UN agency says Gaza aid is threatened by Western response to its terror links
The head of the main U.N. aid agency in the war-battered Gaza Strip warned late Saturday that its work is collapsing after nine countries decided to suspend funding over allegations that several agency employees participated in the deadly Hamas attack on Israel four months ago.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said he was shocked such decisions were taken as “famine looms” in the Israel-Hamas war. “Palestinians in Gaza did not need this additional collective punishment,” he wrote on X. “This stains all of us.”
His warning came a day after he announced he had fired and was investigating several agency employees over allegations that they participated in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war. The United States, which said 12 agency employees were under investigation, immediately suspended funding, followed by several other countries, including Britain, Germany and Italy.
The agency, with its 13,000 employees in Gaza, most of them Palestinians, is the main organization aiding Gaza’s population amid the humanitarian disaster. More than 2 million of the territory’s 2.3 million people depend on it for “sheer survival,” including food and shelter, Lazzarini said, warning this lifeline can “collapse any time now.”
The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, destroyed vast swaths of Gaza and displaced nearly 85% of the territory’s people. The Hamas attack in southern Israel killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and about 250 hostages were taken.
Meanwhile, two senior Biden administration officials said U.S. negotiators were making progress on a potential agreement under which Israel would pause military operations against Hamas for two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages.
The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said that emerging terms of the yet-to-be sealed deal would play out over two phases, with the remaining women, elderly and wounded hostages to be released by Hamas in a first 30-day phase. The emerging deal also calls for Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.
CIA director Bill Burns is expected to discuss the contours of the emerging agreement when he meets Sunday in France with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel for talks centered on the hostage negotiations.
Despite the apparent progress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated in a televised news conference late Saturday that the war would continue until “complete victory,” including crushing Hamas.
He also doubled down on his previous criticism of Qatar, again accusing it of hosting Hamas leaders and funding the group. “If they position themselves as a mediator, so please, let them prove it and bring back the hostages, and in the meantime deliver the medicines to them,” he said.
Netanyahu also pushed back after the International Court of Justice ruled Friday that Israel must do its utmost to limit death and destruction in its Gaza offensive, declaring that “we decide and act according to what is required for our security.”
