Crippling UNRWA: The Knesset’s Collective Punishment of Palestinians
The man has a cheek. Having lectured Iranians and Lebanese about what (and who) is good for them in terms of rulers and rule (we already know what he thinks of the Palestinians), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been keeping busy on further depriving access and assistance to those in Gaza and the West Bank. This comes in draft legislation that would prevent the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from pursuing its valuable functions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The campaign against UNRWA by the Israeli state has been relentless and pathological. Even before last year’s October 7 attacks by Hamas, much was made of the fact that the body seemed intent on keeping the horrors of the 1948 displacements current. Victimhood, complained the amnesiac enforcers of the Israeli state, was being encouraged by treating the descendants of displaced Palestinians as refugees. Nasty memories were being kept alive.
Since then, Israel has been further libelling and blackening the organisation as a terrorist frontbest abolished. (Labels are effortlessly swapped – “Hamas supporter”; “activist”; “terrorist”.) Initially came that infamous dossier pointing the finger at 12 individuals said to be Hamas participants in the October 7 attacks. With swiftness, the UN commenced internal investigations. Some individuals were sacked on suspicion of being linked to the attacks. Unfortunately, some US$450 million worth of donor funding from sixteen countries was suspended.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini was always at pains to explain that he had “never been informed” nor received evidence substantiating Israel’s accusations. It was also all the more curious given that staff lists for the agency were provided to both Israeli and Palestinian authorities in advance. At no point had he ever “received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”
In April, Lazzarini told the UN Security Council that “an insidious campaign to end UNRWA’s operations is under way, with serious implications for peace and security.” Repeatedly, requests by the agency to deliver aid to northern Gaza had been refused, staff barred from coordinating meetings between humanitarian actors and Israel, and UNRWA premises and staff targeted.
Israel’s campaign to dissuade donor states from restoring funding proved a mixed one. Even the United Kingdom, long sympathetic to Israel’s accusations, announced in July that funding would be restored. In the view of UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, UNRWA had taken steps to ensure that it was meeting “the highest standards of neutrality.”
In August, the findings of a review of the allegations by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, instigated at the request of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres,were released. It confirmed UNRWA’s role as “irreplaceable and indispensable” in the absence of a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians, a “pivotal” body that provided “life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.”
In identifying eight areas for immediate improvement on the subject of neutrality (for instance, engaging donors, neutrality of staff, installations, education and staff unions), it was noted that “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence” that the agency’s employees had been “members of terrorist organizations.”
On October 24, UNRWA confirmed that one of its staffers killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza,Muhammad Abu Attawi, had been in the agency’s employ since July 2022 while serving as a Nukhba commander in Hamas’s Bureij Battalion. Attawi is alleged to have participated in the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im in October last year. His name had featured in a July letter from Israel to the agency listing 100 names allegedly connected with terrorist groups. But no action was taken against Attawi as the Israelis failed to supply UNRWA with evidence. Lazzarini’s letter urging, in the words of Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications, “to cooperate … by providing more information so he could take action” did not receive “any response”.
Having been foiled on various fronts in its quest to terminate UNRWA’s viable existence, Israeli lawmakers are now taking the legislative route to entrench the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Two bills are in train in the Knesset. The first, sponsored by such figures as Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky and Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, would bar state authorities from having contact with UNRWA. The second, sponsored by Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, would critically prevent the agency from operating in Israeli territory through revoking a 1967 exchange of notes justifying such activities.
Even proclaimed moderates – the term is relative – such as former defence minister Benny Gantz support the measures, accusing the UN body of making “itself an inseparable component of Hamas’s mechanism – and now is the time to detach ourselves entirely from it.” It did not improve the lot of refugees, but merely perpetuated “their victimisation.” Evidently for Gantz, Israel had no central role in creating Palestinian victims in the first place.
By barring cooperation between any Israeli authorities and UNRWA, work in Gaza and the West Bank would become effectively impossible, largely because Jerusalem would no longer issue entrance permits to the territories or permit any coordination with the Israeli DefenseForces.
UN Secretary-General Guterres was aghast at the two bills. “It would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.” Ambassadors from 123 UN member states have echoed the same views, while the Biden administration has, impotently, warned that the proposed “restrictions would devastate the humanitarian response in Gaza at this critical moment” while also denying educational and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
In their October 23 statement, the Nordic countries also expressed concern that UNRWA’s mandate “to carry out […] direct relief and works programmes” for millions of Palestinian refugees as determined by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) would be jettisoned. “In the midst of an ongoing catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, a halt to any of the organisation’s activities would have devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of civilians served by UNRWA.”
The statement goes on to make a warning. To impair the refugee agency would create a vacuum that “may well destabilise the situation in [Gaza, and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem], in Israel and in the region as a whole, and may fundamentally jeopardize the prospects of a two-state solution.”
These are concerns that hardly matter before the rationale of murderous collective punishment, one used against a people seen more as mute serfs and submissive animals than sovereign beings entitled to rights and protections. Israel’s efforts to malign and cripple UNRWA remains a vital part of that agenda. In that organisation exists a repository of deep and troubling memories the forces of oppression long to erase.
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
5 comments
Login here Register here-
Douglas Pritchard
-
Frank Sterle Jr.
-
Frank Sterle Jr.
-
Clakka
-
Douglas Pritchard
Return to home pageThere is a huge gap in the credibility status of our (and many “Western” countries) when they ignore the actions which qualify a nation featuring a blue star on the flag, as the leading terrorist group, in certainly the middle east.
Aided and abetted by the good ole USA, of course.
Plant a blatant lie at the start of a discussion by distorting who are terrorists, and who are the freedom fighters.
I cry for the people of Palestine.
Re: “There is a huge gap in the credibility status of our (and many ‘Western’ countries) when they ignore the actions which qualify a nation featuring a blue star on the flag, as the leading terrorist group, in certainly the middle east. Aided and abetted by the good ole USA, of course. Plant a blatant lie at the start of a discussion by distorting who are terrorists, and who are the freedom fighters. I cry for the people of Palestine.” …
.
.
With the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, especially in its present form, there has been widespread partisanship via Internet and news commentary. The politics of polarization outside of Israel and even the Middle East, perhaps in part for its own sake, has gotten quite disturbing.
.
Within social media especially, the angry and thoughtless two-dimensional views have been especially amplified, including the majority posted by non-Jews and non-Palestinians. It all arouses a spectator-sport effect or mentality, with many contemptible trolls residing well outside the region yet actively supporting the ‘side’ [via politicized commentary posts] that they hate less.
.
I anticipate many actually keep track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score, however extremely lopsided those numbers.
.
Meanwhile, growing Western indifference towards the continuing slaughter of helpless Palestinian non-combatants will only have further inflamed long-held Middle Eastern anger towards the West. Some countries’ actual provision, mostly by the U.S., of highly effective weapons used in Israel’s mass slaughter will likely have turned that anger into lasting hatred seeking eye-for-an-eye redress. And perhaps another 9/11.
“There is a huge gap in the credibility status of our (and many ‘Western’ countries) when they ignore the actions which qualify a nation featuring a blue star on the flag, as the leading terrorist group, in certainly the middle east. Aided and abetted by the good ole USA, of course. Plant a blatant lie at the start of a discussion by distorting who are terrorists, and who are the freedom fighters. I cry for the people of Palestine.” …
.
.
With the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, especially in its present form, there has been widespread partisanship via Internet and news commentary. The politics of polarization outside of Israel and even the Middle East, perhaps in part for its own sake, has gotten quite disturbing. Within social media especially, the angry and thoughtless two-dimensional views have been especially amplified, including the majority posted by non-Jews and non-Palestinians. It all arouses a spectator-sport effect or mentality, with many contemptible trolls residing well outside the region yet actively supporting the ‘side’ [via politicized commentary posts] that they hate less. I anticipate many actually keep track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score, however extremely lopsided those numbers. Meanwhile, growing Western indifference towards the continuing slaughter of helpless Palestinian non-combatants will only have further inflamed long-held Middle Eastern anger towards the West. Some countries’ actual provision, mostly by the U.S., of highly effective weapons used in Israel’s mass slaughter will likely have turned that anger into lasting hatred seeking eye-for-an-eye redress. And perhaps another 9/11.
The history of imperialist meddling (to say the least) from the ‘West’ (western Europe and more recently America) across the globe is manifest. It has been going on ceaselessly since the days of Columbus and Pope Alexander VI’s Doctrine of Discovery and Doctrine of Dominion ….. like in Oz … terra nullius my arse.
And that meddling has always been accompanied by cultural bumbling, and lies and deceit. Principally for the commercial purposes of expansion, theft and extraction, and subjugation. They were once so successful at it they became indulgent, fat and lazy, but now their laziness and excesses are sending them broke, they are crumbling, so have a dire need to do it again. But at least half of the world knows their game and are objecting – so they have to be dealt with as well – by a tissue of lies, and suppression of free speech.
They can try and put a stop to such brutalities (of their own) or others, like for example the measures they have deployed against Putin’s Russia and its war against Ukraine, or they can pretty well ignore it like they are conveniently doing in South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria etc., in the hope that they can crack open to control North and North West Africa, the Levant, the Fertile Crescent, Iraq, Iran and all the way through to Kazakhstan (the ‘axis of evil’), or in other words the axis (between West and East) they have always sought to control, but failed. And / or create proxies to do their initial dirty work for them.
The fundamental drivers of the scheme are the remaining imperialists, USA, UK, France and Germany, and their hopeful hanger-on toadies. They form on the QT, alliances and coalitions with dictators and despots, and oppress citizen’s uprisings in their ‘target’ states.
If the UN gets in the way, they simply ignore them.
Sunday found me progressing my project in the garage with one ear listening to ABC radio national, who of course will seek to inform with scrupulous attention to fact checking.
I was told how pretty much every country that bordered Israel had “normalized” relations, and so peace and harmony prevailed.
I dont really get having a normalized relationship with a State that is currently engaged in genocide, who runs its justice system on apartheid lines, who ignores international law, United nations, Courts of justice, and all those fine bodies I have been taught will guarentee a civilized nation.
The “World Kitchen” incident revealed that if you tell the Zionists you will be traveling in convoy at a particular time and place, then they will earmark all 3 vehicles for deletion, one at a time.
So they prefer un-civilised, and everyone to their own taste. Im just thankful that I dont know anyone with that religious bent.
Here, we attempt to treat first nation folk with respect,. There, they will eliminate them all eventually.
Some of the radio programs content i found hard to digest, and an an awefull lot was glossed over.
The fascinating part is that I found myself listening to the same collection of words only a few hours later, so this was a message that needed to be brought home to the masses.
Personally I am proud to say my ‘normalised’ relationships require that friends have some ethical values.
ABC RN slips a bit further down the slippery slope.