Kholood Mkhamer fled his neighborhood weeks after Israel began bombing the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7.
An employee of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Mkhamer traveled from northern Gaza to the south, following orders from Israel to make the trip in more than one million people. The UN feared the order amounted to a forced population transfer, which constituted a war crime, but Mkhamer simply wanted to survive.
Shortly after moving with his parents and siblings, they were killed. At the time, Mkhamer, a medical secretary, was working at a clinic along the Egyptian border when the house where the family was staying was bombed.
“They were all martyred,” said Halima Loaz, a former colleague of Mkhamer and an UNRWA nurse recently settled in Spain. “She, her mother and her brothers.”
Attacks on UNRWA
In recent days, a series of countries – including the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria and Romania – have cut funding for UNRWA, the agency the Palestinians have. He was counted on for everything from vaccinations to education for seven decades.
This came after Israel claimed that a dozen agency employees were involved in the October 7 attacks in southern Israel, in which 1,139 people were killed and 240 kidnapped. UNRWA preemptively fired nine of its employees as it investigated the allegations, which surfaced the same day the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to restore vital provisions and increase aid to the enclave as part of a series of measures aimed at preventing genocide in Gaza.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these allegations were made public immediately after the ICJ decision,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian international law jurist. “It aims to depart from the ICJ decision and focus attention on UNRWA and undermine any attempts to hold Israel accountable or end the genocide. »
Philip Lazzarini, Commissioner General of UNRWA said the decision by major donors to cut funding to the agency would only further worsen the misery of the people of Gaza.
“Our humanitarian operation, on which 2 million people depend as a lifeline in Gaza, is collapsing. …The Palestinians in Gaza did not need this additional collective punishment. This taints us all,” he said in a statement.
This is only the latest blow to UNRWA since October 7.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed 152 Palestinian UNRWA employees, the highest number of UN casualties since the world body was established in 1945. Some were killed in the deliberate attacks and repeated attacks by Israel against UNRWA hospitals and schools, which house more than 1 million displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
According to UNRWA, Israel has struck its installations 263 times since the start of the war, resulting in the deaths of 360 civilians. The attacks on UNRWA personnel and facilities are emblematic of Israel’s broader efforts to destroy the agency, analysts, Palestinian refugees and rights groups said.
The right of return
UNRWA was created after more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their country during the creation of Israel in 1948, an event called in Arabic the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
The agency collectively recognizes Palestinians displaced to Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan as refugees entitled to education, health care and other services until they can exercise their right to return to their land, as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
But Israel opposes the return of nearly six million Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA. Israel instead pressured Western states to eliminate UNRWA in an effort to sabotage the right of return of stateless Palestinian refugees, according to Shatha Abdulsamad, a legal expert and refugee specialist at al-Shabaka, a think tank. Palestinian.
“UNRWA is uniquely placed to highlight the need for a just solution to the plight of displaced Palestinians,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune. Its elimination, she added, “would facilitate and accelerate the liquidation of the Palestinian cause because it could contribute to undermining the collective right of return.”
In 2018, then-US President Donald Trump cut all US funding to UNRWA, sparking international criticism. But President Joe Biden has seen allied states like Canada, Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom join him in cutting off aid to the agency.
Israeli officials defended the decision to Foreign Minister Israel Katz. Tweeter: “We have been warning for years that UNRWA is perpetuating the refugee problem. »
Congratulating the US government for its decision to stop funding @UNRWA after it was revealed that some of its employees were involved in the heinous massacre of #October7.
We have been warning for years: @UNRWA perpetuates the refugee issue, obstructs peace and serves as…
– ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) January 27, 2024
Omar Shakir, Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said the Israeli government makes no secret of its motives.
“It is clear that politicized efforts have been made for years to undermine the work of UNRWA. This happened under the Trump administration, and there are pro-Israeli groups that focus entirely on UNRWA because they seek to liquidate the issue of Palestinian rights or even their basic refugee status to serve a broader political agenda,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Campaign against UNRWA
Israel also wants to eliminate UNRWA to force Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to migrate elsewhere out of desperation, according to Zaid Amali, an UNRWA cardholder and civil society activist in the West Bank.
“This move to target UNRWA is part of this overall goal of displacing more Palestinians (from their land) in order to build more illegal settlements,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
In December, Israeli media reported that the government was conspiring to “push” UNRWA out of the Gaza Strip after the war, including by trying to link the agency’s activities to Hamas.
On January 28, far-right ministers in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government confirmed their intention to uproot Palestinians from Gaza at a conference in Jerusalem. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called on Palestinians in Gaza to migrate “voluntarily” and on Israel to reestablish illegal Jewish settlements in the enclave.
Even if Palestinians in Gaza want to flee Israeli violence, which the ICJ says may legally constitute genocide, most will not be able to enter Egypt, which has made clear it will not support any measures that could lead to such genocide. . permanent displacement of the population of Gaza.
With Palestinians unwilling or unable to flee, hunger and disease could worsen in Gaza after UNRWA funding was cut, analysts say. A UN-backed report recently revealed that a quarter of Gaza’s population – 577,000 people – face catastrophic levels of hunger.
Loaz said the world community was directly aiding Israel’s massacre of Palestinians by withholding funds for UNRWA at such a critical time.
“They are going to let everyone (in Gaza) die,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune. “If the people of Gaza do not die from Israeli shelling and bombs, they will die from starvation. »
