INVESTIGATION: The Board of Peace rules out UNRWA in public and consults it in private

Several times, says the Board

What the dispatch says

The Board of Peace says UNRWA no longer has a place in Gaza. It meets with the agency anyway. Several times.

That is the verdict. The evidence follows.

On September 25, 2026, the Associated Press publishes an exclusive interview with Philippe Lazzarini, former head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. His first since leaving, on March 31.

A Board of Peace official confirms to the AP that Board members have met UNRWA officials several times. Two senior UN officials say the same.

Who is at the end of the chain

At the end of this contradiction, there are no diplomats. There are children.

More than 280,000 children in Gaza follow math and digital-literacy programs run by UNRWA, according to the agency as cited by the AP. Another 60,000 attend its temporary learning spaces.

These are not press-release numbers. They are school mornings.

Chalk on a board propped against a cracked wall. A notebook shared by two. A child reciting a multiplication table while a drone passes over.

At the podium, the agency is finished. In class, it still teaches.

What the Board says in public

Early July

First exhibit: the public position, and it is in writing.

On June 30, at UNRWA’s annual donor conference in New York, American Ambassador Jeff Bartos calls on states to stop funding the agency and to fund the Board of Peace instead, Middle East Eye and Mada Masr report.

The Board repeats his speech on X. It writes that UNRWA has no place in the new Gaza, and that it is turning the page on perpetual aid dependency, according to both outlets.

The Board spoke. It wrote. It broadcast.

The next day, at the UN, the secretary-general’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, has to answer a question about that speech.

He replies that UNRWA exists because the General Assembly gave it a mandate. And that it plays a very important humanitarian role.

September 23

The Board has not corrected itself since.

On September 23, on the sidelines of the General Assembly, it presents its recovery plan for Gaza. At that briefing, its officials name various UN agencies as partners. Not UNRWA, the AP writes.

At the podium, the Board excludes. At the podium, the Board turns the page. At the podium, the Board picks its partners.

A public position, written, dated. It binds its author.

What the Board does in private

The confirmation

Second exhibit: the meetings.

A Board official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirms to the AP that Board members have met UNRWA several times since the ceasefire was signed. Two senior UN officials confirm it too.

Not once. Several times. Since the ceasefire.

These sources describe at least three meetings this year between UNRWA and the Palestinian committee tasked with administering Gaza, the latest this month. Another UN official passed minutes of those exchanges to the AP.

The Tony Blair Institute, a partner of the Board, also asked UNRWA for help, according to a senior UN official. The institute says it works with several agencies and organizations.

An admission of dependence

I will say it plainly. I stand with the children in those classrooms and the million Gazans whose water runs through UNRWA. Against the Board of Peace’s public posture. Because on September 23, it presented its partners without the agency, while one of its own officials confirms having met it several times.

Shut out at the podium, consulted in the meeting room.

This is not a communications nuance. It is an admission of dependence.

You do not consult three times what you can do without.

Four sources, two facts

Three voices in one dispatch

An investigation demands cross-checking. Here is mine.

On the meetings, the AP dispatch does not rest on Lazzarini alone. It rests on a Board official, on two senior UN officials, and on minutes passed along by another.

The Board official does not deny it. He clarifies. He says the meetings were meant to understand how the agency works.

No denial. Only a clarification.

A position written elsewhere

On the public position, the evidence comes from elsewhere.

Middle East Eye, on July 2, cites the Board’s post on X and Bartos’s speech. Mada Masr, on July 7, reports the same post and the same conference. On July 1, the official transcript of the UN press briefing records the question put to Dujarric about Bartos’s speech.

Four sources. Two facts. No denial.

The Board said no in public. The Board said yes in the meeting room. The Board disputes neither.

Two facts, two sources, one institution.

Eleven thousand

The agency’s numbers

Why does the Board meet an agency it calls finished? The numbers answer.

UNRWA still has about 11,000 Palestinian employees in Gaza, according to the agency as cited by the AP. It provides about 14,000 medical consultations a day. It maintains the water and waste systems for more than 1 million Palestinians.

Lazzarini says it alone supports roughly half of Gaza’s public health system.

It has more workers on the ground than any other UN agency or nongovernmental organization, the AP writes.

September 24, Guterres

The day before the dispatch, at the ministerial meeting on the agency, Secretary-General António Guterres said UNRWA’s work and its entire mandate were now under threat, UN News reports.

UN News reports more than 10,000 staff in Gaza, helping 1.7 million people. A shortfall of $100 million. Some 70,000 consultations a week.

Eleven thousand means salaries. It means families. It means daily work nobody else does.

Eleven thousand employees. Not a committee on standby. Not a six-month plan. People already there.

You do not replace eleven thousand people with a slide deck.

What the Board does not have

$280 million

Third exhibit: what the Board actually has in hand.

On September 23, it presents a plan of 66 projects worth $2.45 billion over six months, the Times of Israel reports. At a donor conference in February, about a dozen countries had pledged $17 billion. Only $280 million has been paid in.

Pledged: seventeen billion. Paid: two hundred eighty million.

Less than two dollars in every hundred. That is the treasury of those who want to replace the agency.

A committee that cannot get in

The Palestinian committee the Board chose to govern Gaza still has not been able to enter. Israel is blocking its entry until Hamas disarms, the AP writes. The committee says it must be on the ground to launch its plans.

Almost a year after the ceasefire, there has been no reconstruction, according to the AP.

At the briefing itself, Nickolay Mladenov acknowledged that talks with Israel are not easy, because of the elections, the Times of Israel reports.

A plan. Little money. No access.

So who runs the schools, the clinics, the pumps? Not the committee. Not the Board. The agency they call finished.

And yet, at the podium, it is the one struck off the list.

The Board has a plan. UNRWA has the pumps.

The infiltration charge

January 2024, the accusations

The strongest objection exists, and I state it as the Board would sign it.

UNRWA’s days are over, the Board official tells the AP. He is not speaking at random.

Israel accuses UNRWA of being infiltrated by Hamas militants. In January 2024, Israel claimed that hundreds of militants worked for the agency and that a dozen employees took part in the October 7 attack, the AP recalls.

The Board official adds that employees will stay if they pass vetting and serve neither an ideology nor Hamas’s interests. And that the meetings served to build more effective, better-controlled programs.

In other words: consulting is not depending. It is checking before replacing.

The objection is serious. It deserves proof.

No written evidence

Here is what turns it around. The International Court of Justice considers that these allegations have not been substantiated, the AP writes. Lazzarini says he never received written evidence. He still dismissed the employees named, and he does not regret it.

And on July 1, Dujarric recalled that the Security Council resolution backing the Board calls on the UN to lead humanitarian action in Gaza. UNRWA is part of that system, he said.

So the text that founds the Board puts the UN at the center of humanitarian work. The Board, for its part, strikes off the UN’s largest agency on the ground.

Suspicion justifies vetting. It does not replace eleven thousand people.

The witness has a book

A witness with a stake

Now, what cuts against my side. I publish it, and I put it here.

Philippe Lazzarini is not a neutral witness. He ran the agency until March 31. He says he suffered attacks of unheard-of violence online and in the street, in Geneva and in New York. His book, a testimony on Gaza, comes out in French in October.

A former chief defending his agency, a month before his book. Readers have every right to note that. I note it too.

Programs that could last

I also grant this. The Board is not as closed as its July message. Its own official says UNRWA’s programs could continue if they serve Gazans well.

True. And it does not change this: the witness with a stake is not the only source. The Board itself confirms the meetings. And a Board that admits the programs could continue admits it needs them.

The concession does not save the posture. It contradicts it once more.

The witness has a book. The Board has an admission.

Water for a million

Those who would pay

Here is what would happen if the public posture became a decision.

UNRWA maintains the water of a million people. UNRWA handles their waste. UNRWA provides fourteen thousand consultations a day. UNRWA runs the classes of two hundred eighty thousand children. UNRWA supplies the workforce without which, Lazzarini says, a vaccine never reaches a child’s mouth.

Nobody today is proposing a replacement team on the ground. The committee waits at the border. The Board waits for the money.

If the agency leaves tomorrow, who opens the valve the day after?

The vaccine. The water. The classroom. And yet they speak of it in the past tense.

Four hundred

There is another number. Guterres gave it on September 24: nearly 400 UNRWA staff members have died in Gaza.

Four hundred.

Lazzarini remembers a displaced father, housed with his four children in a schoolyard, who slept with his shoes next to his head. In case he had to flee a bombing.

The Board talks about perpetual aid dependency. That father depended on a schoolyard run by the agency they want to strike off.

Those who will pay for the posture were not at the briefing.

An absurd contradiction

Two messages

Lazzarini has a word for it: an absurd contradiction. The Board says the agency is not wanted, while UN member states expect it to deliver.

He also sums up what his counterparts think. They want to get rid of the agency, but they know that removing it completely today would have a disastrous impact.

I cannot verify what those counterparts think. I can verify what they do. They meet with it.

They say no. They book meetings.

Back on June 30, Christian Saunders, the agency’s acting head, called UNRWA vital to the Board’s ceasefire efforts, according to the AP. At the same conference, Bartos was calling for its funding to stop.

Fifty countries

On September 24, more than 50 countries attended the ministerial meeting on the agency at UN headquarters, according to the AP. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, repeated that UNRWA is indispensable.

The meeting was co-chaired by Spain, Brazil and Jordan, UN News reports.

Fifty countries say indispensable. The Board says finished. And yet it is the Board asking for meetings.

The public word says finished. The private calendar says not yet.

Blair, Mladenov and an unnamed official

Who speaks for the Board

An investigation names those responsible. Here is who the evidence allows me to name.

The public position belongs to the Board of Peace, created by the United States, written on its official account at the turn of July, and carried to the UN by Ambassador Jeff Bartos on June 30.

At the September 23 briefing, the one that left UNRWA off the list, Tony Blair spoke and Nickolay Mladenov discussed the talks with Israel, according to the Times of Israel.

The confirmation of the meetings comes from a Board official who declined to be named.

Shaath’s silence

Ali Shaath heads the Palestinian committee. According to Lazzarini, Shaath told him before he left that he did not see how to succeed without the agency. An internal UN note on a meeting in Cairo, on January 26, describes him praising UNRWA.

Neither Shaath nor a spokesman responded to the AP. Israel’s foreign ministry did not comment.

The Board speaks at the podium. The Board confirms under anonymity. The Board never signs both sentences together.

Two sentences. No shared signature.

An institution that speaks twice signs only once.

Three meetings, no public minutes

The minutes

An honest investigation ends with what it does not yet know.

It does not fill the gaps with suspicion. It shows them.

We do not know the exact number of meetings between the Board and UNRWA. We do not have the full minutes. We do not know who at the Board asked for them.

Nor do we know whether the promised vetting of employees has begun, or on what criteria. We do not know whether the minutes passed to the AP will be published.

Four unknowns. One certainty: the meetings took place.

The name missing from the list

Will the Board one day name UNRWA among its partners?

I admit I do not know what this agency will be worth in ten years. I know what it does this morning: consultations, water, classes.

The evidence is public. So is the contradiction. All that is missing is someone to sign it…

The dispatch has spoken. The Board has not chosen its sentence.

Shut out at the podium, consulted in private

July, September, and the meetings

Here is my verdict, and it concerns a dated posture, not a people.

The Board of Peace said in public, at the turn of July, that UNRWA had no place in the new Gaza. On September 23, it left the agency off its list of partners. At the same time, it met with it several times, and it confirms as much.

This is not caution. It is a dependence nobody will admit.

The Board knows it. The UN knows it. The families live it.

Families hooked up to the agency

And the people paying for this contradiction sit neither on the Board nor at the UN. They are the children in the temporary classrooms and the families hooked up to the agency’s water.

At what point should a donor country demand that a peace plan say in public what it does in private?

Until then, the water flows, and it still carries the name they refuse to say.

Shut out at the podium, consulted in private, UNRWA still keeps the water running.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Associated Press — the Board of Peace met UNRWA, interview with Lazzarini, September 25, 2026
• UN News — Guterres says UNRWA’s mandate is under threat, September 24, 2026
• UN spokesperson’s press briefing — Bartos, the Board and UNRWA, July 1, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Middle East Eye — the Board says UNRWA has no place in Gaza, July 2, 2026
• Mada Masr — Washington steers donors to the Board instead of UNRWA, July 7, 2026
• The Times of Israel — the Board’s $2.45 billion plan and its hurdles, September 23, 2026