JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's parliament is scheduled to vote Monday on a pair of bills that would effectively sever ties with the U.N. agency responsible for distributing aid in Gaza, strip it of legal immunities and restrict its ability to support Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Israel accuses the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, of turning a blind eye to Hamas militants it says have infiltrated its staff, including a small number of its 13,000 employees in Gaza who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants from its ranks.
The bills risk crippling humanitarian aid distribution in the Gaza Strip, at a time the United States is pressing Israel to allow in more food and other supplies. More than 1.9 million Palestinians are displaced from their homes and Gaza faces widespread shortages of food, water and medicine.
The bills, which do not include provisions for alternative organizations to oversee its work, have been strongly criticized by international aid groups and a handful of Israel's Western allies.
One bill would effectively strip UNRWA from operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories; the other would bar it from operating in east Jerusalem. UNRWA provides education, health care and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
If approved, the bills would not go into effect immediately; they would go into effect 60 to 90 days after Israel’s Foreign Ministry notifies the U.N., according to the spokesperson of parliamentarian Dan Illouz, one of the co-sponsors.
The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement condemning the bills.
“If it passes and if it’s implemented, it’s a disaster” said Juliette Touma, communications director for the agency. “UNRWA is the largest humanitarian organization in Gaza ... Who can do its job?”
Death toll in Gaza surpasses 43,000
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in the yearlong war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civiians and combatants but says more than half of the dead are women and children.
The tally includes 96 dead who arrived at hospitals in Gaza over the past two days, the ministry said.
The ministry said more than 101,000 have been wounded in the war. The Israel-Hamas war began after militants from Hamas and other groups stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.
Israel raids hospital in northern Gaza, strikes Tyre in Lebanon
The Israeli military said it detained 100 suspected Hamas militants in a raid on a hospital in northern Gaza on Friday.
The World Health Organization accused Israel of detaining 44 male hospital staff at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya. Palestinian medical officials said the hospital, which was treating some 200 patients, was heavily damaged in the raid.
Israel has raided several hospitals in Gaza over the course of the yearlong war, saying Hamas and other militants use them for military purposes. Palestinian medical officials deny those allegations and accuse the military of recklessly endangering civilians.
An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with regulations, said there was heavy fighting around Kamal Adwan Hospital, though not inside it, and that weapons were found inside the facility.
The official said medical staff were detained and searched because some of the militants had disguised themselves as medics.
The Israeli military has called on Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza, where it has been waging a large offensive for more than three weeks. The official said the operation in the northern Gaza city of Jabaliya would last “several more weeks.”
The U.N. said earlier this month at least 400,000 people are still in northern Gaza and hunger is rampant as the amount of humanitarian aid reaching the north has plummeted over the past month.
In Beirut, successive Israeli airstrikes have pummeled the southern port city of Tyre in Lebanon following an evacuation order from the Israeli military for parts of the city, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Iran weighs response to Israeli strike
Global oil prices fell sharply after a retaliatory strike by Israel over the weekend targeted Iranian military sites rather than its energy infrastructure, as had been feared.
Oil prices had spiked after Iran fired nearly 200 missiles into Israel on Oct 1, part of a series of rapidly escalating attacks between Israel and Iran, and militant groups it supports, that threatened to push the Middle East closer to a regionwide war.
Iran is the world’s 7th largest oil producer, but if the conflict in the Middle East were to spread, it could drag in some of the world’s largest energy producers.
It is unclear how Iran could respond to Israel’s weekend strike, which damaged at least two secretive Iranian military bases. A carefully worded statement from Iran’s military Saturday night appeared to offer some wiggle room for the Islamic Republic to back away from further escalation. It suggested that a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.
Egypt's president proposes two-day cease-fire
Egypt's president on Monday called for coordinated international efforts to establish a cease-fire in Israel’s wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively, a day after he unveiled that his country proposed a two-day cease-fire in the Palestinian enclave.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s comments came in a meeting in Cairo with Manfred Weber, the Chairman of the European People’s Party Group, the largest political group in the European Parliament, according to the Egyptian leader’s office.
“The president stressed the need for all international parties, including the European Union, to combine efforts to push hard for … a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon,” el-Sissi’s office said in a statement.
One official said Israel was discussing the proposal both internally and with Egyptian officials. A second official said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed enthusiasm for the deal in a meeting with his Likud party on Monday.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations about the proposal with the media.
Hamas has yet to formally respond to the plan.
___
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Michelle Chapman in New York and Julia Frankel and Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed.
___
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Melanie Lidman And Samy Magdy, The Associated Press
