Philippe Lazzarini: Is UNRWA's mission in Gaza impossible?
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2024
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Sackur speaks to Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians. This week, six UN relief agency staff were killed in an Israeli strike on a central Gaza school that had been turned into an emergency shelter for thousands. UNRWA’s death count in Gaza since the beginning of the war is over 220. Is his agency’s mission now impossible?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me Stephen Saka. |
| 0:04.5 | When my guest today accepted his current leadership role, he knew it would come with constant scrutiny and high stress. |
| 0:12.2 | But Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner of the UN agency responsible for the welfare of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, |
| 0:19.2 | surely couldn't have envisaged the levels of pressure he has been |
| 0:23.2 | under for the past 11 months. The trigger was, of course, Hamas's murderous attack on southern |
| 0:29.6 | Israel on October the 7th last year, which killed more than 1,100 people. It prompted a ferocious |
| 0:36.8 | and continuing Israeli military assault on the Gaza |
| 0:40.1 | which, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, has killed more than 41,000 people, |
| 0:48.1 | the majority of them, women and children, including six relief workers killed in an Israeli strike on a school turned emergency |
| 0:56.2 | shelter for thousands of displaced people, which was hit on Wednesday. Israel says, as it has |
| 1:03.0 | many times before, that it conducted a precision strike against Hamas targets operating in the |
| 1:10.1 | school. Indeed, for many months, the Israeli government |
| 1:12.4 | has accused UNRWA of complicity with Hamas. Those allegations have been the subject of lengthy |
| 1:18.4 | investigation and have seen several donor countries suspend funding. Never has UNRWA's ability |
| 1:25.1 | to fulfil its mission looked more tenuous. Has it become mission impossible? |
| 1:32.0 | Well, Philip Lazzarini joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you, Stephen. |
| 1:36.9 | You run the UNRRA Relief Agency. You have 13,000 staff inside Gaza. You currently are not able to visit Gaza. What is it like when you hear |
| 1:47.9 | that, as yesterday, Wednesday, six members of your staff have been killed an Israeli bomb attack? |
| 1:55.2 | This is always absolutely devastating. Yesterday I was boarding the plane coming from Carroll to London when I heard |
| 2:03.6 | the news and this happened in a school which was also sheltering at that time 12,000 people and there |
| 2:12.4 | in this school because they still believe that the United Nations flag can protect them. |
| 2:19.0 | Yesterday, six staff working in this shelter, providing assistance, organizing, in fact, |
... |
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