<\/p>\n
27 May 2025<\/p>\n
Over the past 20 months, the Government of Israel has continuously made unsubstantiated claims against Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA and its neutrality.<\/p>\n
These claims have put the lives of Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA staff at serious risk and harmed the reputation of the Agency.<\/p>\n
In a letter I have recently written to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, I repeated the concrete steps that Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA has taken for more than a decade in cooperation with the Government of Israel in line with transparency and neutrality.<\/p>\n
In that regard, the Agency has requested on numerous occasions for cooperation from the Government of Israel by providing information and evidence to substantiate the accusations made against Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA.<\/p>\n
To date, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA has not received any response, nor has the Government of Israel shared any sufficient evidence, to back up these very serious claims against the Agency and its personnel.<\/p>\n
The Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ depends on Member States for security and information concerning its premises and personnel.<\/p>\n
Member States \u2013 not the United Nations- are responsible for criminal investigations and prosecutions of armed militant activity.<\/p>\n
It is expected that Member States will pursue their investigations in compliance with due process and report to the United Nations on the outcome of these processes where they may impact upon Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ operations or staff.<\/p>\n
In this case, the Government of Israel has neither shared adequate evidence with the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ to allow substantiation through administrative processes nor pursued its own criminal proceedings, which would also require the presentation of credible evidence and due process.<\/p>\n
Had the Government of Israel taken either of these steps and cooperated with Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA, the Agency could have acted in accordance with its regulations and due process.<\/p>\n
The minimum requirements are sufficient evidence and due process. The absence of both more than one year later raises the possibility that the accusations were unfounded.<\/p>\n
In the letter, I urged once again the State of Israel to renew the decades-long cooperation with Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA in line with the United Nations Charter and other international frameworks.<\/p>\n
I have requested that they put an end to the unfounded dis-information campaign against the Agency.<\/p>\n
I have also stated that Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA, together with other Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ agencies, is ready to continue the critical work it does in humanitarian relief, education and health care to Palestine Refugees. Gaza is a case in point where the Agency has the supplies and the structure to deliver at scale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
27 May 2025 Over the past 20 months, the Government of Israel has continuously made unsubstantiated claims against Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA and its neutrality. These claims have put the lives of Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA staff at serious risk and harmed the reputation of the Agency. In a letter I have recently written to the Minister of Foreign Affairs […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[6978,1338],"document-source":[1817],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[1769,2005,1741,1805,1745,6891],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-307912","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-social-media-post","document-category-statement","document-source-united-nations-relief-and-works-agency-for-palestine-refugees-in-the-near-east-unrwa","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","document-subject-occupation","document-subject-refugees-and-displaced-persons","document-subject-unrwa","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/307912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/307912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307913,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/307912\/revisions\/307913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=307912"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=307912"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=307912"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=307912"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=307912"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=307912"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=307912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}