UNRWA ban could result in more child deaths in Gaza, UNICEF says

Update UNRWA ban could result in more child deaths in Gaza, UNICEF says
A man squats by a wall bearing a mural representing the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) at the aid agency's center at the Nuseirat camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on October 29, 2024. (File/AFP)
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Updated 29 October 2024
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UNRWA ban could result in more child deaths in Gaza, UNICEF says

UNRWA ban could result in more child deaths in Gaza, UNICEF says
  • Law passed by Israel to ban the UN Palestinian refugee agency from operating inside Israel has raised concerns
  • Other agencies said it would be impossible to fill the void
  • Gaza war mediator Qatar condemned the ban
  • UNRWA’s spokesman called the agency the backbone of humanitarian work in the Palestinian territories
  • Ireland’s Prime Minister Simon Harris urged the EU to review trade ties with Israel over ban

GENEVA: Israel’s decision to ban the UN relief agency UNRWA could result in the deaths of more children and represent a form of collective punishment for Gazans if fully implemented, UN agencies said on Tuesday.

A law passed by Israel on Monday to ban the UN Palestinian refugee agency from operating inside Israel has raised concerns about its ability to provide relief in Gaza after over a year of war.

“If UNRWA is unable to operate, it’ll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza,” said UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who has worked extensively in Gaza since the Oct. 7 war began. “So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children.”

Other UN agencies at the same briefing said it would be impossible to fill the void. “It is indispensable and there is no alternative to it at this point,” said UN humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke.

In response to a question about whether the ban represented a form of collective punishment against Gazans, he said: “I think it is a fair description of what they have decided here, if implemented, that this would add to the acts of collective punishment that we have seen imposed on Gaza.”

The head of the International Organization for Migration said IOM could not replace UNRWA in Gaza but that it could provide more relief to those in crisis. “That is a role that we are very, very keen to play, and one that we will be stepping up with the support of various stakeholders,” IOM Director-General Amy Pope said.

Qatar condemns ban

Gaza war mediator Qatar on Tuesday condemned the Israeli parliament’s decision to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees from operating in Israel, the Gulf emirate’s foreign ministry said.

Israeli lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to ban the agency, UNRWA, from working in Israel and annexed east Jerusalem.

The lawmakers also passed a measure prohibiting Israeli officials from working with UNRWA and its employees.

“We emphasize that stopping support for UNRWA will have disastrous consequences,” ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told reporters.

“The international community cannot stand silent in the face of this disregard for its international institutions,” he added.

Keeping Gaza people ‘alive’

An official from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Tuesday the organization was “irreplaceable” as its network helps sustain the people of war-ravaged Gaza.

For more than seven decades, UNRWA has provided critical support to Palestinian refugees.

But the agency has faced mounting criticism from Israeli officials, escalating since the start of war in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attacks last year.

But Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA’s spokesman in Jerusalem, called the agency the backbone of humanitarian work in the Palestinian territories, especially in Gaza.

“UNRWA is irreplaceable, UNRWA is essential. That remains a fact, whatever the legislation that was passed yesterday,” Fowler, who called the bill “an outrage,” told AFP in an interview at the agency’s compound in east Jerusalem.

With around 18,000 staff the occupied West Bank and Gaza, including 13,000 education staff and 1,500 health care workers, UNRWA has delivered vital aid since 1949.

Fowler said UNRWA hopes the decision will be rescinded, and is “not in the mindset” of thinking of replacement.

“It is on the international community that if this moves forward, and on the Israeli authorities as members of the international community, to say what the plan B is,” should the decision be enforced in three months.

Unlike other UN agencies, which rely on external partners, UNRWA directly employs teachers and health care staff of its own, including 13,000 staff in Gaza.

“The entire UN system and other international players rely on UNRWA’s logistical networks, on UNRWA’s staff to do what is necessary to try to keep the population of Gaza alive. We are the backbone,” said Fowler.

“So the question is, who would be the people who would do this stuff?” he added.

Ireland urges EU to reconsider Israel trade

Ireland’s Prime Minister Simon Harris urged the EU to review trade ties with Israel Tuesday over Israeli lawmakers’ “despicable” ban of UNRWA.

The Irish leader criticized the Israeli parliament’s “shameful” banning of the agency, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza.

“The most important action that the European Union could take right now is reviewing trade relations,” Harris told reporters in Dublin before meeting incoming European Council president Antonio Costa.

“What Israel and the Israeli Knesset did last night was despicable, disgraceful and shameful. More people will die, more children will starve,” he said.

Harris added there was “no alternative” to UNRWA, and that he would discuss with Costa “how Europe now needs to find the moral courage... to act in relation to this.

“Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and others have been calling for more actions at an EU level. I think that would be a very effective way and I’ll be continuing to make that case,” he said.

Costa replaces outgoing EU Council chief Charles Michel on December 1 and is touring European capitals prior to taking up the new post.

He did not speak to the media ahead of meeting Harris in the Irish capital.

Ireland, along with Spain, Norway and Slovenia, earlier this year formally recognized a Palestinian state comprising the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

They have been among the most outspoken critics of Israel’s conduct since the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas which sparked the latest rounds of violence across the region.

In February, Dublin and Madrid asked the EU to “urgently” examine whether Israel was complying with its human rights obligations in Gaza under an accord linking them to trade ties.

They noted the “EU/Israel Association Agreement... makes respect for human rights and democratic principles an essential element of the relationship.”


At least 46 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, Gaza hospitals say, as the war drags on

At least 46 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, Gaza hospitals say, as the war drags on
Updated 17 sec ago
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At least 46 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, Gaza hospitals say, as the war drags on

At least 46 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, Gaza hospitals say, as the war drags on
  • The Israeli military did not immediately comment on any of the strikes, but says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in densely populated areas
DEIR AL-BALAH: Israeli strikes and gunfire in the Gaza Strip killed at least 46 Palestinians overnight into Wednesday morning, most of them among crowds seeking food, local hospitals said.
The dead include more than 30 people who were killed while seeking humanitarian aid, according to that treated dozens of wounded people.
The Israeli military didn’t immediately comment on any of the strikes, but says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, because the group’s militants operate in densely populated areas.
The deaths came as the United Kingdom announced that it would recognize a Palestinian state in September, unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, following a similar declaration by France’s president. Israel’s foreign ministry said that it rejected the British statement.
The Shifa hospital in Gaza City said that it received 12 people who were killed Tuesday night when Israeli forces opened fire toward crowds awaiting aid trucks coming from the Zikim crossing in northwestern Gaza.
Thirteen others were killed in strikes in the Jabaliya refugee camp, and the northern towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the hospital said.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, the Nasser hospital said it received the bodies of 16 people who it says were killed Tuesday evening while waiting for aid trucks close to the newly-built Morag corridor, which separates Khan Younis from the southernmost city of Rafah.
The hospital received another body for a man killed in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis, it said.
The Awda hospital in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp said that it received the bodies of four Palestinians who it says were killed Wednesday by Israeli fire close to an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, in the Netzarim corridor area, south of the Wadi Gaza.
In addtion, seven Palestinians, including a child, have died of malnutrition-related causes in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry said on Wednesday. A total of 89 children have died of malnutrition since the war began in Gaza. The ministry said that 65 Palestinian adults have also died of malnutrition-related causes across Gaza since late June, when it started counting deaths among adults.
Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Its count doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians. The ministry operates under the Hamas government. The UN and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.

Libyan coast guards train in Greece under plan to stem migrant flows

Libyan coast guards train in Greece under plan to stem migrant flows
Updated 30 July 2025
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Libyan coast guards train in Greece under plan to stem migrant flows

Libyan coast guards train in Greece under plan to stem migrant flows

ATHENS: Libyan coast guard officers have started training on the Greek island of Crete as part of a plan to strengthen cooperation and help the two countries stem a surge in migrant arrivals, Greek sources said on Wednesday.

Relations between Greece and Libya have been strained by a maritime boundary agreement signed in 2019 between the Tripoli-based Libyan government and Turkiye, Greece’s long-standing foe.

A tender that Greece launched this year to develop hydrocarbon resources off Crete revived those tensions, while a spike in migrant flows from North Africa to Europe has prompted Athens to deploy frigates off Libya and pass legislation banning migrants arriving from Libya by sea from requesting asylum.

The division of Libya by factional conflict into eastern and western sections for over a decade has further complicated relations. Greece says it is determined to continue talking to both the Tripoli-based government and a parallel administration based in Benghazi to the east.

So far, coast guard officers from eastern Libya have been training in Greece, including areas such as patrolling and search and rescue operations. Coast guard officers from western Libya are expected to also participate in the training, the sources said.

As part of efforts to improve relations, Athens last week invited Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli to start talks on demarcating exclusive economic zones in the Mediterranean Sea.

Missions from both countries are expected to hold talks on maritime zones in the coming months, the Greek sources said.


Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide

Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide
Updated 30 July 2025
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Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide

Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide
  • Israeli human rights groups brace for backlash
  • Deeply sensitive accusation in Israel, founded after Holocaust

JERUSALEM: When two human rights groups became the first major voices in Israel to accuse the state of committing genocide in Gaza, breaking a taboo in a country founded after the Holocaust, they were prepared for a backlash.

B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel released reports at a press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, saying Israel was carrying out “coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”

That marked the strongest possible accusation against the state, which vehemently denies it. The charge of genocide is deeply sensitive in Israel because of its origins in the work of Jewish legal scholars in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Israeli officials have rejected genocide allegations as antisemitic.

So Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem’s international director, said the group expected to face attacks for making the claim in a country still traumatized by October 7, 2023.

“We’ve looked into all of the risks that we could be facing. These are legal, reputation, media risks, other types of risk, societal risks and we’ve done work to try and mitigate these risks,” said Michaeli, whose organization is seen as being on the political fringe in Israel but is respected internationally.

“We are also quite experienced in attacks by the government or social media, so this is not the first time.” It’s not unrealistic “to expect this issue, which is so fraught and so deeply contentious within Israeli society and internationally to lead to an even greater reaction,” she said.

Israel’s foreign ministry and prime minister’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Shortly after the reports were released on Monday, government spokesperson David Mencer said: “Yes, of course we have free speech in Israel.” He strongly rejected the reports’ findings and said that such accusations fostered anti-semitism abroad.

Some Israelis have expressed concern over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, destroyed much of the enclave and led to widespread hunger.

An international global hunger monitor said on Tuesday a famine scenario was unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with malnutrition soaring, children under five dying of hunger-related causes and humanitarian access severely restricted.

“For me, life is life, and it’s sad. No one should die there,” said nurse Shmuel Sherenzon, 31.

But the Israeli public generally rejects allegations of genocide.

Most of the 1,200 people killed and the 251 taken hostage to Gaza in the October 7 attacks in southern Israel were civilians, including men, women, children and the elderly.

In an editorial titled “Why are we blind to Gaza?” published on the mainstream news site Ynet last week, Israeli journalist Sever Plocker said images of ordinary Palestinians rejoicing over the attacks in and even following the militants to take part in violence made it almost impossible for Israelis to feel compassion for Gazans in the months that followed.

“The crimes of Hamas on October 7 have deeply burned – for generations – the consciousness of the entire Jewish public in Israel, which now interprets the destruction and killing in Gaza as a deterrent retaliation and therefore also morally legitimate.”

Israel has fended off accusations of genocide since the early days of the Gaza war, including a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned as “outrageous.”

While Israeli human rights groups say it can be difficult working under Israel’s far-right government, they don’t experience the kind of tough crackdowns their counterparts face in other parts of the Middle East.

Israel has consistently said its actions in Gaza are justified as self-defense and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge the militant group denies.

Israeli media has focused more on the plight of hostages taken by Hamas, in the worst single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

In this atmosphere, for B’Tselem’s Israeli staff members to come to the stark conclusion that their own country was guilty of genocide was emotionally challenging, said Yuli Novak, the organization’s executive director.

“It’s really incomprehensible, it’s a phenomena that the mind cannot bear,” Novak said, choking up.

“I think many of our colleagues are struggling at the moment, not only fear of sanctions but also to fully grasp this thing.”

Guy Shalev, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said the organization faced a “wall of denial.”

It has been under pressure for months and is expecting a stronger backlash after releasing its report.

“Bureaucratic, legal, financial institutions such as banks freezing accounts including ours, and some of the challenges we expect to see in the next days...these efforts will intensify,” he told Reuters.


Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says

Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says
Updated 30 July 2025
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Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says

Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says
  • Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says

ANKARA: Turkiye will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Syria from Saturday, the energy minister said on Wednesday.

Syria’s Islamist authorities, who toppled Bashar Assad in December, are seeking to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and economy after almost 14 years of civil war.

The conflict badly damaged Syria’s power infrastructure, leading to cuts that can last for more than 20 hours a day.

“We will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Aleppo via Kilis,” a province in southernmost Turkiye near the Syrian border, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.

In May, Syrian Energy Minister Mohammad Al-Bashir said Damascus and Ankara had reached a deal for Turkiye to supply natural gas to the war-torn country via a pipeline in the north.

Gas-rich Azerbaijan is a historic ally of Turkiye which maintains close ties with the Syrian transitional government.


At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official

At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official
Updated 30 July 2025
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At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official

At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official
  • It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force

JUBA: At least five South Sudan security forces were killed in clashes with the Ugandan army near the countries’ shared border earlier this week, local officials said Wednesday.

Uganda has a history of involvement in impoverished South Sudan, and has long provided military support to President Salva Kiir, including a deployment of special forces since March.

It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force (SSPDF).

Police in Kajo Keji county, where the clashes took place, said “two SSPDF officers, two prison officers and a police officer” were killed, according to a statement from local authorities on Wednesday.

The statement quoted local army commander Henry Buri as saying the Ugandan forces “were heavily armed with tanks and artilleries,” and had targeted 19 “joint operation” forces.

There was no comment from the Ugandan government.

An earlier statement by local county officials said there had been “loss of lives and injuries from both sides.”

Uganda sent troops to support Kiir when civil war broke out in the country in 2013, just two years after it gained independence from Sudan.

The civil war between Kiir and his long-time rival, Riek Machar, lasted five years and left some 400,000 dead before a power-sharing agreement was reached in 2018.

Uganda again deployed special forces in March this year as Kiir moved once again against Machar, eventually placing him under house arrest.

That has all but buried the power-sharing deal and triggered conflict between the army and members of a militia from Machar’s ethnic Nuer community.

The Ugandan army has been accused of using chemical weapons, namely barrel bombs containing a flammable liquid that killed civilians, against Nuer militias in South Sudan’s northeast.

Uganda has denied the accusations.