srael informed the United Nations on Monday that it has terminated the decades-old agreement legally recognizing the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which provides a humanitarian lifeline for people in the Gaza Strip.
In a letter addressed to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Israel was withdrawing from the 1967 agreement that forms the legal basis for its relations with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), though the impact of the move was not immediately clear.
On Monday, UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said the agency expected to continue its work coordinating the distribution of aid in Gaza and the West Bank at the operational level. Israeli authorities were not communicating directly with UNRWA about terminating the agreement, she said.
The move comes a week after Israel’s Knesset passed two laws that would severely imperil UNRWA’s activities and diplomatic privileges by blocking any activity on Israeli territory and forbidding government authorities from directly communicating with the agency.
Israel has long been critical of UNRWA and accused it of being infiltrated by Hamas, a claim the agency has denied. UNRWA says it distributes food aid to more than a million Palestinians in Gaza who depend on humanitarian aid.
Here are other key developments
Health workers administered second-round polio vaccines to over 35,800 children in northern Gaza on Sunday, UNICEF and COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs, said Monday. Officials hope to vaccinate 90 percent of children in the north this week, UNICEF spokeswoman Rosalia Bollen said.
Israel’s military said its forces conducted a raid in southern Syria “in recent months,” capturing a Syrian man they described as an Iranian operative. The Israel Defense Forces said the man was gathering intelligence on Israeli troops near the border and was taken to Israel for interrogation.
At least 43,374 people have been killed in Gaza during the war and 102,261 injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. At least 2,986 people have been killed and 13,402 injured in Lebanon, the country’s Health Ministry says. Neither agency distinguishes between civilians and combatants.
Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, including more than 300 soldiers. It says 368 soldiers have been killed in its military operation in Gaza⍐.
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