Occupied Jerusalem– After the Israeli Parliament approved, last Monday, the law prohibiting the activity of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) inside Israel, with the support of 92 members and the opposition of 10 members, the history of persecuting this agency and targeting its institutions in the holy Palestinian city came back to mind.
Although many believe that the most difficult stage of liquidating the presence of UNRWA was in 2017, when then-US President Donald Trump declared the city of Jerusalem – with its two parts – the unified capital of Israel, others believe that the most dangerous liquidation attempts began to appear clearly after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
Among them is Nidal Al-Azza, director of the Badil Resource Center for Citizenship and Refugee Rights, who said at the beginning of his talk to Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the campaign aimed at dismantling UNRWA and ending its presence intensified after the signing of the Oslo Accords, and later became one of the permanent issues on the agenda of the annual “Herzliya” conference for Israeli strategic planning, which was launched in 2017. 2000.
This conference discusses Israel’s security and defense policies and foreign relations, and researchers, politicians, academics, and specialists from inside and outside Israel participate in it. Al-Azza confirms that since 2003, the mechanisms for liquidating UNRWA have been discussed annually at this conference.
Include targeting
The director of the Badil Center said, “The liquidation campaigns ranged from questioning the agency’s efficiency and performance, then moved to the stage of demonizing it and accusing it of terrorism, then working to transfer its powers to international and local institutions not assigned by the United Nations, until the situation finally came to accusing UNRWA of not being impartial and participating.” In terrorism during the events of October 7 and their aftermath.”
During Trump’s rule, the decision to liquidate and dry up UNRWA’s funding sources became clear, and this coincided with incitement campaigns led by Israeli officials over the past years, leading to the current legislation prohibiting the UNRWA’s activity inside Israel, and the approval of another law prohibiting contact with it, according to Al-Azza.
Regarding the serious repercussions resulting from banning the agency’s work, the director of the Badil Center indicated that “terminating UNRWA’s work will directly affect the services that Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories receive, services that their need for is increasing in light of the continuation of the war of extermination in Gaza.”
Because this UN agency has sufficient competence and experience in dealing with millions of refugees, and it has sufficient records, headquarters, and staff to provide its services, no other party will be able to compensate for its absence or carry out its tasks, according to Al-Azza.
As for the strategic danger – which Al-Azza believes is the most important – it is dropping international responsibility for the Palestinian refugees and liquidating their cause, thus removing the burden from the international community towards the refugees outside Palestine, and lifting protection for the refugees living inside it.
Hinge station
According to political analyst Omar Assaf, the recent Knesset decision represents a turning point in the history of the UNRWA, and it is not unlikely that it will be applied to the West Bank since the occupation explicitly declares that it is subject to its sovereignty.
Assaf believes there is a need for immediate and broad action because the decision has dimensions that are not only related to education, health, and relief. Rather, “there is a political dimension, which is an attempt to eliminate one of the evidences of the crime of asylum, and later an attempt to end the phenomenon of camps.”
He also expects additional financial burdens on the Palestinian Authority with the enactment of Israeli legislation, without ruling out at the same time that Israel bear the financial burdens in the Jerusalem area, “and thus interfering – for example – in the school curricula, as the Palestinian curriculum is now taught in the agency’s schools.”
Assaf added that the possibility of Israel assuming responsibility for refugee affairs carries a political dimension: “There are quite a few refugees in the Shuafat camp, located within the borders of the municipality of Jerusalem, and therefore Israel may try to deprive its residents of services and try to deny them refugee status.”
Incitement and violence
Aryeh King, Deputy Mayor of the Occupation Municipality, is considered one of the most prominent instigators of the UNRWA and its employees based in Jerusalem. Once the law banning it was finally approved, he called on his followers on his Facebook page to a celebratory gathering yesterday, Wednesday, in front of the agency’s headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem, and wrote, “Without a lot of words and statements, all you have to do is pick up a glass of wine and say thank you to everyone who helped.”
King previously described the headquarters as a “time bomb in Jerusalem” and repeatedly called for holding demonstrations in front of it, which included attacks, setting fires, shouting slogans and raising inflammatory banners.
As for the former mayor of the occupation, Nir Barkat, during his term he also announced a plan to liquidate UNRWA institutions in Jerusalem. He said at the time that the municipality intends to build schools affiliated with it to accommodate students who are receiving their education in the agency’s schools in the Shuafat camp, claiming that it is the only camp in the West Bank that falls under the municipality’s influence. .
The international agency provides its services to more than 110,000 Palestinian refugees in Jerusalem. Its headquarters is located in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, known in Israel as the “Ma’alon Dafna” neighborhood. The agency has a refugee camp in the Jerusalem Governorate called Shuafat and Qalandia.
On October 10, Israeli Army Radio said that there was an order to confiscate the lands on which the agency’s headquarters are located and allocate them to building settlement units, while the “Israel Today” newspaper said that the UNRWA headquarters area in Jerusalem would be confiscated to build 1,440 housing units and that the project is in the preparation stages.
Al-Azza says that if the people of Jerusalem wake up one day without the presence of the headquarters and the presence of its services, this means “removing international responsibility from the Palestinian residents inside Jerusalem and leaving them completely under Israeli sovereignty.”