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Unrwa chief denounces Israeli police’s seizure of assets in Jerusalem compound
The head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees denounced Israel’s seizure of assets from its compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Monday.
“Today in the early morning, Israeli police accompanied by municipal officials forcibly entered the Unrwa compound in East Jerusalem”, Philippe Lazzarini said on X.
With trucks and forklifts, the authorities took “furniture, IT equipment and other property”, and the compound’s United Nations flag was replaced with an Israeli one, Lazzarini added.
Lazzarini has been declared persona non grata by Israeli authorities, who banned Unrwa from operating inside the country early this year.
Israeli police told AFP in a statement that the seizures were “carried out by the Jerusalem municipality as part of a debt-collection procedure”.
“Police are present to secure the municipality’s activity,” the statement said.
But Roland Friedrich, Unrwa director for the West Bank and east Jerusalem, rejected that assessment.
“There is no debt because the United Nations - and Unrwa is part of the United Nations and is a UN agency - is not required to pay any kind of taxes of that kind under international law and under the law that Israel itself has adopted,” he said.
Under a 1946 convention, the UN and its assets must not be taxed by host countries.
The compound in occupied East Jerusalem has been empty of Unrwa staff since January, when the Israeli law banning its operations took effect.
“Whatever action taken domestically, the compound retains its status as a UN premises, immune from any form of interference,” Lazzarini said.
Death toll in Gaza rises to 70,365
The death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 70,365, the majority of whom are women and children, since the start of Israel’s genocide in October 2023.
The Palestinian health ministry said the number of people wounded by Israeli forces during that time had risen to 171,058.
At least five new names were added to the death toll, three of whom were killed by Israeli forces over the past 24 hours, and two whose bodies were recovered from under rubble.
Since the ceasefire agreement on 11 October, at least 376 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and 981 wounded. A further 626 bodies have been recovered.
Ben Gvir flaunts noose at Knesset hearing on execution bill for Palestinians
Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir turned up to a Knesset National Security Committee session on Monday wearing a bright yellow pin shaped like a gallows noose, as lawmakers debated a proposed bill that would introduce the death penalty for Palestinians accused of resisting the Israeli occupation.
The gesture, designed to provoke, came as Ben Gvir and other members of his extremist Jewish Power party attended the hearing ahead of the bill’s second and third parliamentary readings, despite mounting legal and ethical objections to the proposal.
Ben Gvir publicly championed execution as an acceptable tool of state violence. “One of the options by which the law will enforce a death penalty for terrorists,” he said, according to Haaretz. “Of course, there is the option of the gallows, the electric chair, and there is also the option of anesthesia.”
A day earlier, the committee’s legal advisers warned that the bill raises serious constitutional problems, casting doubt on its legality and compatibility with even Israel’s own legal framework.
Ben Gvir dismissed those concerns, boasting about alleged support from within the medical community. “Since it was announced that doctors would not want to help with the law, I have received a hundred calls from doctors saying, ‘Itamar, just tell me when’,” the minister said.
