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philippe lazzarini
Israeli Raid on UNRWA Compound Slammed as 'Dangerous Precedent'
"This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations member state to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises," said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.
Dec 08, 2025
United Nations officials and others strongly condemned Monday's raid by Israeli authorities on a facility run by the UN's office for Palestinian refugees in occupied East Jerusalem—an act one rights group decried as part of an ongoing effort "to undermine and ultimately eliminate" the lifesaving agency.
Israeli police and other officials forcibly entered the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) compound early Monday, pulling down a UN flag on the facility's roof and replacing it with an Israeli one. Israeli officials said the raid was ordered over unpaid taxes.
"They call it 'debt collection'—we call it erasure," Claudia Webbe, a socialist former member of British Parliament, said on social media. "Over 70,000 dead in Gaza, they now seek to kill the memory of the living. The occupation must end."
Police vehicles including motorcycles, trucks, and forklifts entered the compound, while communications were cut and furniture, computer equipment, and other property were seized from the facility, according to UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
"This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations member state to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises," Lazzarini said in a statement.
"To allow this represents a new challenge to international law, one that creates a dangerous precedent anywhere else the UN is present across the world," he added.
Secretary-General António Guterres was among the other senior UN officials who condemned Monday's raid.
“This compound remains United Nations premises and is inviolable and immune from any other form of interference,” he said.
“I urge Israel to immediately take all necessary steps to restore, preserve, and uphold the inviolability of UNRWA premises and to refrain from taking any further action with regard to UNRWA premises, in line with its obligations under the charter of the United Nations and its other obligations under international law," Guterres added.
In late 2024, Israeli lawmakers approved a ban on UNRWA in Israel over disproven allegations that some of its staffers were Hamas members who took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. Those accusations led to numerous nations suspending financial support for UNRWA, although most of the countries have since restored funding. Israel has also sought to ban UNRWA from Gaza since early 2024.
Israeli forces have killed more than 370 UNRWA staff members since October 2023 and destroyed or damaged over 300 of the agency's facilities in Gaza. Lazzarini and others have also accused Israeli forces of torturing UNRWA staffers in a bid to force false confessions of Hamas involvement.
In October, the International Court of Justice—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—found that UNRWA has not been infiltrated by Hamas as claimed by Israeli leaders.
Others also condemned Monday's raid, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), which called the action part of an effort "to undermine and ultimately eliminate a United Nations agency providing vital services to millions of Palestinian refugees."
"Governments should condemn Israel's unlawful moves against UNRWA and urgently act to stop further abuses," HRW added.
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'Gaza Is Being Obliterated,' Says Top UN Official, as World Leaders Stand Aside
"There is no safe place in Gaza, let alone a humanitarian zone," said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini. "It is a large and growing camp concentrating hungry Palestinians in despair."
Sep 09, 2025
A top United Nations official on Tuesday called out the international community for continuing to let the Israeli military decimate civilian infrastructure in Gaza and massacre human beings with impunity.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), wrote in a social media post that Israel was making Gaza unlivable, and he slammed the country for ordering Palestinians to evacuate from Gaza City given that nowhere in the enclave appears safe from its bombing campaigns.
"Gaza is being obliterated, reduced to a wasteland," he wrote. "Gaza is being emptied from its starving population forced to move into the so called 'humanitarian' area of Mawasi. There is no safe place in Gaza, let alone a humanitarian zone. It is a large and growing camp concentrating hungry Palestinians in despair."
He then turned his ire toward other nations who have continued to sit idly by as the destruction of Gaza worsens.
"Warnings of famine have fallen on deaf ears," he said. "Will warnings of this deepening catastrophe also fall on deaf ears? Cease-fire, before it is way too late. End the impunity before atrocities become the new norm."
Lazzarini was not the only observer of the Gaza conflict to raise alarms about Israel's actions on Tuesday.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, highlighted Israel's Monday destruction of Gaza City's Al-Ru'ya Commercial Tower—which was home to human rights organizations, aid groups, childcare centers, and other civil society groups—to argue that Israel is deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure in the city as a pretext for ethnically cleansing all of Gaza. Israel has brought a series of high-rise buildings to the ground with targeted missile strikes this week.
"Israel keeps blatantly destroying the civilian infrastructure of Gaza with barely a pretense of attacking Hamas," he said. "This is about rendering Gaza unlivable to justify (on 'humanitarian' grounds) the mass forced deportation of two million Palestinians."
Nicola Perugini, an anthropologist and political scientist at the University of Edinburgh, noted that Israel has already "destroyed 80% of civil defense equipment," which he said was being done to "maximize civilian casualties" in Gaza.
On Tuesday, a mass exodus from Gaza City was underway as Palestinian civilians attempted to flee following evacuation orders for the entirety of the city that were given by the Israeli military.
"Staying in the city is extremely dangerous," Avichay Adraee, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, said on social media.
Independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous responded to the IDF threat by saying, "There it is. Israel's military order to ethnically cleanse all of Gaza City of Palestinians."
The latest Gaza developments come just days after several UN experts, including United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, demanded the UN General Assembly convene to pressure Israel to end its siege of Gaza, which has caused famine and starvation in the enclave.
"Israel must immediately end its obstruction of safe, effective and dignified humanitarian assistance," they said. "But lifting these restrictions alone will not be enough to save Gaza's devastated population. What is urgently required is an end to Israel's siege and the declaration of an immediate ceasefire. At this critical moment, the world needs the General Assembly—the highest body of the United Nations—to take decisive leadership and act to prevent further catastrophe."
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'Assault on Children': UNRWA Condemns Israeli Raids on East Jerusalem Schools
"Now, nearly 800 girls and boys—some as young as 6 years old—are left in shock and trauma."
May 08, 2025
Israeli occupation forces enforced a ban on the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday by storming three schools in East Jerusalem, terrorizing children and staff as they shuttered the facilities and drawing condemnation from human rights defenders.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, heavily armed Israeli security forces raided the schools in the Shu'fat refugee camp in illegally occupied East Jerusalem, detaining one UNRWA employee and forcing around 550 children out of their classrooms as the invaders closed the facilities.
"As a result, UNRWA was forced to evacuate all children across the six schools it runs in East Jerusalem," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said. "Now, nearly 800 girls and boys—some as young as 6 years old—are left in shock and trauma."
"Storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law," Lazzarini added. "These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations. By enforcing closure orders issued last month, the Israeli authorities are denying Palestinian children their basic right to learn. UNRWA schools must continue to be open to safeguard an entire generation of children."
The International Court of Justice—which is also weighing a genocide case against Israel over the U.S.-backed Gaza onslaught—is considering whether the Israeli government's ban on UNRWA violates international law.
Hundreds of UNRWA staffers and their relatives have been killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. Israel has bombed many UNRWA schools-turned-shelters in Gaza, including a Tuesday "double-tap" airstrike on school in the al-Bureij refugee camp that killed at least 30 of the more than 2,000 people sheltering there.
UNRWA officials also accuse Israeli forces of torturing kidnapped agency workers in a bid to elicit false confessions that they took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. UNRWA and much of the international community have condemned such allegations as baseless.
In the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem, Israeli forces launched Operation Iron Wall in January. Israel says the invasion is targeting resistance fighters largely based in West Bank refugee camps. However, tens of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced by the offensive, which has killed numerous civilians.
According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 900 Palestinians including nearly 200 children have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 2023. Attacks by Israeli settler-colonists, sometimes aided by Israeli troops, have also killed, wounded, displaced, and terrorized West Bank residents as Israel's far-right government forges ahead with plans to steal more land from Palestinians, ethnically cleanse them, and open the door to further Israeli colonization.
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