Beirut, Lebanon – Israel’s much-criticized ban on the United Nations’ Palestinian aid agency (UNRWA) is part of a broader attempt to undermine the rights of Palestinian refugees and expel them from the occupied territories, officials said. analysts at Tel Aviv Tribune.
The agency’s ban takes effect in three months and will worsen an already dire situation in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
“The latest legislation is part of a campaign (led by Israel) to destroy all aid infrastructure,” said Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel and Palestine for the International Crisis Group, a dedicated nonprofit organization. to conflict resolution.
“But it is also part of a broader goal to permanently expel Palestinians from their land,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune.
As the main provider of aid to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has been instrumental in keeping people alive in Gaza, where civilians face the risk of genocide, according to the International Court of Justice.
Over the past year, Israel has uprooted almost the entire population of 2.3 million people and killed some 43,000 people in Gaza. The war began after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, in which 1,139 people were killed and around 250 were captured.
Palestinians in Gaza have lived under a land, sea and air blockade imposed by Israel since 2007, leading rights groups to label the enclave an “open-air prison”.
Israel now appears to be attempting to depopulate Gaza by ending UNRWA services, an irreplaceable lifeline for the population, analysts say.
“It seems very clear from the way Israel is waging this war… that Israel is trying to make life in Gaza so difficult that people leave,” said Khaled Elgindy, an expert on Israel and Palestine and a senior researcher at the Middle East Institute. .
Erase the evidence of the Nakba?
In 1948, Zionist militias expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their lands to create the State of Israel – an event called “Nakba” or catastrophe.
Many Palestinians found themselves stateless, languishing in the occupied territories and refugee camps of neighboring states, while Israel was recognized as a full member of the United Nations.
During the same year, the United Nations General Assembly also established UNRWA to help Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria until they could return home , as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
Israeli and American leaders traditionally viewed UNRWA as a way to pacify Palestinians by providing them with vital supplies without granting them political rights, Elgindy said.
However, he added that Israel and the United States have increasingly attempted to sabotage the humanitarian agency over the past decade.
Former US President Donald Trump went so far as to suspend his country’s support for UNRWA in 2018, triggering a funding crisis.
Palestinian refugees saw Trump’s decision as an attack on their right of return to their homeland, which UNRWA guarantees.
Elgindy believes that Israel is now explicitly trying to undermine this right by erasing any legitimate reference to the Nakba or Palestinian refugees.
“(UNRWA recalls) that the creation of Israel came at the expense – of the dispossession – of the Palestinian people, and this is what (Israel) wants to erase from history.
“UNRWA constantly reminds us of the Nakba of 1948.”
Irreplaceable
The Israeli attack on UNRWA is part of a broader attempt to cut off a vital lifeline for Palestinians, says Zaid Amali, an UNRWA cardholder and civil society activist in the West Bank.
He stressed that millions of Palestinians depend on UNRWA for employment, housing reconstruction, sanitation, health care and education.
The loss of these vital services, coupled with Israel’s daily raids and the destruction of Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, aims to uproot the population, Amali told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“UNRWA is irreplaceable with all its experience and staff. The mandate alone is so broad that it makes it irreplaceable, so I don’t see any organization – international or local – capable of filling this void,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Diana Buttu, an expert on Israel and Palestine and former legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), added that the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs certain territories in the occupied West Bank, will not be able to fill the role of vacuum.
The Palestinian Authority was born out of the Oslo Accords, which saw then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shake hands with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in 1993.
The agreement aimed to lay the foundations for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Since 2006, the PA’s presence has been limited to the West Bank after Hamas forced it out of Gaza following a brief conflict.
The PA could now face the impossible task of replacing UNRWA, Buttu said.
“Either the Palestinians will leave (the West Bank and Gaza) or they will blend into the structures of the Palestinian Authority,” she added. “This is extremely problematic because the Palestinian Authority does not have the resources to fund all of these schools and medical clinics.
“(The PA) just can’t do it. There is not even a Palestinian Authority in Gaza to distribute food. »
A risky cause?
The Palestinian cause is in danger if the world community allows Israel to unilaterally destroy structures and institutions that recognize Palestinians as a people with rights, Amali warns.
He pointed out that Israel had killed hundreds of UN workers in Gaza, banned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering the country and that Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan , had even torn up the UN charter in front of the General Assembly.
Israel’s provocative move at the UN came in response to a non-binding General Assembly vote that effectively recognized Palestine as a state in May 2024.
“Israel’s entire behavior (towards the UN) indicates that Palestine’s presence in the international forum threatens Israel because it means (global) recognition of Palestinian rights,” he said. at Tel Aviv Tribune.
Tahani, the Crisis Group expert, believes that Israel could next intensify its attack on the PA, a body that de facto represents the Palestinians at the UN and in the world community. She pointed out that Israel already withholds $188 million in tax revenue, which it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority – under the Oslo Accords.
UNRWA, according to her, is currently only the main target.
“This is not just an arbitrary decision by Israel to do as it pleases. There is a clear objective around this, which, as I said, is to make life totally unbearable for Palestinians on the ground,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“This way, they are either forcibly expelled or they leave ‘voluntarily’.