Gaza/Ramallah- “Are we incomplete?” Ahmed Al-Sultan used this popular question to express his anger and fears over the Israeli Knesset’s approval of a draft law prohibiting the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Israel.
This displaced refugee told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “Our conditions are tragic, even with the presence of UNRWA and its services. What would our situation be like if Israel banned its work and restricted its activities and access to refugees in the camps of the West Bank and Gaza Strip?”
The Sultan comes from a refugee family that immigrated from the village of Berbera during the Nakba in 1948, and has been living for 6 months in what he describes as the “Nakba of displacement” after he was forced to forcibly move from his home in the refugee camp in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, following the Israeli invasion of the city on the 6th of May. Last May.
Since then, the Sultan has lived a miserable life with his family, children, and grandchildren, in dilapidated tents in the Mawasi area of the city of Khan Yunis, where there is a lack of infrastructure and the basics of life. The region houses hundreds of thousands of displaced families, whose roots originally go back to refugee families. UNRWA has been supervising the services provided to them with health care, education, and basic needs since the Nakba.
Restrictions and bans
Israel imposes severe restrictions on the work of UNRWA, affecting its services provided to the Gazans, who face forms of death and hunger during the escalating Israeli war. According to the Sultan, these restrictions have affected his life and the lives of all Gazans, as a result of the cessation of humanitarian aid several months ago.
Yesterday, Monday, the Knesset approved a draft law prohibiting UNRWA from working in Israel, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that employees of the UN agency must be held accountable for what he described as “terrorist activities” against Israel.
Although the text of the Knesset resolution indicates a ban on the agency’s work in Israel, Palestinian circles have warned of its repercussions on the refugee issue and the services provided to them in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the diaspora camps.
UNRWA provides its services to more than 5.5 million Palestinian refugees in its five areas of operations, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Among the beneficiaries of the agency’s services are more than 800,000 refugees in the West Bank, a quarter of whom live in 19 camps, distributed among various cities and villages. Also, more than 70% of the Gaza Strip’s population of two million and 200,000 are refugees, and their presence is concentrated in 8 camps.
Great aggression
The head of the PLO’s Refugee Affairs Department, Ahmed Abu Houli, described the decision as a “systematic war” on the refugee issue. In a lengthy statement published on his official Facebook page, Abu Houli said that this decision aims to “undermine UNRWA’s mandate and liquidate the refugee issue.” He added, “Israeli laws will close the doors to dealing with UNRWA as an international organization and make it a target of the occupation.”
The Palestinian official stressed that “Israel does not have sovereignty over UNRWA, and it is obligated as an occupying authority to respect its mandate,” and called on “the international community to oblige the occupying authority to repeal its racist laws” against the UN agency.
In his interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, Advisor to the Palestinian Foreign Minister Ahmed Al-Deek agreed with Abu Holi that the decision amounted to “an aggression not only against the Palestinian people, but also against the United Nations and its competent agencies.” He added that its danger lies not only in the fact that it primarily targets refugees and deprives them of the services of the international organization, but also in stripping the Palestinians of refugee status.
He said that the decision is rejected by the State of Palestine, explaining that “there are agreements between the State of Palestine and UNRWA, and for us this decision is illegitimate and does not apply to the occupied Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza, in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions.”
War of extermination
The Director of Camps in the Refugee Affairs Department of the PLO, Muhammad Alian, described the decision as a “dangerous precedent,” warning of the occurrence of “disasters as a result of such decisions,” and their repercussions on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and will affect the budgets granted to the agency and contribute to drying up its sources of funding.
Speaking to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, he considered that Israeli legislation is waging a “systematic war against UNRWA to end its work and replace it with other agencies, in a dangerous precedent for a country that is a full member of the United Nations against an international organization established by a decision of the General Assembly.”
In turn, the head of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory, Rami Abdo, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that “Israel’s insistence on legalizing its successive measures against UNRWA for years constitutes a declaration of war on the refugee community, who are among the most vulnerable groups and in need of humanitarian support in Palestinian society.”
Abdo pointed out that this decision comes at a time when the living conditions of refugees and displaced persons are deteriorating in all areas, due to the ongoing Israeli war of annihilation for the second year in the Gaza Strip, its military operations and the comprehensive siege in the West Bank.
He stresses that banning UNRWA and undermining its work in this way – after a series of previous measures, including the killing of 223 of its employees and the destruction of about two-thirds of its facilities in the Strip – “constitutes a black page in the history of the United Nations, and its inability to protect even its agencies, areas of work, and decisions.”
The UN agency may practically become “incapable – due to the new Israeli measures – to provide humanitarian aid, education and other basic services,” thus depriving millions of refugees of food, education and health care, especially in the Gaza Strip, according to this human rights activist.
Abdo believes that “Israel wants to exploit the shameful international silence regarding all its policies, by getting rid of UNRWA once and for all, and erasing the refugee issue, as well as perpetuating famine in Gaza, within the framework of the ongoing crime of genocide in favor of the plan to empty the Gaza Strip of its population and impose forced displacement.”
It is noteworthy that UNRWA was established by a resolution issued by the United Nations General Assembly in 1949, and provides direct relief and employment programs for Palestinian refugees in the internal and diaspora camps. In the absence of a solution to the issue of Palestine refugees, the General Assembly has repeatedly worked to renew UNRWA’s mandate, the most recent of which was to extend The agency operates until June 30, 2026.
