AA / Istanbul / Bekir Aydogan
The UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, commented on Tel Aviv’s decision to deny entry to Philippe Lazzarin, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) director in Gaza, saying: “Israel does not want witnesses. or truth tellers” which he called “genocide”.
His official account of humanity has a name: genocide.
Earlier on Monday, Lazarin announced in a post on Platform X that Israel had refused him entry into the Gaza Strip, “despite the fact that famine is imminent” in the northern Gaza Strip.
From another perspective, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that the ban on Lazarin’s entry into Gaza was a mistake.
The UNRWA director said at a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Cairo on Monday that he planned to travel to Rafah, but was told an hour later that he had been denied entry.
Shukri added during the same press conference: “To be clear, this was prevented by the Israeli government, not Egypt, and this is an unprecedented position against a UN official.”
As of January 26, 18 countries and the European Union have suspended funding to UNRWA, amid Israeli accusations that some of the UN agency’s staff were involved in an October 7 attack on settlements near the Gaza Strip. The United Nations aid agency has announced the launch of an investigation into the allegations.
Israel has been waging a deadly offensive against the Gaza Strip that has led it to appear before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the first time since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 on charges of genocide, a war that has killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians, most of them women and children, in addition to an unprecedented humanitarian disaster and The unprecedented destruction of the infrastructure of the Palestinian enclave.
UNRWA was established by a resolution of the UN General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to refugees in five areas of its operation, namely Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, until a just settlement is reached. between the parties involved in the conflict in the region.
* Translated from Arabic by Munir Benuri.
Source: AA
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