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Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King has sparked widespread condemnation after calling for the killing and expulsion of all staff of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), following the demolition of the agency’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem.
In a video published on his Facebook page from the demolition site, King described UNRWA as an “enemy” and declared that its removal from Jerusalem marked a victory. He said that the agency’s staff should be expelled from what he termed the “Land of Israel,” adding that there was “no choice” between them and Israel. King went further by explicitly calling for the destruction and elimination of all UNRWA personnel.
The remarks drew strong condemnation from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, who warned that such statements represent a grave moral and legal breach. Lazzarini said the calls to assassinate UN staff signal a dangerous escalation, describing them as evidence of a “loss of moral compass” and the emergence of “a new era of barbarity.”
He added that Israeli officials had already competed to take credit for storming and vandalising UN facilities in occupied East Jerusalem, and that calls to exterminate an entire community of UNRWA staff marked a further, deeply alarming step. Lazzarini stressed that UN member states, bound by the UN Charter, cannot tolerate such incitement from officials of a member state, and called for the issue to be raised and addressed at the highest international levels.
The incident comes amid growing international concern over Israeli measures targeting UNRWA operations in Jerusalem and the wider occupied Palestinian territory, following recent Israeli legislation aimed at curbing the agency’s work.
READ: UNRWA says demolition of UN buildings in Sheikh Jarrah marks peak of Israeli attacks
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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