CNN —
Israeli lawmakers supporting a bill that would block key UN agencies in Gaza and the West Bank from operating in Israel have accused the US ambassador to Israel of lobbying opposition leaders to block the move. .
If passed by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, this week, the bill would ban Israeli officials from providing services or doing business with UN Relief and Works Agency staff, and would also ban UNRWA from operating in Israel.
Several countries, including the United States, have expressed concerns about the impact of this bill.
The Israeli government has alleged that some United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) personnel have ties to Hamas. UNRWA strongly denies the allegations, but several governments suspended funding to the agency earlier this year while the allegations were investigated.
Member of Parliament Yulia Malinovsky told CNN that US Ambassador Jacob Lew has joined several opposition leaders, including Avigdor Lieberman, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, to block the bill. He said he had contacted him.
She said US pressure was unacceptable.
The US State Department told CNN that for policy reasons, it does not comment on private diplomatic conversations.
However, he said the proposed legislation would make it impossible for UNRWA to operate, leaving a “vacuum that would then be the responsibility of Israel to fill.” The spokesperson said UNRWA provides critical services in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan.
UNRWA has long been a target of Israeli criticism, and relations between Israel and the UN have cooled during the Gaza war.
Last week, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Major General Daniel Hagari announced that the Israel Defense Forces had killed the commander of the Hamas “Nukba” unit, who had also been employed by UNRWA since July 2022.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz then posted on X that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had “reached new heights of hypocrisy and insensitivity.” Last night, he lamented the removal of “UNRWA colleagues” by IDF forces in Gaza. ”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a letter to two senior Israeli government officials earlier this month that they were “deeply concerned” about the Biden administration’s chances of passing the bill.
Malinowski told CNN he was determined that UNRWA should no longer receive “five-star treatment” in Israel. She said the bill had wide support in Israel’s parliament.
“UNRWA is colluding with Hamas, teaching children to hate Israel, spreading anti-Semitism, and selling the story that they can return to Israel. That will not happen,” Malinowski said.
UNRWA insists on the neutrality of its staff and said the Israeli allegations against 66 of its 30,000 staff accounted for just 0.22% of their salaries.
In May, the agency said, “There is absolutely no basis for comprehensively describing the “entire organization” as “completely pervasive.””
Most political parties in Congress appear to support the bill. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid declined to comment on private conversations, but his office told CNN that UNRWA “played an active role in the brutal massacre of October 7. “That organization launched terrorist attacks against Israel…”
Former war cabinet minister Benny Gantz wrote on X last week that UNRWA “has chosen to make itself an inseparable component of the Hamas apparatus and now is the time to completely dissociate from it.”
On Saturday, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom expressed “serious concerns” about the bill.
They said that without UNRWA’s operations, the provision of assistance “including education, health care and fuel distribution in Gaza and the West Bank” would be severely hampered, if not impossible.
