‘Tipping Point’ – UNRWA Warns Palestinians Being ‘Separated’ from Palestine
Philippe Lazzarini slammed the US-backed Israeli aid distribution mechanism as “an abomination that costs lives,” and that “humilitates and degrades desperate people.”
UNRWA has warned that the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is “at a tipping point” with the “implementation of a project” aimed at separating “Palestinians from Palestine.”
“We are at a tipping point in the occupied Palestinian territory, which threatens to permanently shift the long-established parameters for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict,” UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini stated in a speech to the UN agency’s Advisory Commission (ADCOM) on Wednesday.
During @UNRWA Advisory Commission, I stressed that we are witnessing the implementation of a project, to separate Palestinians from #Palestine.
In #Gaza, the culmination of 20+ months of inaction impunity meant that desperate people are being starved, humiliated degraded.…
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) June 26, 2025
Lazzarini added, “We are witnessing the implementation of a project, decades in the making, to separate Palestinians from Palestine.”
He said while food and medical supplies “sit across the border,” two million people in Gaza “are being starved.”
“It is obscene,” Lazzarini stressed, adding “A so-called ‘aid mechanism’ has been created to replace the principled international aid operation led by the United Nations, of which UNRWA is a critical part.”
Aid Plan an ‘Abomination’
He slammed the US-backed Israeli aid distribution mechanism as “an abomination that costs lives.”
“It humiliates and degrades desperate people, concentrating them in ghetto-like hubs, from which they can be more easily displaced,” Lazzarini stressed.
“Humanitarian principles need to be reinstated [in Gaza],” @UNLazzarini tells the media.
UNRWA teams in #Gaza continue to manage shelters, provide clean water, and remove waste. They are a model of what humanitarian work is and should be.
Let us bring in aid at scale. Let us… pic.twitter.com/lRPnY0Mz8t
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) June 24, 2025
He said the situation was “the grotesque culmination of 20 months of inaction and impunity, during which more than 55,000 people have been reported killed – mostly women and children.”
Lazzarini pointed out that for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, “it is a time of profound anxiety and uncertainty.”
He said what this “long marginalized and deeply vulnerable population” was facing is “the existential crisis engulfing the United Nations agency on which they have relied for generations, at every stage of their lives.”
West Bank ‘Annexation’
Lazzarini warned that the occupied West Bank “is now under lockdown” with additional restrictions on the movement of people and goods “intensifying the impact of brutal military operations by the Israeli Security Forces, and rampant violence by Israeli settlers. ”
In the north, Palestinians “have been displaced from camps at levels not seen since 1967,” he stated.
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Public infrastructure “is systematically destroyed so Palestinians cannot return, and the demography of camps is permanently altered.”
“Annexation is well underway,” Lazzarini stressed, adding that Israeli authorities were also depriving Palestinians of the most basic rights, including the right to education.
“A painful example,” he noted, is the forced closure of UNRWA schools in occupied East Jerusalem, weeks before the end of the school year and without any alternative for nearly 550 girls and boys.
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“Denying children an education is not only inhumane, it is illegal,” Lazzarini stated.
‘Dismantling’ UNRWA
The UNRWA chief also warned that “the desire” to undermine the viability of a Palestinian state and to strip Palestinians of their refugee status was “so great” that “dismantling UNRWA has become an objective of the war in Gaza.”
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Israeli legislation against UNRWA took effect in January, he explained, “prohibiting our operations in what Israel considers its sovereign territory – including occupied East Jerusalem – and prohibiting contact between Israeli authorities and the Agency.”
The legislation, he stressed, has “effectively expelled” international UNRWA staff from the occupied Palestinian territory.
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Nearly 320 UNRWA personnel have been killed in Gaza, many with their families, since Israel launched its military campaign in the enclave in October 2023, according to Lazzarini.
One staff member, he said, “was summarily executed while on duty for the United Nations and found near the infamous mass grave of Palestinian paramedics.”
He reiterated his call “for accountability for these and other international crimes.”
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🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/HgH6WD7U7I pic.twitter.com/TKeniENBoO
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 25, 2025
Lazzarini pointed out that the goal of ending UNRWA’s operations “also underpins the fierce disinformation campaign spearheaded by Israel”, which targets lawmakers and the public in countries that support UNRWA, “strangling our funding” for critical services to Palestine Refugees.
He emphasized that to tackle disinformation, “we must continue to insist that independent, international media” enter and report from Gaza.
“This is a vital complement to the extraordinary efforts of Palestinian journalists and others who have reported daily, especially through social media, about the atrocities taking place,” he stated.
Allegations over Hamas
The political attacks against UNRWA “are based on allegations that the Agency is colluding with or infiltrated by Hamas,” Lazzarini noted, adding that those allegations of neutrality breaches are taken “extremely seriously.”
He pointed out that the Independent Review of UNRWA’s neutrality conducted last year found that the Agency has a more robust approach to neutrality than comparable entities, and that implementing the recommendations of the Colonna Report “remains a priority.”
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The “relentless political attacks” on UNRWA have compounded the Agency’s dire financial situation, Lazzarini stressed.
Donor funding received between January and May this year for the Programme Budget represents “only 56 percent “of the funding received during the same period last year.
‘Strategic Assessment’
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has requested “a strategic assessment” of the impact and exercise of UNRWA’s mandate. The assessment, he explained, will propose how the rights of Palestine Refugees may be protected amid the immense political, financial and operational pressures on the UN agency.
“This will require Member States, especially AdCom members, to take bold, decisive, and long overdue action,” Lazzarini stressed.
Future of Refugees
He reiterated that “what is at stake is not just UNRWA as an institution,” adding “It is the collective future of Palestine Refugees.”
“Our actions must be guided by what will protect and serve Palestine Refugees best,” Lazzarini emphasized.
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According to UNRWA, Palestine refugees are defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.”
When the Agency began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services.
Nearly one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
(The Palestine Chronicle)