Geneva  

Thank you so much. A pleasure to be with you.  

Thank you, Minister Leis, and thank you Spain, first for the chairmanship of the AdCom, but also for stewarding the support to the Agency with other Member States, both politically but also financially. Spain has been very involved also in New York with other Member States when it comes to the joint commitments to the Agency.  

You said a lot. So, I want just to be a little bit briefer and give more time for the questions and answers today.  

As you know I was at the General Assembly last week, at the Fourth Committee, because of the unprecedented time the Agency is going through, which I have described as being certainly the darkest moment for the Agency, but also for the Palestinian refugees across the region. 

 You have all followed recently the adoption of the two Knesset bills on 28 October. I have drawn the attention of the Member States to the fact that now the clock is ticking. Basically, it is a three-month deadline.  

I have shared with Member States our three asks.  

The first one being we have to stop or prevent the implementation of these bills.  

Secondly, once this implementation of these bills is put on hold, we need to delineate the role of the Agency within a political pathway, leading to the two-state solution, and leading to an empowered Palestinian authority.  

As Minister Leis said, you keep hearing that the Agency is irreplaceable. I keep being asked, why is the Agency irreplaceable? In fact, it is replaceable by a functioning state, by functioning institutions. And, for this, we need to invest into a political process even more, in order to make sure that this reality would be the reality of tomorrow for the Palestinians. But we are irreplaceable by any other United Nations organisation because there is no United Nations organisation which has been geared to provide public-like services like UNRWA. There is absolutely no United Nations agency which would provide primary or secondary education to hundreds of thousands of girls or boys anywhere in the world, but also across the region. So, my message to the Member States has also been, please make sure that we are not throwing the baby with the water at the same time, because if we do this and we do not have a viable alternative in place, we will create a vacuum. We will also deprive hundreds of thousands of children of the right of education. But, by doing this, we will also sow the seeds for more extremism, more hate in the future. 

So, what is at stake? You heard from me many times, because I am also asked, “What are the objectives behind the dismantlement of the Agency?”, and you heard me talking about the aim of stripping the Palestinians from the refugee status through this, also undermining the aspiration of the Palestinians for self-determination, but also undermining the efforts of the international community for a two-state solution. On this one, we have to be clear: even if UNRWA today would cease its operations, the status of refugees would remain. 

Why so? Because the status of Palestinian refugees is determined in General Assembly resolution 194, whereas the activities and the mandate of the Agency are defined in a different General Assembly resolution, which was basically adopted later.  

I keep being asked whether, yes or no, there is a Plan B. There is no Plan B within the United Nations family, because there is no other agency geared to provide the same activities and, in reality, UNRWA is the response of the international community to the plight of the Palestinian refugees through the mandate provided by the General Assembly resolution. So, if there is no United Nations or international community response, the responsibility will come back to the occupying power, being Israel, and that's where we have to ask, “Where does a Plan B sit today?” 

I would like just to conclude by saying that we can already feel the impact of these laws. Our staff in the region is deeply, deeply concerned, anxious, worried about what might happen. And rightly so. We had already last week an incident where a female staff member was searched at her home by IDF soldiers, and when they realised that she is working for UNRWA, basically, they told her, “How come you work for a terrorist organisation?” They asked for access to all the data in the computer, in total violation of our immunity and privileges. And then she was brought for interrogation for a few hours, handcuffed to a post. This, of course, creates a lot of anxiety. And it is not just an anxiety regarding the job security or the livelihood. But talking about this, only in the occupied Palestinian territory, we have 17,000 staff, and we are the second main employer of Palestinians after the Palestinian Authority.  

I think I will stop here.