THE Israeli parliament’s decision to ban the humanitarian activities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Israel, including east Jerusalem, has been condemned by Christian Aid as part of a broader campaign to challenge Palestinian refugees’ right to return.

One of the two Bills passed passed late on Monday evening bans Israeli authorities from having contact with the agency, putting UNRWA’s work in Gaza at risk.

A spokesman for the UN human rights office, Jeremy Laurence, said on Tuesday that, without UNRWA, “the delivery of food, health care, education, among other things, to most of Gaza’s population, would grind to a halt”. The British Prime Minister reiterated that “only UNRWA can deliver humanitarian aid at the scale and pace needed”, and warned that the legislation risked making its work for Palestinians “impossible”. The US government has also urged the Israeli government not to pursue the legislation, warning that implementation “risks catastrophe”.

The Israeli government has long raised concerns about UNRWA, and, in February, several countries, including the UK, suspended aid to the agency in the wake of fresh allegations about its links to terrorism (News, 2 February). In August, the UN said that nine members of its staff would be sacked because they “may have been involved” in the 7 October attacks on Israel.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said after the vote that his government stood “ready to work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security”.

Christian Aid’s head of Middle East region, William Bell, said on Tuesday that Israel was “breaching the provisional measures to prevent genocide ordered by the ICJ” (News, 19 January).

“In addition to the physical hardship this ban will impose, this is part of the Israeli state’s ongoing challenge to the eligibility of Palestinian refugees to claim the right of return to their former homes across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory,” he said. “Once again, international leaders have either been unable or unwilling to protect the most basic rights of Palestinians, including their existence as a sovereign people.”

Concern about the plight of the more than 400,000 Palestinian civilians estimated to remain in northern Gaza grew this week. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said last Friday that Israel’s actions in north Gaza “risk emptying the area of all Palestinians. We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity.”

The following day, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator Joyce Msuya, wrote on social media that hospitals had been hit, and first responders “prevented from rescuing people trapped under the rubble”. Men and boys had been “taken away by the truckload”.

“The entire population of north Gaza is at risk of dying,” she warned. “Such blatant disregard for basic humanity and for the laws of war must stop.”

Her statement was referred to more than once in the House of Commons on Monday. Challenged to respond, the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, said that the UN was “absolutely not embellishing” what was happening in Gaza. He condemned the Israeli government’s “ongoing restrictions on humanitarian assistance”, which “fly in the face of Israel’s public commitments”. They were, he said, “a rebuke to every friend of Israel, who month after month have demanded action to address the catastrophic conditions facing Palestinian civilians.”

But the use of the terms “annihilation, extermination, and genocide” to describe Israel’s actions “undermines their seriousness”, he said.

During the debate, the Labour MP for Battersea, Marsha de Cordova, announced this month as the Second Church Estates Commissioner, called for “stronger action: suspend any trade negotiations with Israel, implement a complete arms sale ban, and ensure that goods produced in settlements in the West Bank are also banned”.

In September, the British government suspended arms export licences to Israel for use in military operations in Gaza, following a review of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law. But, on Monday, Mr Lammy resisted calls for a full arms embargo, referring to the Iranian attacks on Israel earlier this month.

Unicef has raised the alarm about the fate of the 2400 children in need of urgent medical care, warning that the rate of evacuation has slowed to fewer than one child per day, despite a litany of conditions including head trauma, amputations, burns, cancer, and severe malnutrition. A spokesman, James Elder, said that the Israeli authorities did not provide reasons for refusals.

“Children in Gaza are dying, not just from the bombs, bullets, and shells that strike them, but because, even when ‘miracles happen’, even when the bombs go off and the homes collapse and the casualties mount, but the children survive, they are then prevented from leaving Gaza to receive the urgent care that would save their lives,” he said.

Last week, the World Health Organization announced that the third phase of its polio vaccination campaign, due to take place in northern Gaza, had been postponed due to the escalating violence. The news came on the eve of World Polio Day, 24 October.

On Monday, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that 95 per cent of Gaza’s cattle had died, and nearly all calves had been slaughtered.