CNN
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An Israeli lawmaker behind a bill that would prevent the main UN agency in Gaza and the West Bank from working Israel accused the US ambassador to Israel of lobbying opposition leaders to block the move.

If the bill is passed by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, this week, it will ban any Israeli official from providing services or dealing with UNRWA employees and ban UNRWA from operating in Israel.

Several countries, including the US, have expressed concern about the bill’s impact.

The Israeli government claimed that some of the staff of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are affiliated with Hamas. UNRWA strongly denied the allegations, but several governments suspended funding to the agency earlier this year while the allegations were investigated.

The lawmaker, Yulia Malinovsky, told CNN that US Ambassador Jacob Lew had contacted several opposition leaders, including Avigdor Lieberman, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, in an effort to stop the legislation.

She described the US pressure as unacceptable.

The US State Department told CNN that, as a matter of policy, it would not comment on private diplomatic conversations.

But he said the proposed legislation would make it impossible for UNRWA to function and leave a “vacuum that Israel would then be responsible for filling”. A spokesman said UNRWA provided vital services in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan.

UNRWA has long been a target of Israeli criticism, and relations between Israel and the UN have collapsed amid the Gaza war.

Last week, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the IDF had killed a commander of the Hamas “Nukhba” force, who was also employed by UNRWA since July 2022.

Later, Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “has reached new heights of hypocrisy and insensitivity. Last night, he lamented the elimination of “their UNRWA colleague” by IDF forces in Gaza.”

In a letter sent to two senior members of the Israeli government earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Biden administration was “deeply concerned” about the possible passage of the bill.

Malinovsky told CNN that she was determined that UNRWA should no longer receive “five-star treatment” in Israel. She says she has broad support in the Israeli parliament for the measure.

“UNRWA has collaborated with Hamas, educates children to hate Israel and spreads anti-Semitism, sells them stories that they will be able to return to Israel. This will not happen,” said Malinovsky.

UNRWA says it insists on the neutrality of its staff and has said the allegations made by Israel about 66 of its 30,000 staff amount to just 0.22 percent of its payroll.

“There is absolutely no reason for a blanket description of the ‘institution as a whole’ to be ‘totally infiltrated,'” the agency said in May.

Most parties in the Knesset seem ready to support the bill. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid declined to comment on the private conversations, but his office told CNN that UNRWA “played an active role in the brutal massacre on October 7. Terrorist attacks against Israel were launched from its institutions…”.

Former war cabinet member Benny Gantz posted on X last week that UNRWA “has chosen to become an inseparable part of the Hamas machine – and now is the time to completely disassociate from it.”

On Saturday, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain expressed “serious concern” about the legislation.

They said that without the work of UNRWA, the delivery of assistance “including education, medical assistance and fuel distribution in Gaza and the West Bank would be severely hampered, if not impossible.”