Should decades of investment in human development and human rights be abandoned by the agency being dismantled in a chaotic manner overnight, or should an orderly political process be pursued in which UNRWA continues to provide education and health care to millions of Palestinian refugees until empowered Palestinian institutions take over these services?

This came in an article he wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian, in which he said that the intensity of international anger over Israel's attempt to dismantle the UN agency has subsided to a large extent, and that the risks are now very high, because the agency may be forced to stop its work in the occupied Palestinian territories next month if the legislation passed by Israel is implemented.

This means paralyzing the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, depriving millions of Palestinian refugees of basic services in the West Bank, and eliminating a living witness to the horrors and injustice that Palestinians have endured for decades.

Condemnation and anger faded away.

The Commissioner said that the brazen actions of the Government of Israel to thwart the will of the international community as expressed in UN resolutions, and to dismantle a single UN agency, were met with public condemnation and outrage that quickly faded amid political deadlock, and stressed that the lack of political courage and principled leadership when it matters most does not bode well for the multilateral international system.

Complicity in this endeavor, according to the author, leads not only to the erosion of humanity, but also to the erosion of the legitimacy of the multilateral international system, because the almost complete absence of political, economic, and legal sanctions for flagrant violations of the Geneva Conventions, the complete disregard for Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, and the blatant defiance of the rulings of the International Court of Justice, make a farce of the rules-based international system.

Now, Israeli Foreign Ministry-sponsored propaganda is being displayed on billboards in key locations in the United States and Europe, supplemented by Google ads promoting websites full of misinformation, in a well-funded effort to distract from the brutality of the illegal occupation and international crimes committed with complete impunity under the world’s watch.

Ironically, the Israeli government justifies its actions against UNRWA by claiming that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has infiltrated it, despite carefully investigating all the allegations it has made. At the same time, Hamas accuses UNRWA’s leadership of collusion with the Israeli occupation, and UNRWA remains a victim of this war, he said.

Crossroads

If the goal of the efforts to discredit and dismantle UNRWA is to eliminate the status of Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini continues, then the blind pursuit of this goal ignores the fact that the status of Palestinian refugees is not linked to UNRWA, but is enshrined in a General Assembly resolution that preceded the creation of the agency.

Today, the international community stands at a crossroads, either facing a miserable world that has backed away from its commitment to provide a political solution to the Palestinian issue, leaving Israel, as the occupying power, to bear responsibility for the population in the occupied Palestinian territories, and perhaps contracting with private parties that are less accountable to the international community.

Or in a world based on fixed rules that seeks to resolve the Palestinian issue through political means and build the capacities of the Palestinian administration that will govern the future State of Palestine, including Gaza, and this latter world is the path that UNRWA was established to support according to the Commissioner-General.

Lazzarini explained that pending the establishment of a Palestinian state, the agency's presence will be crucial to ensuring that children in Gaza are not condemned to live in the rubble without education and without hope, and its mission will gradually end, after its teachers, doctors and nurses become the workforce of capable Palestinian institutions, within the framework of a political solution.