The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Israeli Parliament on Sunday approved two bills to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. The projects will now go to the second and third reading before becoming law.
The first law, proposed by a deputy from the ultra-Israel Beitenu group, seeks to prohibit Israeli authorities from having any type of contact with UNRWA. The second would directly prohibit the agency from working in Israeli territory.
“What remains now is only the vote in the plenary session of the Knesset,” declared deputy Yulia Malinovsky, promoter of the project. Malinovsky called on the coalition and the opposition to unite: “(To pass the law) as soon as possible so we can get rid of UNRWA once and for all.”
According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth, UN Secretary General Antònio Guterres sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express his opposition to the project.
“It is extremely worrying that a United Nations Member State is considering legislation that would fundamentally contravene the principles of the UN Charter,” Guterres noted in his letter. Last week, the Israeli Government declared the Secretary General ‘persona non grata’.
Israel denounces that the UN is “obsessed” with the Palestinian issue and that many of its agencies, from the Human Rights Council to UNESCO, including UNRWA or the figure of the special rapporteur, have an anti-Israeli bias. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has even accused UNRWA – which has lost 225 workers for the bombings in this offensive – of being “friends of the terrorists” and Netanyahu has called for its closure for promoting discourse in favor of the “elimination of Israel.”
Israel said in March that “a significant number” of UNRWA workers are “members of terrorist organizations.” However, in mid-April, an external investigation said that Israeli authorities had not provided sufficient evidence to substantiate alleged terrorist links.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
