UN agency for Palestinians readies to shutter operations in East Jerusalem after Israeli ban

Women enter an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Jerusalem Health Center in Jerusalem's Old City, January 27, 2025, (Reuters)
Short Url
Updated 28 January 2025
Follow

UN agency for Palestinians readies to shutter operations in East Jerusalem after Israeli ban

  • The UN rejects accusations of bias and says that UNRWA’s expertise is irreplaceable, particularly in Gaza

JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem were set to lose education, health care and other services provided by UN agency UNRWA as an Israeli ban on the organization 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 neighborhood, 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 center in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Medical center 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 UN rejects accusations of bias and says that UNRWA’s expertise is irreplaceable, particularly in Gaza.
A UN 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.


UN appeals for $6 billion for Sudan crisis aid in 2025

Updated 8 sec ago
Follow

UN appeals for $6 billion for Sudan crisis aid in 2025

  • The aim is to provide assistance to nearly 26 million people this year, UN bodies say
  • Civil war has displaced 12 million people, of whom around 3.5 million have fled the country
GENEVA: The UN appealed Monday for $6 billion to provide desperately-needed aid to people in war-ravaged Sudan and millions of refugees fleeing “appalling” conditions.
The aim is to provide assistance to nearly 26 million people this year, the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA and refugee agency UNHCR said in a joint appeal.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a brutal conflict between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The UN agencies said the civil war has displaced 12 million people, of whom around 3.5 million have fled the country.
They stressed that at the same time, nearly two-thirds of Sudan’s population needs emergency aid, as swathes of the country face famine conditions.
“Sudan is a humanitarian emergency of shocking proportions,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement.
“Famine is taking hold. An epidemic of sexual violence rages. Children are being killed and injured. The suffering is appalling.”
Famine conditions have already been reported in at least five locations in Sudan, including in displacement camps in Darfur and in the western Nuba Mountains, the UN statement said.
And “catastrophic hunger is expected to worsen by May when the lean season begins,” it warned.
The UN said it was appealing for $4.2 billion to reach nearly 21 million people inside Sudan with life-saving aid and protection.
Fletcher said the UN plan would provide “a lifeline to millions.”
The United Nations said it would also need $1.8 billion to support 4.8 million people – both Sudanese refugees and their host communities – in the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, South Sudan and Uganda.
“Today, one-third of Sudan’s entire population is displaced,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in the statement, highlighting that “the consequences of this horrific and senseless conflict spread far beyond Sudan’s borders.”
The UN cautioned that without immediate funding, two-thirds of refugee children would be denied access to primary education, “threatening an entire generation.”
And “up to 4.8 million refugees and host community members will continue to face severe food insecurity, with at least 1.8 million going without food assistance,” it said, warning that “already strained health systems may collapse.”
Last year, humanitarian organizations received $1.8 billion for Sudan – 66 percent of the $2.7 billion requested – and managed to reach more than 15.6 million people across the country.
They also provided life-saving food assistance to over a million people in neighboring countries, as well as medical support to half a million and protection services to over 800,000, the statement said.

Israeli strike on south Lebanon targets Hamas official, Lebanese security sources say

Updated 6 min 54 sec ago
Follow

Israeli strike on south Lebanon targets Hamas official, Lebanese security sources say

  • Deepest strike in the country since a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel took effect in late November

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on a car in Lebanon’s southern port city of Sidon on Monday targeted an official in the Palestinian militant group Hamas, two Lebanese security sources said.
Lebanon’s state news agency said rescuers had extracted one body from the car but did not identify the victim.

An Israeli drone strike is the deepest strike in the country since a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel took effect in late November, Lebanon’s state news agency said.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack, which comes a day before the deadline for Israel’s full withdrawal from southern Lebanon under the ceasefire agreement that ended the 14-month war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Footage circulating online showed a car engulfed in flames. The strike occurred near a Lebanese army checkpoint and Sidon’s municipal sports stadium.
The original withdrawal deadline was in late January, but under pressure from Israel, Lebanon agreed to extend it to Feb. 18. It remains unclear whether Israeli troops will complete their withdrawal by Tuesday.
Since the ceasefire, Israel has continued airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, saying it is targeting military sites containing missiles and combat equipment. Israel and Lebanon have exchanged accusations of violating the ceasefire agreement.


Lebanon urges ceasefire sponsors to pressure Israel to withdraw by deadline

Updated 48 min 41 sec ago
Follow

Lebanon urges ceasefire sponsors to pressure Israel to withdraw by deadline

  • Israeli gunfire killed a woman in the border town of Hula on Sunday as people tried to go home
  • A fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group has been in effect since November 27

BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Monday urged sponsors of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah to help pressure Israel to withdraw troops by a deadline the following day.
“We are continuing contacts on several levels to push Israel to respect the agreement and to withdraw on the scheduled date, and return the prisoners,” Aoun said, according to a presidency statement.
“The sponsors of the deal should bear their responsibility to assist us,” he added.
A fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group has been in effect since November 27 after more than a year of hostilities including two months of all-out war during which Israel launched ground operations.
Under the deal, Lebanon’s military was to deploy in the south alongside United Nations peacekeepers as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period that was later extended to February 18.
Hezbollah was to pull back north of the Litani River — about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border — and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
A committee involving the United States, France, Lebanon, Israel and UN peacekeepers is tasked with ensuring any ceasefire violations are identified and dealt with.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Sunday said it was the government’s responsibility to ensure the Israeli army fully withdraws by Tuesday’s deadline.
Last week, Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, said Washington had told him that while Israel would withdraw on February 18, “it will remain in five locations.”
Lebanon has rejected the demand.
On Sunday, Israel said it carried out strikes in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah military sites, as official media reported three raids in the country’s east.
The official National News Agency also said Israeli gunfire killed a woman in the border town of Hula on Sunday as people tried to go home.
On Saturday, Israel said it targeted a senior militant from Hezbollah’s aerial unit, as Lebanese official media reported two dead in an Israeli strike in the south.
Karim Bitar, lecturer in Middle East studies at Sciences-Po university in Paris, said “it appears that there is a tacit if not an explicit US agreement to extend the withdrawal period.”
“The most likely scenario is that Israel would maintain control over four or five hills that basically oversee most of south Lebanon’s villages,” he said.
Ramzi Kaiss from Human Rights Watch said Monday that “Israel’s deliberate demolition of civilian homes and infrastructure” was making it “impossible for many residents to return.”


Cairo building collapse kills 10: state media

Updated 17 February 2025
Follow

Cairo building collapse kills 10: state media

  • Eyewitnesses told the state-owned outlet that “a gas cylinder explosion” caused the collapse

CAIRO: A building collapse in the Egyptian capital killed 10 people and injured eight more on Monday, with several others believed to be missing under the rubble, state media reported.
Ambulances were dispatched to the scene in the working class neighborhood of Kerdasa, where civil defense teams searched for people thought to be missing under the rubble, according to the Al-Akhbar Al-Youm newspaper.
Eyewitnesses told the state-owned outlet that “a gas cylinder explosion” caused the collapse, and a police investigation was under way.
Building regulations are unevenly enforced in the sprawling metropolis of Cairo, home to over 26 million people.
The city has seen a number of deadly building collapses in recent years, both due to the dilapidated state of some and, at times, failure to comply with building regulations.


500 days of the Israel-Hamas war, by the numbers

Updated 17 February 2025
Follow

500 days of the Israel-Hamas war, by the numbers

  • The current phase of the truce is set to expire in early March and it is unclear if the sides will extend it
Monday is the 500th day of the war triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel.
A tenuous ceasefire in the Gaza Strip has held for nearly a month. But the current phase of the truce is set to expire in early March and it is unclear if the sides will extend it, begin negotiations for a more lasting ceasefire or resume fighting.
Here are some numbers that show the scale of death and devastation. Sources include the Israeli government, the Gaza Health Ministry and UN agencies.
People killed in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023: Around 1,200
Hostages taken into Gaza: 251
Hostages remaining in Gaza: 73, including 3 taken before Oct. 7, 2023
Hostages in Gaza believed to be dead: 36, including one from before Oct. 7, 2023
Palestinians killed in Gaza: Over 48,200 (This figure from the Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but the ministry says more than half of the dead were women and children)
Palestinians wounded in Gaza: Over 111,600
Israeli soldiers killed since Oct. 7, 2023: 846
Rockets fired at Israel from Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023: Over 10,000
Percentage of Gaza’s population displaced: Around 90 percent
Palestinians who have crossed into northern Gaza since the ceasefire began: 586,000
Israelis displaced by attacks from Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon at their peak: Over 75,500
Housing units damaged or destroyed in Gaza: Over 245,000
Primary roads damaged or destroyed in Gaza: Over 92 percent
Health facilities damaged or destroyed in Gaza: Over 84 percent