including one led by France’s former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA but stressed Israel had not provided evidence for its chief allegations.
UK MPs urge Israel to reconsider UNRWA ban
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UK MPs urge Israel to reconsider UNRWA ban
- The chair of the UK parliament’s International Development Committee echoed his call on Friday
- “While news of a ceasefire is encouraging, the situation on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank remains alarming,” said Sarah Champion
High-level Turkish team to visit Damascus on Monday for talks on SDF integration
- The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal
ANKARA: A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkiye views the US-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organization and has warned of military action if the group does not honor the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkiye’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkiye has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganizing the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkiye sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkiye and the unity of Syria.
