An Israeli MP behind a bill that would prevent the main UN agency in Gaza and the West Bank from working in Israel has accused the US ambassador in Israel of lobbying opposition leaders to block the move. <\/p>\n
If the bill passes in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, this week, it will prohibit any Israeli official from providing services or dealing with employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency and forbid UNRWA from operating in Israel. <\/p>\n
Several countries, including the US, have expressed concern over the impact of the bill. <\/p>\n
The Israeli government has claimed that some of the UN Relief and Works Agency\u2019s (UNRWA) staff are affiliated with Hamas. UNRWA has strongly denied the allegations, but several governments suspended funding for the agency earlier this year while the allegations were investigated. <\/p>\n
She described the US pressure as unacceptable. <\/p>\n
But it said that the proposed legislation would make it impossible for UNRWA to operate and would leave a \u201cvacuum that Israel would then be responsible for filling.\u201d A spokesman said UNRWA provided vital services in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan. <\/p>\n
UNRWA has long been a target of Israeli criticism and relations between Israel and the UN have slumped amid the war in Gaza. <\/p>\n
Last week, the spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the IDF had killed a commander of the Hamas \u2018Nukhba\u2019 force who had also been employed by UNRWA since July 2022. <\/p>\n
Subsequently, Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had \u201creached new heights of hypocrisy and insensitivity. Last night, he lamented the elimination of their \u2018UNRWA colleague\u2019 by IDF forces in Gaza.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a letter sent to two senior members of the Israeli government earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Biden administration was \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d about the potential adoption of the bill. <\/p>\n
\u201cUNRWA colluded with Hamas, it is educating kids to hate Israel and spreading antisemitism, it is selling them stories that they will be able to come back to Israel. This will not happen,\u201d Malinovsky said. <\/p>\n
UNRWA says it insists on the neutrality of its staff and said the allegations made by Israel about 66 employees out of 30,000 staff amounted to just 0.22% of its payroll. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is absolutely no ground for a blanket description of \u2018the institution as a whole\u2019 being \u2018totally infiltrated,\u2019\u201d the agency said in May. <\/p>\n
Former war cabinet member Benny Gantz posted on X last week that UNRWA \u201cchose to make itself an inseparable component of Hamas\u2019 mechanism \u2013 and now is the time to detach ourselves entirely from it.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Saturday, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the UK expressed \u201cgrave concern\u201d over the legislation. <\/p>\n
They said that without UNRWA\u2019s work, the provision of assistance \u201cincluding education, health care, and fuel distribution in Gaza and the West Bank would be severely hampered if not impossible.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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An Israeli MP behind a bill that would prevent the main UN agency in Gaza and the West Bank from working in Israel has accused the US ambassador in Israel of lobbying opposition leaders to block the move. If the bill passes in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, this week, it will prohibit any Israeli official from providing services <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}