JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel faced a mounting international backlash yesterday after its Parliament approved a bill banning the main United Nations (UN) aid agency for the devastated Gaza Strip.
Despite objections from the United States (US) and warnings from the UN Security Council, Israeli lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the bill banning the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, from working in Israel and annexed east Jerusalem. Israel strictly controls all humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza, and lawmakers also passed a measure prohibiting Israeli officials from working with UNRWA and its employees.
UNRWA has provided essential aid, schooling and healthcare across the Palestinian territories and to Palestinian refugees elsewhere for more than seven decades.
“There is a deep connection between the organisation (Hamas) and UNRWA, and Israel cannot put up with it,” one of the lawmakers who sponsored the bill, Yuli Edelstein said in Parliament as he presented the proposal.
Even several of Israel’s Western allies voiced disquiet at the ban, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying Britain was “gravely concerned”.
Germany warned it would “effectively make UNRWA’s work in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem impossible… jeopardising vital humanitarian aid for millions of people”.
