Refugee Affairs Department at the Palestine Liberation Organization denounced on Sunday a call by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for dismantling the UNRWA.
Director-general of the Department Ahmad Hannoun said that Netanyahu’s demand to dismantle the UNRWA deliberately targets the right of return of the Palestinians who were displaced from their homes in 1948 and aims to eliminate the living witness to the Palestinian Nakba and the crimes committed by the Jewish armed gangs against the Palestinian people in 1948.
He pointed out that this falls in line with an Israeli systematic campaign against the UNRWA to stop its operations.
Hannoun stressed the importance of the presence of the UNRWA until the achievement of a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian cause that leads to ending the Israeli occupation in the territories occupied in 1967 including Jerusalem the capital of the Palestinian state and the return of the Palestinian refugees who were displaced from their homes in 1948 as stipulated in the UN resolution No. 194.
Hannoun explained that the UNRWA services provided to the refugees over the past 68 years have been a stabilizing factor in the region calling on the UN and its Secretary-General António Guterres to reply to Netanyahu’s statements.
Earlier in the day Netanyahu called for dismantling the UNRWA and merging it with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
In a statement issued by Netanyahu’s office on Sunday he said that he told the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley during their meeting last week that the UN should consider ending the work of the UNRWA.
For its part the UNRWA affirmed that its mandate is granted to it by the UN General Assembly and it is the only body that can change its functions through a majority vote.
The UNRWA spokesman Sami Msha’sha’ said in a press release that in December 2016 the UN General Assembly extended UNRWA’s mandate for three years by a large majority.
He added that the situation of the Palestinian refugees must be solved through a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The UNRWA was established by a UN General Assembly resolution in 1949 to provide services to about five million Palestinian refugees registered in the West Bank the Gaza Strip Jordan Syria and Lebanon.
The UNRWA services include education health care relief social services infrastructure camp improvement and microcredit for Palestine refugees so that they can improve their potentials until a just solution to their cause is achieved.
