JERUSALEM: An official from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, banned by Zionist entity this week, said Tuesday the organization was "irreplaceable” as its network helps sustain the people of war-ravaged Gaza. Despite international concerns, including from Washington, Zionist entity lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to bar the agency, UNRWA, from operating in Zionist entity and east Jerusalem. For more than seven decades, UNRWA has provided critical support to Palestinian refugees.

It has faced mounting criticism from Zionist entity officials. In recent months, the military has struck several UNRWA schools-turned-shelters where Zionist entity said Palestinian militants were operating. UNRWA said 230 of its staff have been killed since the beginning of the war.

Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA’s spokesman in Jerusalem, called the agency the backbone of humanitarian work in the Palestinian territories, especially in Gaza. "UNRWA is irreplaceable, UNRWA is essential. That remains a fact, whatever the legislation that was passed yesterday,” Fowler, who called the law "an outrage”, told AFP in an interview at the agency’s compound in east Jerusalem.

With around 18,000 staff in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, including 13,000 education staff and 1,500 healthcare workers, UNRWA has delivered vital aid since 1949. Fowler said UNRWA hopes the decision will be rescinded, and is "not in the mindset” of thinking of alternatives.

"It is on the international community that if this moves forward, and on the Zionist entity authorities as members of the international community, to say what the Plan B is”, he said. Unlike other UN agencies, which rely on external partners, UNRWA directly employs teachers and healthcare staff of its own, including 13,000 staff in Gaza, a large majority of them Palestinian. "The entire UN system and other international players rely on UNRWA’s logistical networks, on UNRWA’s staff to do what is necessary to try to keep the population of Gaza alive. We are the backbone”, said Fowler.

Jens Elder, a spokesman for the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, which is taking part in a mass vaccination campaign in Gaza alongside UNRWA, said: "If UNRWA is unable to operate, it’d likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza.” UNICEF would be "unable to distribute life-saving supplies,” he added.

Tarik Jasarevic, spokesman for the World Health Organization said: "3,000 of their staff are health workers, it’s really unmatched, it couldn’t be matched by any agency, including WHO”. Asked whether the Palestinian Authority could take over part of UNRWA’s mandate in the West Bank, Fowler pointed to the fact that the agency’s is intended to be folded into Palestinian institutions once "a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee situation” is achieved.

But "we are nowhere near that situation now”, he said.

The Zionist entity law would also bar UNRWA from communicating and coordinating with Zionist entity authorities, effectively blocking its operations in the West Bank and Gaza. "On the coordination side, this is a very, very serious problem”, Fowler said. UNRWA depends on communication with the Zionist entity army or COGAT, the defense ministry body that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, to facilitate essential operations like staff movement and supply entry.

He said "the ability to move around, the ability to do our work in relative safety, risks being severely hampered by the possibility of not being able to do de-confliction anymore”. On a wider scale, he warned about the global implications for the UN’s work and the multilateral order.

Meanwhile, outspoken UN rights expert Francesca Albanese reiterated Tuesday an allegation that Zionist entity is committing "genocide” in Gaza, charging that the country is seeking the "eradication of Palestinians” from their land. "Today, the genocide of the Palestinians appears to be the means to an end: the complete removal or eradication of Palestinians from the land so integral to their identity, and which is illegally and openly coveted by Zionist entity,” the independent expert concluded in a fresh report.

Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, has long faced harsh criticism, allegations of anti-Semitism and demands for her removal, from Zionist entity and some of its allies, over her relentless criticism and longstanding accusations of "genocide”. She was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but does not speak on behalf of the United Nations.

She charged that the offensive Zionist entity unleashed after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 was "part of a long-term international, systematic state-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians”.

"The Gaza genocide is a tragedy foretold, and one that risks expanding to other Palestinians under Zionist entity rule,” Albanese wrote in the report, which was dated October 1 but only made public Tuesday. "Since its establishment, Zionist entity has treated the occupied people as a hated encumbrance and threat to be eradicated, subjecting millions of Palestinians, for generations, to everyday indignities, mass killing, mass incarceration, forced displacement, racial segregation and apartheid,” the report conclusion read. — AFP