UNRWA runs East Jerusalem medical centre that serves 30,000
28/1/2025 6:05
Tens of thousands of
Palestinian refugees in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem were set
to lose education, healthcare and other services provided by
U.N. agency UNRWA as an Israeli ban on the organisation takes
effect on Thursday.
Israel's government ordered UNRWA to vacate its East
Jerusalem compound and cease operations under a law passed last
year outlawing the agency and prohibiting Israeli authorities
from having contact with it.
At UNRWA's offices in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah
neighbourhood, workers were packing boxes and loading portable
buildings onto a truck on Monday.
"It's an unacceptable decision," said Jonathan Fowler, a
spokesperson for UNRWA, formally titled the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
"The people that we serve ... we are not able to tell them
what is going to happen to our services as of the end of this
week."
Israel has not announced provisions for replacing UNRWA's
activities, and the Israeli prime minister's office did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.
UNRWA has for decades run schools and clinics in East
Jerusalem, the eastern part of the city that Israel has occupied
since a 1967 war, for tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees
who have no nationality.
"We have everything here for us. When I heard that it will
close, I was very sad because here is a place for people in need
and for people who don’t have money to pay for medication,"
refugee Sara Saeed said at the UNRWA medical centre in
Jerusalem's Old City.
Medical centre Director Hamza Al Jibrini said the facility
serves 30,000 refugees. Among them are patients with diabetes
and high blood pressure, pregnant women and children who receive
vaccinations, said head of nursing Manal AlKhayat.
"Where they will go?" she asked.
Israel's ban only directly covers Israeli territory, which
Israel considers East Jerusalem to be. UNRWA also operates in
the occupied West Bank and Gaza, but it was unclear how the law
will affect UNRWA's work there.
ISRAEL CLAIMS BIAS
UNRWA was established some 75 years ago, serving around
750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war at the time of
the creation of the state of Israel.
Its sprawling headquarters are in a prime position not far
from Jerusalem's Old City, which is home to sites holy to
Christians, Jews and Muslims. The agency has long been a thorn
in the eye of Israeli governments that considered the agency
fundamentally hostile to Israel.
Israel says UNRWA's continued existence decades after the
1948 war has consolidated the refugee status of generations of
Palestinians, who now number in the millions, and has frozen the
conflict in place.
Israel regularly accuses the agency of anti-Israel bias and
has also claimed its staff includes members of Hamas, the
Palestinian militant group that launched the deadly cross-border
raid on Israel on Oct 7, 2023. Israel calls for UNRWA's
responsibilities to be taken over by other UN bodies such as its
main refugee agency.
The U.N. rejects accusations of bias and says that UNRWA's
expertise is irreplaceable, particularly in Gaza.
A U.N. investigation found that nine UNRWA staff may have
been involved in the Hamas attack. The agency fired them but
said Israel had not provided evidence of more widespread
involvement by its staff. UNRWA employs around 30,000 people in
the region and some 13,000 in the Gaza Strip.
More than 200 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza, the
agency says, since the Gaza war started. Around 1,200 Israelis
and foreigners were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack and
another 250 were taken hostage into Gaza, Israel says.
Over 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since
Israel's military launched a retaliatory offensive, according to
Gaza's health ministry.
|
|