Defunding UNRWA: ‘Collective punishment’ against Palestinians!

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established on December 8, 1949, by the UN General Assembly to provide basic support including food, health care and education for all refugees resulting from the 1948 Palestine war which led to the establishment of the Zionist colonial settler apartheid state of Israel. Around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs or 85 per cent of the total population of historical Palestine fled or were expelled from their homes when captured by the Israeli army and Zionist terrorist groups.
UNRWA aids about six million uprooted Palestinians who live within and outside Palestine. Their operations are spread across the West Bank, East Jerusalen, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Services they provide include school education, health care and other social services.
It was established as a temporary UN agency until a just and durable solution for Palestinian refugees was achieved but continues to exist even after 76 years to provide essential services like education, health care and other services. Palestinian refugees as a group are defined as people whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1945 and May 1948 and their descendants who lost their homes and means of livelihood because of the creation of the Zionist colonial settler apartheid state of Israel or what the Palestinians call "Nakba" (catastrophe).
In fact, Zionism, a European colonial movement with white supremacist and fascistic ideologies spearheaded a drive to colonise Palestine with the active support from the UK. The 1917 promise (Balfour Declaration) given by the British of a "national homeland" for European Jews was a British colonial project promising a European ethnic group land in the Arab Middle East in Palestine.
Before the Balfour declaration was made public, it had been submitted and approved by US President Woodrow Wilson, in early 1918. It was also publicly endorsed by the French and Italian governments. Finally in 1948 with the blessing of the British rulers of Palestine at that time Zionists were successful in establishing a racist colonial settler apartheid state in Palestine and named it Israel.
UNRAWA's existence, therefore, remains a constant reminder of Israel's historical crimes committed against the Palestinians. The agency does not have a mandate to push for the traditional UN sponsored-type durable solutions as have been available to other refugee situations.
The agency's operations directly counter to the infamous Zionist slogan attributed to Israel's founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion about Palestinian refugees, "The old will die and the young will forget". But that has not happened. Palestinians not only hold strong sense of who they are and retain memories of their homes with a strong connection to their ancestral homeland which has further strengthened over time.
Until October 7, 2023, Israel upheld its founding principle expressed in the Zionist aspiration to enforce a doctrine of endless occupation of Arab territories. On October 7, the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas did not only strike at the Israeli military and colonial settler outposts, but it also struck at the imperial forces that enabled Israel to perpetuate its occupation of Palestine and murder Palestinian people with impunity.
While the attack was not surprising as reflected in UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' comment that it "did not happen in vacuum", however, the scope and the nature of the attack against Israel have no precedence in the 16 years of Hamas rule in Gaza.
In the wake of the Hamas attack, with the full military backing by the US, Israel has invaded and promises to annihilate Hamas. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu even told the world that "our civilisation is at stake" to continue its bloody massacre in Gaza. In fact, Israeli cabinet declared war on Hamas and begun aerial bombardment indiscriminately killing thousands of civilians including children and destroying major hospitals and basic infrastructures and displacing about 1 million Palestinians.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its ruling delivered on January 26, in South Africa Vs, Israel, stated that "the state of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip." Obviously, the institution that best suited to do the job is UNRWA.
Israel will make much of the fact that no order was made for it to halt its military actions. In fact, the day after the Court ruling, Israel launched a major attack inside Khan Yunis, which was encircled with thousands trapped inside, and began its push toward Rafah. Israel's action in Khan Yunis is seen as an Israeli answer to the ICJ. This clearly indicates that ICJ ruling has hardly any immediate effect on what the Palestinians are experiencing.
The ICJ is just another example of an international body that has failed the Palestinians like the other ones such as the UN dominated by the Western powers. These very Western nations led by the US have tried and continuing to try to delete the Palestinians nationality and nation from the recorded history.
Also, on the same day the ICJ rulings were issued, UNRWA said that Israel had provided the organisation with information alleging (not proven) that 12 of its employees had taken part in the October 7, Hamas-led attack on Israel. It is also reported that initially Israel said the "information" on the 12 accused UNRWA employees was the result of interrogation, i.e., torture of captured fighters. It then changed the story, stating that intelligence services had monitored their mobile phones.
Israel's move was very carefully planned to flaunt the ICJ rulings. But the response of UNRWA was swift even without investigating the allegations, through termination of the contracts of those accused employees. A criminal investigation was also instituted including allegations made against the organisation itself.
Israel's longstanding objective of completely erasing the Palestinian refugee issue had led to its targeting UNRWA. In fact, Israel has been lobbying for its dissolution since the day it was established, arguing that it perpetuates the refugee issue rather than solve it. Israel wants to eliminate UNRWA to force the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to migrate elsewhere out of desperation.
Destroying UNRWA is now an explicit goal of Israel's war on Gaza because the Zionists now view UNRWA as an obstacle to the eradication of the Palestinian people as a recognisable group of people because it keeps them together and allows them to demand their right to return to their homes, as enshrined in the UN General Assembly Resolution 194. A former UNRWA official told Al Jazeera, "The Israelis have said they can not win the war in Gaza unless UNRWA is disbanded, so what clearer signal do you want?"
In response to the unsubstantiated allegation against 12 UNRWA employees by Israel, the US immediately suspended all funding to UNRWA, to be followed in quick succession by 15 other countries such as the US's close allies like the UK, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Canada, Australia and Switzerland. These countries decision to suspend funding to UNRWA is a collective punishment for all Palestinians.
The suspension of funding to UNRWA is an indirect violation of the ICJ's decision and morally indefensible. It is also to be noted that since the Israeli genocidal slaughter has started in Gaza, in providing relief and shelterto Gazans have cost UNRWA more than a hundred staff deaths, they are all Palestinians,
Israel's accusation and attempts to delegitimise UNRWA have escalated since then. Death by starvation is the clear intent of Israel. A leaked classified Israeli foreign ministry document suggested a three steps plan to destroy UNRWA. The elimination of UNRWA would be carried out in the first instaceby linking it with Hamas, followed by reduction of services by UNRWA and in the final stage once Gaza is occupied, Israel will have the chokehold on whatever entity that emerged to govern Gaza, therefore limiting or stopping its ability to help Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said he was shocked that such decisions were taken as famine looms in Gaza. UN secretary general Antonio Guterres also joined Lazzarini's call to continue to support UNRWA by donor countries that runs aid operation in Gaza. The WHO Chief warns that defunding UNRWA will have "catastrophic consequences" for Gazans.
History is important in assessing the present. It is to be noted that international organisations have repeatedly failed the Palestinians and they have legitimised the Zionist settler colonial project in Palestine. Both the League of Nations created after the WWI and the United Nations established after the WW II dominated by the Western powers have tried their utmost (including the Soviet Union under Stalin) to erase the Palestinian nation from the pages of history.
Ironically now, the provisional measures announced by the ICJ which includes to take immediate and effective measures to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza, are being frustrated by signatories to the UN Genocide Convention. The defunding of UNRWA, especially given the humanitarian consequences of denying relief to surviving Gazans, is a step towards genocide.
[email protected]