Yesterday, Friday, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, recommended that his country’s government classify the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as a terrorist organization, in response to the United Nations’ decision to include the Israeli army on the blacklist of child killers.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, informed the Israeli mission to the United Nations, yesterday, Friday, of the inclusion of the Israeli army in the “black list of countries that kill children,” also known in the media as the “list of shame,” which focuses mainly on those involved in violations against children in the areas. conflict, including their killing, maiming, recruitment and sexual exploitation.
According to the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, Tel Aviv is also considering taking other measures to respond to the UN’s decision, including severing all relations with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Erdan also suggested to the government not to issue new entry visas to officials of the United Nations and heads of its agencies, and to prevent them from working in the West Bank.
This is the first time that the Israeli army has been included in this list, despite calls for this step repeated in recent years by international human rights organizations.
On January 26, 18 countries and the European Union suspended their funding to UNRWA against the backdrop of Israeli allegations that the agency’s employees were linked to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), but after none of the Israeli allegations were proven, some of these parties and countries began, since last March, to review its decisions and released its funding to the agency.
Yesterday, Friday, the Israeli army said that it killed “17 terrorists” in a raid launched Thursday on an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, causing dozens of martyrs, but the government media office in the Gaza Strip refuted the validity of the occupation army’s claims, stressing that the names of these elements were among them. “Alives, travelers, and martyrs in different times and places, not in Nusayrat.”
Yesterday, Friday, UNRWA, through the agency’s Director of Media and Communications, Juliette Touma, called for investigations into all Israeli violations against it, including attacks on its buildings and centers that shelter displaced civilians in Gaza.
As UNRWA Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement via his account on the X platform, “Humanitarian convoys designated for the residents of the Gaza Strip were attacked, looted, or prevented from arriving without anyone being held accountable,” stressing that “The war of disinformation continues to rage against the agency, and this endangers the lives of my colleagues in Gaza and elsewhere.”
The UN official added that UN staff were killed in Gaza at “unprecedented” levels, and stressed that “the time has come for independent investigations and accountability.”
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli war on Gaza has left more than 120,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and nearly 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of dozens.