Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, reacts to the milestone reached in the violence of Israeli bombings against the Gaza Strip and denounces the dangerous assimilation of the Palestinian population of the enclave with Hamas.
On Saturday October 28, he was the guest of Internationales, a TV5 Monde show presented by Françoise Joly, and of which Le Monde is a partner.
The director of our operations in southern Gaza – the only member of our staff we were able to reach this Saturday morning, by satellite, when telephone and Internet no longer work – said: “We have never heard, from memory, bombings of such intensity. » However, we had already had the impression, over the last few days, that we had reached a paroxysm in terms of intensity.
There were strikes against the northern part, in Khan Younes [in the south of the Gaza Strip], where there are many displaced people sheltered in UNRWA installations. The previous twenty days of war have already had disastrous consequences for the population, with hundreds of thousands of displaced people, thousands of dead, even more wounded, in a Gaza Strip under total blockade, where it is not possible to provide sufficient humanitarian aid.
Now added is an atmosphere of anxiety, of panic, with the fear that there will be new population movements. The 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants who are still in the North were again ordered on Friday by the Israeli army to move en masse towards the South. It is obviously impossible to move during intense bombardments. Our fear is that, once in the South, the populations will be pushed even further, near the Egyptian border.
UNRWA has suffered colossal losses since the start of Israel’s war against Gaza, which followed Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel on October 7. Our employees live in the same conditions as the rest of the population, they are part of the displaced people who have gone to the South. Some were able to stay in the North, by personal choice, like other civilians. But our operations are taking place today in the South.
Since the start of the war, 57 members of our teams have been killed (according to figures available Friday). This is unsustainable. We have 13,000 employees in Gaza, including 2,000 working in emergency response. They are all Palestinian refugees, except for a small team of internationals. If I compare with Syria, UNRWA lost 17 employees there in more than ten years of war.
It is a deep feeling in Gaza, but also in the region, that international humanitarian law or human rights are of variable geometry. As for Gaza, the population there is treated as associated with Hamas. There has been a phenomenon of dehumanization [of Gazans] in recent years. Despite all the unbearable images coming from Gaza, there is no reaction.
Absolutely not. No one saw coming this absolutely abominable massacre perpetrated by Hamas, which created a real national trauma in Israel and was very strongly condemned by the international community.
The blockade was announced by the Israeli authorities: today there is a siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. The mechanism put in place requires a lot of inspections of the merchandise entering. The Rafah crossing point [between Egypt and the Gaza Strip] is not suitable for large flows of goods towards Gaza. Rafah was bombed recently. The logistics system, which provides for unloading of goods before they are put back into other trucks, is very complicated and absolutely does not meet the current needs of more than 2 million people.
If this continuous flow means having one or a few trucks per day, then yes, there have been almost daily convoys. But their numbers have been ridiculous until now.
Without fuel, we will not be able to continue operating in the Gaza Strip: hospitals, bakeries, water stations depend on fuel. We rely on fuel to move humanitarian aid from school to school. The Israeli army claims that Hamas stole fuel from UNRWA. I am not informed of this.
There is no movement of fuel undertaken by UNRWA into the Gaza Strip without prior security measures, without authorization from the Israeli army so that it can move without becoming a military objective. We are in a propaganda situation: “Nothing will come in because Hamas has fuel. » But UNRWA is not Hamas. It is dangerous to want to associate an association like ours with Hamas, as has already been the case. I refute these accusations.
In the last six conflicts that have taken place in the last fifteen years, each time the figures have been considered largely reliable. There is no reason to doubt today that the figures are less reliable than they were in the past.
The worst scenario is that this war continues, that the siege continues, with aid in trickles. A spokesperson in Gaza told me he met people in shelters who were hungry. This is unprecedented, despite the various wars that took place there.
