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Israel has been attempting for a long time to abolish the UN organization that protects Palestinian refugees’ right to return home.
A few weeks after Israel started bombing the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Hamas’s surprise strike on October 7, Kholood Mkhamer left her neighborhood.
Mkhamer, who works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), followed Israel’s directives to relocate from the northern to the southern part of Gaza, joining over a million others in doing so. Mkhamer only wanted to live, but the UN worried that the order amounted to the forcible relocation of a population, which is illegal under international law.
Her parents and siblings were slaughtered not long after they moved. The family’s home was shelled at the time, while Mkhamer, a medical secretary, was working in a clinic near the Egyptian border.
“They were all martyred,” remarked Halima Loaz, a UNRWA nurse and Mkhamer’s former coworker who had just moved to Spain. “Her brothers, her mother, and her.”
UNRWA attacks
The United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria, and Romania are among the nations that have recently reduced their financial support for UNRWA, the organization that the Palestinian people have depended on for everything from immunizations to education for seven decades.
This occurred as a result of Israel’s accusations that twelve employees of the agency participated in the attacks on southern Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,139 people and the kidnapping of 240 more. As part of a series of actions to stop genocide in Gaza, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to restore essential supplies and increase aid to the enclave. The charges arose the day following, and UNRWA responded by firing nine of its staff members in anticipation of an investigation.
“I don’t think it’s coincidence that these allegations surfaced right after the ICJ ruling,” international law scholar Diana Buttu, a Palestinian, said. “The goal is to divert attention away from the ICJ ruling, concentrate it on UNRWA, and sabotage any efforts to hold Israel responsible or put an end to the genocide.”
According to UNRWA Commissioner-General Philip Lazzarini, the decision by significant donors to stop funding the organization will only make the suffering of the Gaza population worse.
“Our humanitarian effort is failing, providing a lifeline to two million people in Gaza. Gaza’s Palestinian population didn’t require this extra round of collective punishment. In a statement, he stated, “This stains all of us.”
This is only UNRWA’s most recent setback since October 7.
UNRWA’s Gaza war has claimed the lives of 152 Palestinian staff members, the most number of UN fatalities since the organization’s founding in 1945. Israel’s intentional, recurrent attacks on UNRWA hospitals and schools—which provide shelter to over a million Palestinians who have been displaced—have resulted in some fatalities.
UNRWA claims that since the war began, Israel has attacked its facilities 263 times, killing 360 civilians. According to experts, Palestinian refugees, and rights organizations, Israel’s larger efforts to dismantle UNRWA are exemplified by the attacks on its employees and infrastructure.
UNRWA was established in response to the 1948 formation of Israel, which resulted in the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. This event is known in Arabic as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
Together, the organization acknowledges that Palestinians who were forced to flee to Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan are refugees deserving of healthcare, education, and other assistance until they are able to fulfill their UN Resolution 194-mandated right to return to their homeland.
She told Al Jazeera that UNRWA was in a unique position to draw attention to the need for a fair resolution to the predicament of Palestinian refugees. She continued, “Removing it could help undermine the collective right of return, which would expedite and facilitate the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.”
In 2018, US President Donald Trump slashed all US financing to UNRWA, sparking protests from around the world. However, ally states including Germany, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom have joined President Joe Biden in suspending funding to the organization.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz tweeted, “We have been warning for years that UNRWA perpetuates the refugee issue,” as support for the initiative came from Israeli officials.
However, Israel stands against the repatriation of about six million Palestinian refugees who are officially registered with UNRWA. Instead, to undermine the right of return for stateless Palestinian refugees, Israel has pushed Western governments to abolish UNRWA, according to Shatha Abdulsamad, a legal and refugee specialist with the Palestinian think tank al-Shabaka.
Human Rights Watch’s head for Israel and Palestine, Omar Shakir, stated that the Israeli government is open about its intentions.
“It’s evident that a politically motivated campaign to discredit UNRWA’s work has been going on for years. It took place in the Trump administration, and pro-Israeli organizations only pay attention to UNRWA because they want to eliminate any discussion of Palestinian rights or even the refugees’ fundamental status in order to forward their own political goals, he told Al Jazeera.
opposition to UNRWA
Zaid Amali, a civil society activist in the West Bank and bearer of a UNRWA card, claims that Israel also wishes to abolish UNRWA in order to push Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank to migrate elsewhere out of despair.
Targeting UNRWA furthers the overarching objective of uprooting more Palestinians [from their land] so that more illegal settlements may be constructed, he told Al Jazeera.
Israeli media said in December that the government was planning to “push” UNRWA out of the Gaza Strip following the conflict, attempting to link the organization’s operations to Hamas in the process.
During a summit in Jerusalem on January 28, far-right ministers in the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed their plan to drive out Palestinians from Gaza. Itamar Ben- Gvir, the minister of national security, has urged Israel to reestablish illegal Jewish communities in Gaza and for Palestinians living there to “voluntarily” migrate.
Most Palestinians in Gaza would not be able to enter Egypt, which has made it clear that it will not support any action that could result in the potential, permanent displacement of Gaza residents, even if they wanted to escape Israel’s brutality, which may legally be considered genocide, according to the International Court of Justice.
Analysts predict that when UNRWA’s funding was removed, hunger and disease in Gaza would increase since Palestinians would not or could not leave. According to a new UN-backed research, 577,000 people, or 25% of Gaza’s population, are at dangerously high risk of starvation.
By withholding funding from UNRWA at this crucial juncture, according to Loaz , the international community is actively supporting Israel’s systematic murder of Palestinians.
She said to Al Jazeera, “They are going to let everyone [in Gaza] die.” “Famine will kill people in Gaza if Israeli bombs and shelling don’t kill them first.”
Source: Aljazeera
