Bethan McKernan

Bin bags were piling up at one end of the chaotic main thoroughfare in Shuafat refugee camp on Friday morning as shoppers walked by, stepping over a stream of wastewater trickling from a nearby drainpipe. Poor sanitation is just one of the UN-administered Palestinian camp’s problems – but things will get much worse.

Despite huge international pressure not to jeopardise the work of Unrwa, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the Israeli parliament voted this week to ban the organisation from operating on its soil. It also declared it a terror group, in effect severing all cooperation and communication between the UN agency and the Jewish state.

At present it is unclear how the new laws, which are supposed to come into effect in 90 days, will affect aid in Gaza, where UN officials say humanitarian efforts for 2.3 million people are “completely dependent” on Unrwa staff, facilities and logistical capabilities. Another 900,000 Palestinians in the West Bank rely on the organisation for basic services, which the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority does not have the capacity to take over, leading to fears it could collapse altogether.

“I have studied Unrwa for many years; I can emphatically say there is no alternative. It is not like other UN agencies in terms of the scope and scale of what the international community and Israel has asked it to provide while there is no solution to the conflict,” said Dr Maya Rosenfeld, a sociologist and anthropologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“Emergency providers can step in for a short time, but they cannot replace what Unrwa does long-term. It is too big to fail,” she added.

The new bills could yet be vetoed by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, if he can be persuaded to by western allies who support Unrwa’s activities, and they will almost certainly be challenged in petitions made by human rights groups to Israel’s supreme court.

At stake are 96 schools in the West Bank serving 45,000 students, as well as 43 health centres, food distribution services for refugee families, and psychological support services, according to the agency’s website. Before the war in Gaza, it operated 278 schools for 290,000 students, ran 22 medical centres, and distributed food packages to 1.1 million people, and now serves as a crucial emergency lifeline.

The anti-Unrwa legislation, passed by a 92-10 vote in the Knesset late on Monday evening, marks an all-time low in Israel’s relationship with the UN, which it has long accused of bias.

A coalition of pro-Iran groups in Iraq said it carried out four drone attacks on the Israeli resort of Eilat on Saturday, after Israel said it intercepted three drones approaching from the east, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

In a statement, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it was behind the attacks on what it called “four vital targets” in the resort on Israel’s Red Sea coast, all conducted within one hour.

Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 52 people and injured scores more, the Lebanese health ministry said, while rockets fired from Lebanon fell on Israel on Saturday.

Israeli police said 19 people were injured before dawn on Saturday in the central town of Tira. Three projectiles crossed into Israel from Lebanon, Israel’s military said, and some were intercepted.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said two of those injured were in moderate condition from the attack, and the others had lesser injuries. A photo the service released showed damage to what appeared to be an apartment building.

In Lebanon’s north-eastern Bekaa valley, rescuers searched for survivors after airstrikes killed nine people and brought down a building that had housed 20 people in the town of Younine.

Further Israeli strikes killed 12 people in the town of Amhaz and 31 others across at least a dozen villages, bringing the total death toll to 52, the health ministry said. The bombardment left 72 people injured, the ministry added. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the strikes.

The latest violence comes against the backdrop of a renewed diplomatic push by Joe Biden’s administration, days before the US presidential election, to reach temporary ceasefire deals.

In central Gaza, Palestinians recovered the bodies of 25 people killed in a barrage of Israeli aerial attacks that began on Thursday, hospital officials said.

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the US with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its 26 October attack that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just head of the US presidential election this Tuesday.

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.

The AP reports that Khamenei did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.”

In other developments:

• Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 52 people and injured scores more, the Lebanese health ministry said, while rockets fired from Lebanon fell on Israel on Saturday. Israeli police said 19 people were injured before dawn on Saturday in the central town of Tira. Three projectiles crossed into Israel from Lebanon, Israel’s military said, and some were intercepted.

• The situation in the northern Gaza Strip is “apocalyptic” as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants in the area, top United Nations officials have warned. “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” they said in a statement on Friday signed by the heads of UN agencies, including the UN children’s agency Unicef and the World Food Programme, and other aid groups.

• The US asked Lebanon to declare a unilateral ceasefire to revive stalled talks to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, according to a report later denied by the Lebanese prime minister. Two unnamed sources, a Lebanese political source and a senior diplomat, made the claim to Reuters, saying the US envoy, Amos Hochstein, had communicated the proposal to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, this week.