GAZA (PIC)– Hamas movement denounced the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for reducing services extended to Palestinian refugees in its capacity as a preliminary step to liquidating the issue of those refugee and their right to return to their homeland.
A statement issued by Hamas’s refugees affairs department on Tuesday charged that reducing the agency’s services was part of a systematic policy aimed at ending its service altogether in service of re-settlement projects and liquidation of the right of return.
Hamas warned UNRWA that it should continue extending its humanitarian services until the Palestinian refugees return to their homeland from which they were forcibly evicted at gunpoint in 1948.
Hamas said that the Palestinian people would adopt escalatory steps against UNRWA if it did not retract its decision.
Meanwhile two other Lebanon-based institutions supporting the Palestinian refugees Wajeb and Thabet issued separate statements condemning the UNRWA step.
Wajeb did not rule out that UNRWA decision was political par excellence adding that Gaza Strip was facing tragedies as a result of the Israeli siege other than high unemployment rate and poverty.
It said that the reduction in services of UNRWA would lead to negative repercussions on the condition of those refugees charging that the reduction policy was in violation of international laws.
Wajeb explained that the agency was established to provide services to the Palestinian refugees who were displaced from their homes and denied return following the international community’s recognition of Israel on Palestinian land.
Thabet reiterated the same words in a press release and urged UNRWA commissioner general Filipo Grande to reverse the decision which was taken at the pretext of budget shortage.
