(Reuters reports that Fateh Sharif is accused of ties to the Hamas terrorist group)
Quds Press
March 2, 2024
Today, Saturday, Palestinian refugees in Palestinian camps and gatherings in Lebanon carried out sit-ins and vigils in front of schools and offices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
These protest steps come, according to what the Lebanese Teachers Union reported, “as an escalation against the policy of the UNRWA administration against its employees, and against the backdrop of its threat to the educator, Professor Fateh Sharif, to refer him to investigation or submit his resignation, under the pretext of the activities in support of Gaza that he conducts in his school.”
Our correspondent in Lebanon said, “About 40,000 Palestinian students in Lebanon refrained from going to their 64 schools.”
Participants in the events raised banners rejecting attacks on employees and demanding that UNRWA reverse its policies.
The speeches delivered, according to our correspondent’s monitoring, stressed “the necessity of supporting and keeping pace with the movement and the escalatory steps announced by the Teachers’ Union in Lebanon.”
She considered that “these steps constitute a surrender to the pressure of the occupation and its supporters to eliminate the agency from the gate of belonging and national sympathy, and to eliminate the right of return from the hearts of the refugees.”
She believed that “these decisions against the employees of our people, which are not consistent with the agency’s role in relief and employment, will not go unnoticed, and our people will not accept them, and will confront them with all the different frameworks.”
It also called on the agency’s management in Lebanon to “stop its behavior towards the employees and try to alienate them from their cause under the pretext of restoring funding, and to reverse its unjust decisions against the employees, and not to alienate them from the issues of their people in light of the war of genocide and the war of siege and starvation that the occupier is practicing against our people in the Gaza Strip.” “.
The crisis erupted after “the agency’s administration asked teacher Fath Sharif, on Thursday (the day before yesterday), to submit his resignation within a deadline of March 2 of this year, against the backdrop of his political and national activity,” the union explained in its statement.
The Union said, “This administration recently yielded to the blackmail of certain parties and requested Professor Fath Sharif to submit his resignation within two days, otherwise he will be subjected to an investigation with unfortunate results.”
According to the Union’s statement, the agency argued that “donor countries will not support UNRWA if the administration does not take such measures against him and other employees as a result of malicious reports from known or fictitious parties.”
It should be noted that UNRWA’s action against Professor Sharif was carried out against several teachers during previous years, under the pretext of “violating impartiality”, which sparked a state of anger and union movements, which led the agency to retract its decisions.
