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BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani on Monday called for an urgent meeting of Arab leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly after Israel intensified its strikes on Lebanon.
Iraq “calls on and works to convene an urgent meeting of the leaders of Arab delegations... to review the repercussions of the Zionist (Israeli) aggression on our peaceful people in Lebanon and to work jointly to stop its criminal behavior,” Sudani said in a statement.
An Israeli law banning the UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees will have “catastrophic consequences” that threaten regional stability, the head of the organization warned on Wednesday.
In an impassioned plea to the General Assembly, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, urged member states to take action to prevent Israel’s move against his organization.
The Israeli parliament voted last month to cut ties with UNRWA and ban it from operating in Israel. The law, which is expected to be implemented within three months, will severely limit the agency’s ability to operate in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, where millions of Palestinians rely on its services.
Meanwhile, the appalling humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate, with international aid groups accusing Israel this week of failing to meet US demands to alleviate the suffering.
Lazzarini spelled out the severity of the situation in his address to the General Assembly as he issued stark warnings about the far-reaching implications of the decision to ban UNRWA. He said it would not only cause the humanitarian response in Gaza to collapse but also deal a blow to the international rules-based order under which all UN agencies must operate.
“The risk of the agency’s collapse threatens the lives and futures of individuals and communities, the stability of the region, and the integrity of our multilateral system,” Lazzarini said.
UNRWA, he added, has become another casualty of the war in Gaza, during which Israeli forces have killed more than 43,000 people, the majority of them women and children. He said famine has probably already taken hold in the territory, and hunger and disease are widespread.
“The implementation of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) legislation will have catastrophic consequences,” Lazzarini said.
“In Gaza, dismantling UNRWA will collapse the United Nations’ humanitarian response, which relies heavily on the agency’s infrastructure.”
He went on to highlight the devastating effects the ban would have on education in Gaza, where “in the absence of a capable public administration or state, only UNRWA can deliver education to more than 660,000 girls and boys.
“In the absence of UNRWA, an entire generation will be denied the right to education. Their future will be sacrificed, sowing the seeds for marginalization and extremism.”
Schooling for a further 50,000 children in the West Bank would also be under threat, along with primary health care for half a million Palestinian refugees.
Lazzarini repeated previous requests for UN member states to do whatever they can to halt the implementation of the Israeli ban and maintain funding for UNRWA. He painted Israel’s actions targeting the agency as representing a wider threat to the UN and the multilateral world order under which it operates.
“The United Nations and its staff are in an increasingly untenable position; if the legal and political framework within which we operate does not hold, we cannot stay and deliver,” he said.
Speaking later to the press, Lazzarini said there had been much anger and condemnation in response to the Israeli law and he hopes there might still be some pathway to prevent its implementation. But he conceded this might be “wishful thinking.”
The Israeli law was widely criticized in the region and the wider international community. Saudi Arabia described it as a “flagrant violation of international law and a direct violation of the rules of international legitimacy.”
On Tuesday, the US said Israeli authorities had made some progress in increasing the flow of aid to Gaza and, as a result, Washington would not limit weapons transfers to the country. However, this came as a report published by eight international aid agencies said conditions in the territory were worse than at any point in the war.
Israel claims that some UNRWA staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel last year, which killed about 1,200 people and sparked the war in Gaza. The UN reacted by firing nine of the agency’s workers that might have been involved. Lazzarini said the agency has a “zero-tolerance approach” to any breaches of its neutrality.
JERUSALEM: The US decided not to punish Israel over the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip after giving it an ultimatum to increase aid entering the territory. But the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians is still at nearly its lowest level of the entire 13-month-old war.
The White House last month gave Israel 30 days to improve conditions or risk losing military support. As the deadline expired Tuesday, leading international aid groups said Israel had fallen far short.
But the US State Department announced it would not take any punitive action, saying Israel has made limited progress. However, it called for more steps.
Aid groups accuse the Israeli military of hindering and even blocking shipments in Gaza. Almost the entire population of around 2.3 million Palestinians relies on international aid for survival, and doctors and aid groups say malnutrition is rampant. Food security experts say famine may already be underway in hard-hit north Gaza.
“It’s really frustrating because by almost every objective metric, all agencies say that the humanitarian situation has gotten worse in that time frame that the US has specified,” Aseel Baidoun, a senior manager of the aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians, said.
“Even though we have provided all the evidence that there is a risk of famine ... still the U.S. miraculously finds Israel not violating the humanitarian aid law.”
Israel, which controls all crossings into Gaza, says it is committed to delivering humanitarian assistance and has scrambled to ramp up aid.
COGAT, the military body in charge of aid passage, said they had taken a number of steps over the past month to increase the amount entering the territory, including opening a fifth crossing — into central Gaza — this week.
Israel says the UN and international aid groups need to do a better job of distributing supplies.
Aid into Gaza is typically measured in terms of truckloads of food and supplies entering the territory. The US has demanded 350 trucks daily — still below the 500 a day that entered before the war.
In October, aid entry plunged to its lowest level since the first month of the war. Israeli government figures show roughly 57 trucks a day entering on average. The average has risen to 100 a day so far in November, slightly lower than the same month last year.
The UN, however, says even less is entering. It reports receiving an average of 39 trucks daily since the beginning of October. This is largely because it says it cannot reach the main crossing point in the south to collect cargos due to Israeli military restrictions and lawlessness. The UN says virtually no food or other aid has reached the northernmost part of Gaza since the beginning of October. That’s when the Israeli military launched a major offensive against Hamas fighters in the area of Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, cutting them off.
Israel says October’s drop in aid was because it closed crossings into Gaza during the Jewish high holidays. It said it couldn’t allow deliveries to the far north in October because of the fighting.
Under international pressure, COGAT allowed two deliveries to the far north this month.
But little of it got through. Last week, the World Food Programme said troops on the ground ordered its trucks to unload their cargo before reaching their destination.
PARIS: Israeli officials are insisting on maintaining a capacity to strike Lebanon at any moment as part of conditions to secure a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hezbollah, France’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Speaking to a parliamentary hearing after holding talks in Israel last week in Jerusalem, Jean-Noel Barrot said it was a condition increasingly voiced among Israeli officials.
“Today we hear in Israel voices calling for it to keep a capacity to strike at any moment or even enter Lebanon, as is the case with its neighbor Syria,” said Barrot, who held talks with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and new Defense Minister Israel Katz last week.
“That is not compatible with the sovereignty of a strong country,” Barrot said, referring to broader efforts to help strengthen Lebanon’s governance.
Several diplomats said that it would be all but impossible to get Hezbollah or Lebanon to accept any proposal that included this demand.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the remarks. Its defense minister, Israel Katz, said earlier: “We will not allow any arrangement that does not include the achievement of the war’s objectives — and above all Israel’s right to enforce and act on its own against any terrorist activity.”
France, which has historical ties with Lebanon, has sought to play a role in trying to secure a ceasefire in the Middle Eastern country.
It has worked with the United States to try to implement a temporary ceasefire, but those talks stalled at the end of September.
Coordination between Paris and the outgoing US administration to get a ceasefire has been more complicated since, with US envoy Amos Hochstein focused on his own proposals.
Barrot said it made no sense for France to lead initiatives by itself on Lebanon given it needed the United States to convince Israel, just like it was not helpful for Washington to go it alone because it would “lack a fine appreciation of Lebanon’s internal political dynamics,” he said.
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said six soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon Wednesday, making it the deadliest day for its troops since the start of ground operations in September.
The soldiers “fell during combat in southern Lebanon,” the army said in a statement. Their deaths mean 47 Israeli troops have been killed in combat with Hezbollah since the start of ground operations on September 30.
BEIRUT: Hezbollah said it launched a drone attack targeting Israel’s military headquarters and ministry of defense in the city of Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
In a statement, the Lebanese militant group said it conducted an “aerial attack with a squadron of exploding drones” on the site housing Israel’s main defense institutions in the commercial hub.
The Israeli military said in two statements that it intercepted two drones and 40 projectiles launched from Lebanon, and that the attack had caused no injuries.
The statements did not specify what sites had been targeted.
