(January 29, 2025 / Jns)
With a pair of laws, which the Knesset adopted in October, should come into force on January 30 by closing the office of the United Nations Rescue and Work Agency in Jerusalem, journalists asked a press briefing United Nations Wednesday if the United Nations agency would comply with Israeli laws.
“Let’s see what is happening when the sun rises on Jerusalem tomorrow,” Guterres Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for António Guterres, the UN secretary of the UN told António Guterres.
The World Organization has “taken action to ensure” that UNRWA staff subject to new legislation are “safe and that premises and files are also safe,” said Dujarric during the point of press. When asked if Israel had told the United Nations that this would guarantee the protection of UNRWA staff, Dujarric said: “I would not say that we have obtained insurance.”
The UN spokesman echoed the comments of Philippe Lazzarini, general commissioner of UNRWA, and said that the agency “will continue to hand over his mandate until she could not physically. “”
The United Nations Agence for the Aid and Social Services of Palestinians, UNRWA, has long been accused of direct links with Hamas and other terrorist groups of Gazan. The tensions between the United Nations and Israel agency increased spectacularly after the Jewish state discovered and publicized that UN staff participated in the October 7, 2023 attacks in Hamas.
The new laws planned to enter into force tomorrow ending UNRWA operations in Jerusalem and the contactor between Israeli officials and the United Nations Agency.
Dujarric’s remarks at the press conference one day come after the office of the UN Secretary General provided JNS with a copy of a letter that Guterres sent Danny Danon on Monday evening, the Israeli ambassador of the ‘Global Organization.
A few hours after participating with Israeli officials during a ceremony of Holocaust, Guterres seemed to threaten the Jewish state membership rights to the letter to Danon. (JNS asked for comments from the United Nations and the Israeli mission to the World Organization.)
“I regret this decision and I ask that the government of Israel retracts it,” Guterres on Danon wrote Israeli laws, “given the legal framework applicable to the activities of the United Nations Rescue and Work Agency for Palestinian refugees from the Middle East and the Middle Orche and the Nearby the irreplaceable nature of the agency. »»
“All the actions that prevent UNRWA from continuing its activities would seriously undermine the provision of an appropriate humanitarian response in the occupied Palestinian territory,” wrote Guterres. (Israel said that other agencies, both in the United Nations and outside, could assume the responsibilities of UNRWA.)
In what seemed to be a veiled threat, Guterres quoted the Charter of the United Nations and declared that Israel “continues to be obliged” to “give UNRWA any assistance in any action which it takes conform” to the Charter of United Nations “in order to ensure all rights and advantages resulting from membership, will fulfill the obligations that assume them.”
Brett Schaefer, principal researcher in international regulatory affairs at the Heritage Foundation, told JNS that all threats to strip members of the UN Israel to the Security Council would be “almost” welcomed by an American veto.
A suspension of the rights of Israel would cross the United Nations General Assembly “but would be reckless, because it would probably arouse strong opposition from the United States and harm the organization without modifying the current Dilemma of UNRWA,” said Schaefer.
“Despite the letter, the United Nations and the Secretary General cannot force Israel to change course,” he told JNS. “With the CNSPR, unlikely to act, it would force individual states to apply it – perhaps resulting in American reprisals.”
The United Nations has long insisted that Israel must authorize UNRWA, which is under a mandate from the United Nations General Assembly, to operate and facilitate its work. Several Member States and the Palestinian Authority, which have a permanent “observer” status, called on the United Nations to penalize Israel or potentially stripped of its members because of its continuation of the war against Hamas and its actions towards ‘UNRWA.
Guterres said that Israel, in international law, “does not have the right to exercise sovereign powers” in Eastern Jerusalem that the United Nations judge the territory occupied. The UNRWA Jerusalem field office is located in the eastern part of the city.
The UN chief also complained that Israel unilaterally provided UNRWA a “week less than a week of notice” that she had to stop her operations and leave her premises in Jerusalem. UN officials have recognized for months that these provisions were contained in anti-UNRWA laws.
Guterres wrote that efforts had been made to convince Israel to “make consultations on resulting issues” of the legislation. They remained unseated, said Guterres. JNS has asked the Office of the UN Secretary General on several occasions in the last three months if the World Organization had or would contact Israel to ask for accommodation for the laws. The United Nations spokesperson has confirmed such awareness.
“Consultations and negotiations referred to questions arising from relevant Israeli laws should take place without delay,” Guterres wrote in the letter this week. “The United Nations is ready to conclude such consultations and negotiations.”
Guterres also insisted in his letter that UNRWA facilities in Jerusalem remain the property of the United Nations. Israeli officials said diverse that UNRWA had never obtained the appropriate permission to operate its field office in Jerusalem, that it owed massive land taxes and that it added land and installations to his campaign office without authorization.
“The Secretary General should recognize that UNRWA is a compromised entity that no longer enjoys the confidence of essential governments for its operations,” Schaefer told JNS.
“Other United Nations entities and not one can provide humanitarian support to the Palestinian people,” he said. “The secretary general should spend more productive time by facilitating this change and supporting the end of UNRWA.”
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