Until this morning, Hussam Abu Ghaban, 38, had not heard of the Israeli Knesset’s decision to ban the United Nations agency charged with his family’s welfare.
Now, with the Israeli Knesset passing two bills banning the agency from entering Israel and preventing it from working in Gaza, the family is at a loss for what to do.
Someone in the nearby camp run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) had mentioned it, but Abu Ghaban was unaware of what turned out to be a landslide Knesset vote in favor of the ban despite international outrage.
“People would be hungry”
The worry on Abu Ghaban’s face was unavoidable as he assessed the news. He, his wife Ola and their eight children fled the Shati refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip in early November to take refuge in the relatively safe vicinity of a camp in Deir el-Balah managed by UNRWA.
As overcrowded and woefully underfunded as the camp is, it represents little support for Gaza’s 1.9 million displaced people.
“UNRWA’s support has been crucial,” Abu Ghaban told a translator.
“They provide essential services such as health, education and food, as well as running the camp,” he said, describing how the family of 10, reduced to living in a tent, depended on the United Nations agency for the decreasing number of essential products supplied to it. pass Israeli checkpoints.
Abu Ghaban did not know how the family would survive without the support the UN agency has given them for generations since they were uprooted from their village of Hiribya to make way for the new State of Israel during the Nakba (disaster) of 1948.
Since then, prevented by Israel from returning, their displacement has become generational.
Abu Ghaban found it difficult to imagine life under Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza without UN support.
“The refugees will find it difficult to survive,” he said. “People would be hungry, which could lead to an increase in violence,” he said of an enclave he described as already plagued by hunger, fear and violence. ‘instability.
Life is already difficult, he says. There was no room in the official camp when they arrived. Today, they exist on its periphery, although still under UN custody.
Abu Ghaban pointed to the plastic tarpaulin provided by UNRWA to cover their tent. He still had nothing to keep the dirt floor safe for his children, the youngest being only six years old.
Life in Deir el-Balah is hard enough for young people, Abu Ghaban said. “They are now forced to focus only on survival, but I see that they still remember their previous lives. UNRWA recreational activities help relieve some of the tension.
“Children still express their hopes through drawing,” he said, pointing to the childish sketch on the tent wall depicting a family returning home.
Helplessness
Legislation that could end much of the aid provided to Abu Ghaban’s family will come into force 90 days after Israel’s foreign minister informs the UN.
Moreover, with no alternative humanitarian agency provided in law to replace UNRWA, the consequences for those stuck in Gaza are set to be catastrophic.
Within the enclave, UNRWA acts as what its spokesperson Jonathan Fowler described as the “backbone” of the international humanitarian operation in Gaza.
Without UNRWA, this aid operation in Gaza would fail, he said.
In Gaza, the situation has never been more desperate. In the north, access to which is strictly controlled by the Israeli army, famine threatens everyone as international concerns over the siege of the area, denied by the Israeli government, continue to grow.
If UNRWA’s ability to operate in the territory were to be disrupted, the delivery of the limited aid still entering parts of Gaza would also be disrupted, Fowler told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“Such a move by a UN member state against an organization mandated by the UN General Assembly is unprecedented and dangerous,” Fowler said.
“This… violates the obligations of the State of Israel under international law… (and it) would constitute a setback for lasting peace efforts and for achieving a diplomatic solution to the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades,” he added.
“Failure to push back against attempts to intimidate and undermine the United Nations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory will ultimately undermine humanitarian and human rights work around the world. »
The politics of hunger
Israel’s long-running campaign against UNRWA intensified during Israel’s war on Gaza and includes a list of still unfounded accusations of supporting Hamas fighters.
All the while, UNWRA has been working on the ground in Gaza to help mitigate the effects of an Israeli military campaign considered by the International Court of Justice in its January ruling to be a potential case of genocide.
Nonetheless, in the face of unprecedented international pressure during the 13-month all-out war on Gaza, the Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly to ban the agency, potentially destroying the entire fragile aid network that has so far managed to support what remains of the population of Gaza. .
Even the United States, Israel’s closest ally, has recognized the seriousness of the situation. Speaking earlier this week, a State Department official acknowledged both the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, particularly in the north, and UNRWA’s role in alleviating it.
One of the drafters of Israeli legislation banning UNRWA, Yulia Malinovsky, dismissed the concerns of the United States, which has provided Israel with unfailing diplomatic cover and weapons throughout its war on Gaza, as representing unacceptable interference in Israel’s internal affairs.
“I congratulate and thank Knesset members from across the political spectrum for passing laws this evening that end the current disgrace of cooperation with UNRWA,” said the far-right provocateur and Minister of Defense. National security Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“Whoever harms the security of the State of Israel, the State of Israel will harm him,” he added.
“This law was not only popular in Israel – its adoption was considered a simple fact,” Ori Goldberg, a Tel Aviv-based analyst, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“It was obvious. This unites official and unofficial Israel in their complete indifference to the plight of the Palestinians.
Goldberg went on to describe the motivations behind the legislation as more sinister than what he called the “hatred” of the Israeli settler movement that sought to dispossess and even kill Palestinians.
“It’s much worse,” he said. “It’s indifference. Israel simply doesn’t care about the Palestinians.”
Speaking about the Knesset’s defiance in the face of international calls for restraint, Goldberg said: “We have taken another step toward Israel’s ultimate goal, achieving total impunity for whatever it wants to do, when he wants it, without the international community. »