Daniel Meron, the Israeli ambassador to international organizations in Geneva, hopes the door doesn’t hit Philippe Lazzarini as the latter steps down as commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
“Philippe Lazzarini’s departure follows UNRWA’s systemic moral collapse,” Meron told JNS. “Rather than accepting responsibility, he continues to frame the agency as a passive victim.
Lazzarini left UNRWA three months before the conclusion of his tenure, and there doesn’t appear to be a succession plan for the U.N. agency, which employed people who participated directly in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks and who had ties to Palestinian terror groups.
UNRWA became a “social fabric” for terror under Lazzarini’s tenure, and Israel has found that almost 12% of the agency’s staff in Gaza are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to Meron.
“This is no case of rotten apples,” Meron told JNS. “Does anyone believe that the agency didn’t know that its schools were being used as command centers and its electricity to power Hamas server farms?”
Meron disagrees with Lazzarini’s view that the U.N. agency’s infrastructure, experience in Gaza and knowledge of the landscape are irreplaceable. Israel is already facilitating aid through international partners, including U.N. agencies like the World Food Programme and UNICEF, he said.
“Real peace requires neutral humanitarian agencies, not those serving as an arm of Hamas,” Meron told JNS. “Instead of preaching for accountability, Mr. Lazzarini should be held accountable for the systemic criminal failures under his tenure.”
Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in New York, wrote “good riddance” to the outgoing UNRWA head.
“The fact that he doesn’t mention, much less show any contrition for, UNRWA’s involvement in Oct. 7, nor their infiltration by Hamas, is a perfect example of how U.N. officials dodge accountability through moral grandstanding,” Waltz stated. (The U.S. envoy was responding to a Guardian op-ed that Lazzarini penned.)
Lazzarini guided UNRWA through significant challenges of the post-Oct. 7 war, but critics derided him for consistently denying and downplaying evidence of direct ties between UNRWA and Gazan terror groups, including Hamas.
The UNRWA head said often that the agency was the victim of a concerted, Israeli-led smear campaign. The Jewish state passed legislation which banned UNRWA operations in Israel and cut off communication between Israeli officials and the agency.
UNRWA’s donor funding dried up, including from Arab states that had backed it unflinchingly, in the wake of the exposure of the agency’s terror links. The Trump administration has described UNRWA as irredeemable and rejected Lazzarini’s claim that the agency can serve as an asset in a peace effort.
The United Nations named Christian Saunders, its special coordinator on improving the U.N. response to sexual exploitation and abuse, as officer in charge of UNRWA on Tuesday. He is to hold that role until the end of June, after which he is to be acting commissioner-general.
Saunders has served as acting UNRWA commissioner-general before and has held key senior positions in U.N. operational support and management departments.
Lazzarini’s decision to step down was publicized months ago, but there has been no formal process to select his permanent replacement.
A source familiar with the situation told JNS that “the agency is a political hot potato right now, and it was felt that no one was in a position to gain acceptance from the needed players.”
“The plan is to lower the temperature, let a solid, experienced technocrat take control for a while, and revisit this after a new secretary-general is chosen,” the source said.
António Guterres’s second and final term as U.N. secretary-general is concluding at the end of the year, and an election for his replacement is scheduled for the fall.
There’s a lack of impressive candidates showing an interest in the UNRWA job so far, the source acknowledged, whether due to the state of post-war Gaza and the agency’s funding crisis. The latter has been an issue because UNRWA counts descendants of every Palestinian refugee of the 1948 and 1967 wars as perpetual refugees and entitles them to services and benefits.
“I think everyone recognizes that whoever takes over down the line might be inheriting a vastly different looking UNRWA,” the source told JNS.
“The problem, one of millions, is that it will be exceedingly difficult for someone to carry out their own vision for the future of UNRWA, when external factors control so much of that future,” the source said.
