Israel’s move to effectively end the work of the UN relief agency UNRWA in Gaza will have dire humanitarian consequences, the UN’s children’s agency has warned.

“Israeli legislation to shut down the main lifeline for Palestinian refugees in Gaza will be deadly if fully implemented,” UNICEF said, in a statement.

“UNRWA is indispensable in delivering the urgent, life-saving assistance that 2.2 million people in Gaza urgently need,” the agency said.

“With the children of Gaza already facing one of the gravest humanitarian crises in recent history, if fully implemented, this decision will be deadly.”

The Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, approved two pieces of legislation recently banning UN Palestine refugee agency UNRWA from operating in its territory and prohibiting authorities from having any contact with it.

UNRWA is the only UN General Assembly-mandated agency to provide for Palestinian refugees. 

“UNRWA runs a range of social services, with over 18,000 employees in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, providing health, education and other essential services for Palestinian refugees. No UN agency can take over this responsibility,” UNICEF said.

UNRWA provides essential services and protection to more than five million Palestinian refugees overall across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

UNICEF noted that it is “the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza”, and that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said “there is no alternative to UNRWA”.

UNRWA said its support for Palestinian civilians continues as the war grinds on in Gaza.

The agency said recently that in Khan Younis, its teams continue to reach thousands of displaced people with flour and essential aid.

“As the risk of famine across the Gaza Strip remains high, UNRWA’s commitment to supporting the most vulnerable is more critical than ever,” the agency said.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has warned that the refugee crisis in Lebanon could match the displacement of Rohingya Muslims in south and east Asia.

Mr Burke said that unlike the Rohingya crisis, in which a million people have been displaced, there was still time to act stop a similar humanitarian crisis in Lebanon.

“I’ve just come back from Bangladesh, which has the worst refugee crisis in the world, with Rohingya’s in a camp at Cox’ Bazaar,” he said at a recent event in Sydney.

“That is a bit of context because I think it gives a scale the world doesn’t understand with respect to Lebanon,” he said,

“The Rohingya crisis at the moment at the moment in Bangladesh amounts to a million refugees in a Bangladeshi population if 174 million people. In Lebanon, you have 1.5 million Syrian refugees in a population of 5.8 million people. And now we have one million people being displaced from the south to the north of Lebanon.”

Mr Burke said the ongoing crisis in Lebanon has seen Australia provide an extra $10 million in aid to Lebanon.