The UNRWA cautions to stop its work in Gaza

Unless there is international intervention, on Thursday, UNRWA, the 75-year-old agency which cares for Palestinian refugees, will cease to operate in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. On October 30th, Israel’s 120-member Knesset adopted by 92 votes to 10 legislation revoking the 1967 agreement with UNRWA and banning Israeli contact with the agency. Israel will cease issuing agency’s staff work and entry permits and halt UNRWA coordination with the army. This allows aid, food, medicine, commercial goods, building and educational materials, and vehicles into coastal strip which has external access only through Israel and Egypt. Since Israel launched all out war on Gaza on October 7th, 2023, UNRWA has become the lifeline of the 2.3 million Gazans who have seen 47,000 of their number die, 110,000 wounded, 11,000 buried beneath of rubble of their homes and 1.9 million displaced.

At the time of writing, newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump has said nothing about UNRWA although he defunded the agency in August 2018 during his first term. He was the first US president to adopt such a punitive measure which deprived the agency of about one-third of its $1.1 billion annual budget, Washington’s traditional contribution. Trump’s then UN ambassador Nikki Haley justified this move by saying UNRWA’s closure should remove the Palestinians’ “right to return” to lands and properties in Palestine after its conquest and ethnic cleansing by Israel. German foreign minister Heiko Maas criticised the idea that ending UNRWA by depriving it of finding, by saying, “The loss of this organisation could unleash an uncontrollable chain reaction.” His words are even more true today than six years ago.

There has been a brief window of opportunity to deliver urgently needed humanitarian aid since the January 19th ceasefire temporarily halted Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza. Hundreds of truckloads of supplies have entered Gaza unobstructed by Israel. However, UNRWA has been sidelined by Israel from assuming the major role in this endeavour. While some UNRWA trucks have entered Gaza, large amounts of its aid remain outside. UNRWA’s head of com-munications Jonathan Fowler told Beirut’s L’Orient-Le Jour, “Although we have a well-established and unique humanitarian network in the enclave, the many obstacles implicitly and then explicitly imposed by Israeli officials over the past 15 months have affected our ability to act, particularly in the north, where the World Food Programme (WFP) has had to take over for the past 10 months. For the time being, aid deliveries since the cease-fire are being organised by other UN agencies, but in close collaboration with other agencies, including UNRWA.”

If the law is enforced, UNRWA’s senior emergency officer Louise Wateridge said in an interview with The Guardian that it would be impossible for the agency to distribute aid, particularly if the current ceasefire is not extended and Gaza again becomes a war zone. She warned that Gaza’s deeply compromised social order would collapse further and leave Gazans unprotected from armed gangs which have looted aid trucks. “If Unrwa is no longer functioning, there’s just not any other agency that can come in,” she said. “Unrwa does something like 17,000 health consultations a day in the Gaza Strip. It’s impossible for another agency to replace that.” Tens of thousands are sheltering in and around UNRWA schools which formerly educated half a million children.

While Israeli politicians have for many years campaigned against UNRWA, they stepped up their efforts following the 2023 attack on southern Israel by Hamas which killed 1,230 and kidnapped 151. The Israelis have accused UNRWA of collaborating with Hamas, which wrested control of Gaza from Fatah in 2007. In response, Israel clamped a tight siege and blockade on Gaza from land, sea, and air while Egypt granted limited and occasional passage of Gazans through its terminal at Rafah in the south.

One Israeli Knesset member accused UNRWA of “educating kids to hate Israel and spreading antisemitism” while a former diplomat said UNRWA IS “a Palestinian organisation fully committed to the Jewish State’s destruction.” These charges are patently false. Palestinian hostility toward Israel has been caused by its 1948 expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 78 per cent of Palestine during its war of establishment and its occupation of the remaining 22 per cent in 1967. In December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 194, paragraph 11, calling for Palestinians to return to their homes and receive compensation for their losses, but this resolution has been dismissed by Israel and ignored by the international community.

If Israel had withdrawn from the territories conquered in 1967 as mandated by UN Security Council resolution 242 and a Palestinian state had emerged, UNRWA and allied UN agencies could have shut down after helping exiled Palestinians to return, build infrastructure, homes, public and commercial buildings and develop natural resources and farmland. Instead of withdrawing, Israel drove another 250,000 Palestinians into Jordan.

Now that there is a 42-day ceasefire in Israel’s Gaza war, UNRWA is more essential than ever. Only UNRWA has the staff, distribution centres, warehouses and vehicles to deliver existential aid to Gazans who have begun to move back to locations where their homes once stood or, if they are lucky, a room or two remain. Palestinians have already begun to set up tents for homeless families in northern neighbourhoods savaged by Israeli bombs and shells. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 92 per cent of homes, or 436,000, have been destroyed or damaged. Restoring the health system will be a “complex and challenging” task, stated World Health representative Dr. Rik Peeperkorn. Of the strip’s 36 hospitals, fewer than half are partially functioning. Thirty-million tonnes of rubble will

have to be removed before beginning reconstruction which could cost $40 billion. No one will pledge funds for reconstruction until Israel withdraws from Gaza and agrees not to obstruct this process, order is restored, and a capable Palestinian administration is in place.