UN warns: We can’t fill in for obsolete PA

The United Nations has warned it does not have the capacity to take over tasks that the Palestinian Authority has abdicated to protest annexation, particularly when it comes to the fulfillment of PA agreements with Israel regarding humanitarian issues.

“We cannot replace the Palestinian Authority,” UN Special Coordinator for the

Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov told the Foreign Press Association on Thursday. He highlighted for the second day in a row the problems that have arisen from the PA’s decision to suspend its agreements with Israel.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to “absolve” the commitments Palestinians undertook within the Oslo framework

in the 1990s has meant that the PA has refused to accept tax revenues from Israel and therefore lacks the funds to pay the salaries of Palestinian public servants, Mladenov said.

“All of these steps in response to the prospect of annexation are already beginning to bite,” he said.

“We see, as the United Nations, across our entire network the effects on the ground,” he added. “The ending of civilian coordination has meant that an increasing number of Palestinian civilians, children [and] cancer patients in Gaza, in particular, are unable to travel [to Israel for treatment]. We have already had one very sad fatality.”

Mladenov cited the death of Omar Yaghi, an eight-monthold Gazan, of cardiac issues on June 18. He had not been able to receive an exit permit for a May operation at Sheba Medical Center because the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee stopped processing permits for medical patients in response to the annexation plan. Physicians for Human Rights and Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement and Access have both highlighted Yaghi’s story.

In an effort to sidestep the frozen process, Physicians for