ANKARA: The UN’s beleaguered agency for Palestinian refugees is to open an office in Ankara within weeks, its chief Philippe Lazzarini said on a visit to the Turkish capital on Thursday.
“We have signed the final agreement with the government of Turkiye and this time it has been also endorsed by the parliament,” he told reporters, adding that it was “a question of weeks” until it opened.
The move came a day after the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said it was going through a “dire” financial crisis that had forced it to fire 571 of its Gazan staff who had continued working for it after being evacuated from the war-ravaged territory.
UNRWA said the “extremely difficult” decision was down to funding issues sparked by a fall in the voluntary contributions it relies on following a campaign of increasingly harsh criticism and attacks by Israel.
For more than seven decades, the agency has provided aid and assistance to Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and was still operating “despite many, many constraints,” Lazzarini said.
Last year, Israel banned UNRWA from operating inside the country and Lazzarini said it was also seeking to halt its operations in the Palestinian territories.
“There is a desire by the government of Israel to dismantle UNRWA, to make sure that the agency has no future role in Gaza and possibly in the occupied Palestinian territories,” he said.
“If the agency cannot, or has to stop operating in Gaza or the West Bank, this will create a huge vacuum. Basically, there is absolutely no partner or capacity to take over public services at such a scale and scope, and with the community trust that the agency has enjoyed until now,” he said.
Israel has been ratcheting up pressure on UNRWA over the past two years.
It has accused the agency of providing cover for Hamas militants, claiming that some UNRWA employees took part in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
A series of investigations found some “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA but said Israel had not provided conclusive evidence for its headline allegation.