Criminalizing UNRWA: How Israel is Delegitimizing the United Nations
ROGUE NATION
Image by khalid kwaik.
On October 28, the Israeli Knesset passed a second reading of two bills that effectively ban the United Nations agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from carrying out “any activity” in Israel and occupied Palestine.
Simply put, the decision is catastrophic, because UNRWA is the main international body responsible for the welfare of millions of Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, and throughout much of the region.
Israel followed its decision by attacking and damaging an UNRWA office in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. It was the Israeli government’s way of demonstrating its seriousness regarding the matter.
This is not the first time that Israel has pursued an anti-UNRWA agenda and, contrary to claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israel officials, the decision is not linked to the current genocidal war on Gaza, or the unfounded claims that UNRWA supports ‘terrorism’.
An independent review commissioned by the UN revealed that Israel “made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations”, but that it “has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”
Israeli claims, however, did a great deal of damage to the organization, as 13 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany and Italy, withheld badly needed funds which were helping Gaza stave off a horrific famine.
Eventually, most of these countries reinstated their financial support, though without apologizing to the Palestinians who were adversely impacted by these countries’ initial, unfair decision.
Unrepenting, Israel continued to unleash its relentless war on the organization. “UNRWA workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable,” Netanyahu, said in a statement on October 28.
The anti-UNRWA rhetoric remains functional for Israel. Amplified by the ever-willing US mainstream media, Israel has managed to keep UNRWA’s name in the news, always associating it with ‘supporting terrorism’. So, when the Israeli Knesset voted for the anti-UNRWA bills, mainstream media conveyed the news as if they were the only rational conclusion to an essentially fabricated story.
Israel’s problem with UNRWA has little to do with the organization itself, but with its underlying political representation as a UN entity whose mission is predicated on providing “assistance and protection to Palestine refugees”.
UNRWA was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV). It began its operations on May 1, 1950, and with time, it became central to the survival of a large number of Palestinian refugee communities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Many have rightly criticized the UN for failing to supplement UNRWA’s humanitarian mandate with a political equivalent that would ultimately help Palestinians achieve their Right of Return in accordance with UN Resolution 194. For Israel, however, UNRWA remained problematic.
According to Tel Aviv’s thinking, UNRWA’s existence is a constant reminder that there is a distinct group of people called Palestinian refugees. And though UNRWA is not a political organization, the Palestinian refugee crisis and all related UN resolutions that emphasize the ‘inalienable’ rights of these refugees are very political.
Taking advantage of the initial, albeit brief sympathy with Israel worldwide, and the massive campaign of misinformation emanating from Israel and its allies, Netanyahu used October 7 as an opportunity to further demonize UNRWA. However, his campaign had started much earlier.
A key player in the war on UNRWA was Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former US President Donald Trump. Kushner, who invested much time in helping Israel defeat the Palestinians once and for all, made UNRWA a key point in his plan. He vowed to carry out “sincere effort to disrupt” the work of the organization, a leaked email revealed.
Due to international rejection and solidarity, Kushner ultimately failed. Even the withholding of funds by the US administration did not force the organization to shut down, although it did negatively impact the lives of millions of Palestinians.
The ongoing war on Gaza and the push to annex large parts of the West Bank represented a golden opportunity for Netanyahu and his extremist government to increase the pressure on UNRWA. They have been enabled by unconditional US support, and the willingness of various western governments to recklessly act upon Israel’s false claims regarding the UN organization.
By allowing Israel to delegitimize the very organization responsible for enforcing international law, the UN’s crisis becomes much deeper.
The impassioned plea on October 30 by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese reflects the frustration felt by many UN-affiliated officials regarding the growing irrelevance of the UN.
In her speech, Albanese pointed out that, if the UN’s failures continue, its impact will become even “more and more irrelevant to the rest of the world”, especially during these times of turmoil.
This irrelevance is already being felt by millions of Palestinians, mainly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. Though Palestinians continue to withstand and reject and resist Israeli aggression, they are fed up with an international system that seems to offer them only words, but little action.
Israel’s banning of UNRWA should represent an opportunity for those concerned about the standing of the United Nations, to remind Israel that UN members who have no respect for international law deserve to be delegitimized. This time, words must be accompanied by action. Nothing else will suffice.
Israel’s relationship with the United Nations has historically been strained, but over the past year, tensions have reached new levels. On October 28, the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) passed a law to prohibit operations of the UN’s relief and works agency (Unrwa) – the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees – within the territory it controls. It’s a legal and political development which many fear will have grave humanitarian consequences for Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.
The decision also prompts questions about what lies ahead for the increasingly divisive relationship between the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the UN. There is even speculation that the Unrwa ban could lead to Israel being expelled from the UN general assembly.
Israel’s relations with the UN have long been fractious. But Unrwa has come in for particular criticism from successive Israeli governments over the years.
The agency was set up in 1949 to support Palestinian refugees displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. What was originally intended to be a temporary agency has now operated for more than seven decades, thanks to the unending hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian people. In addition to humanitarian assistance, Unrwa provides education, healthcare and a range of social services to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Unrwa’s schools have been a particular bugbear for Israeli critics. It has been pointed out that textbooks provided by the Palestinian Authority and used in some Unrwa schools were “pivotal in radicalising generations of Gazans”. There have also been allegations that money intended to support Unrwa relief works has been finding its way to Hamas.
But it was the alleged involvement of Unrwa employees in the October 7 attack on Israel, spearheaded by Hamas, that brought the issue to a head earlier this year. In January, Israel presented Joe Biden’s US administration with a dossier that purported to present evidence that 12 Unrwa staff had taken an active part in the attack. The UN announced it had dismissed the surviving staff named in the dossier – but the accusations led several countries to suspend their Unrwa funding.
Unrwa’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, described the suspension of funding as a “collective punishment”. He said it would have grave consequences for Gaza’s civilians who were – and remain – at high risk of famine.
An independent review set up by Lazzarini reported in April and found no evidence that the agency had been infiltrated by Hamas. Instead, it stressed how Unrwa’s work was an “indispensable lifeline” for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. As a result, international funding of Unrwa was resumed by all countries but the US.
At loggerheads
Now Israel has gone a step further and banned Unrwa operations. This appears to be the latest blow in a campaign of hostility against the UN that has been years in the making.
In recent years, Netanyahu’s anti-UN rhetoric has escalated considerably. In 2022, the UN general assembly (UNGA) voted in favour of a resolution calling for the International Court of Justice to give its opinion on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory”. Netanyahu called the decision “despicable”. He refused to recognise the vote, saying:
Like hundreds of the twisted decisions against Israel taken by the UNGA over the years, today’s despicable decision will not bind the Israeli government. The Jewish nation is not an occupier in its own land and its own eternal capital, Jerusalem.
During the past year, as it has continued its assault on Gaza, Israel’s efforts to delegitimise the UN have also intensified. At the beginning of October, after Iran had launched a barrage of rockets at Israeli military installations, Israel barred the UN secretary general, António Guterres, from entering the country. Foreign minister Israel Katz commented: “Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel … does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil.”
Meanwhile, units of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been involved in a number of incidents which have threatened the safety of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon (Unifil). The peacekeepers are there under a mandate to safeguard Lebanese civilians in the area, where Israel has been conducting what it calls its “military operation” since the beginning of October. Many scholars of international law believe the IDF’s actions could be interpreted as war crimes.
This in turn led to a public spat with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. Calling on Israel to respect the neutrality of Unifil peacekeepers, Macron said Netanyahu should “not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN” – to which Netanyahu replied:
It was not the UN resolution that established the state of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the war of independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, including from the Vichy regime in France.
The last clause was a pointed reminder that a section of the French government collaborated with the Nazi regime in the extermination of French Jews.
International condemnation
But it’s the decision to bar Unrwa from Israel that has drawn the harshest international criticism, and which threatens to further isolate the country diplomatically. The UN secretary general has been joined by the EU and US in urging Israel to reconsider.
Washington has already been highly critical of what it describes as “Israeli efforts to starve Palestinians” in parts of Gaza, and the US and UK are both reported to be considering suspending arms sales to Israel.
Amnesty International, meanwhile, said the law “amounts to the criminalisation of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis”. But Israel has signalled it intends to hold firm, while insisting it will “continue to do everything in its power” to ensure that aid continues to reach “ordinary Gazans”.
But the vast majority of Gaza’s population is now displaced. Most of the built infrastructure – including hospitals – has been destroyed. And Israel’s military operations are forcing most civilians out of the north of the Gaza Strip. So, the question now is whether the effective crippling of the largest international aid agency working in Gaza will simply make matters worse for the people living there.
No comments:
Post a Comment