Taken from Palestine Media Agency.
Israel will be “the first country in history to prohibit, according to written and declared law, the functioning of a United Nations agency”, as Palestinian researcher and writer Majd Kayyal explains on his Facebook account.
The Israeli Parliament voted, Monday, October 28, by an overwhelming majority (92 votes to 10) in favor of a bill prohibiting the activities in Israel of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). A second text, also widely adopted (89 against 7), prohibits Israeli officials from working with UNRWA and its employees.
This vote is just the latest and most dangerous step in a decades-long crusade to tarnish and eradicate UNRWA. It follows Israel’s accusation that 12 agency employees participated in the October 7 Hamas attack — an accusation made on the same day the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the agency’s conduct Israel in Gaza likely constituted genocide. In the following weeks, without providing evidence, Israel further claimed that some 1,200 UNRWA employees in Gaza had ties to Hamas, which, in Netanyahu’s words, had “totally infiltrated” the agency.
Following these announcements and despite the total absence of evidence provided by Israel, 18 countries suspended their funding to the agency, representing a loss of $430 million and therefore less, despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, where more than 1.9 million Palestinians have been forced from their homes and face relentless bombings, famine, epidemics and shortages of all essential goods. Since the start of Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel and 100,544 injured, including a large proportion of children and the elderly.
The paradoxical link between Israel and UNRWA
Yet in September, Israel found itself in a delicate position because, while preparing the laws that were passed yesterday, it was counting on UNRWA to facilitate Gaza’s mass polio vaccination campaign — primarily to protect its own citizens.
As the main humanitarian aid agency in Gaza, with 13,000 employees — most of whom are Palestinian — the agency was uniquely positioned not only to administer vaccines, but also to encourage Palestinian families to participate. in the countryside and carry out mass inoculation. According to Sam Rose, UNRWA’s senior deputy director for Gaza affairs, “the vaccination campaign could never have happened without UNRWA.”
UNRWA has been coordinating its activities with Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) for decades. As recently as February, COGAT chief Major General Rasan Elian admitted that “no other organization is equipped to take over the critical role played by UNRWA in distributing humanitarian aid.” “.
This is just one example of the paradoxical bond that Israel maintains with UNRWA. According to historian Laura Robson, Israel has long used UNRWA as an “instrument of containment”: the organization puts in place some of the structures and resources of a state, thanks to it the Palestinian territories can therefore “function ” without direct representation, and Israel “keep the lid” on Palestinian political action.
This position of UNRWA is therefore strategic for Israel, but it remains in a way “too Palestinian” for it. Palestinians not only make up the vast majority of the agency’s employees, but they have also decisively shaped and transformed it, although senior management has remained largely in the hands of former Western diplomats and career United Nations civil servants.
Perhaps most importantly, UNRWA has helped keep the Palestinian refugee issue alive and serves as a reminder that the international community is responsible. It is for this reason that Israel has long sought to dismantle UNRWA, even though this would have no impact on UN Resolution 194, which enshrined the right of return of Palestinian refugees in the international law, or on other conventions affirming this right for all refugees in the world.
It is the action of the UN that Israel calls into question
The entire legislation — which will not come into force immediately — is expected to result in the closure of UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem and block the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza via Rafah, while more than 1 9 million Gazans are displaced and facing widespread shortages of food, water and medicine. The disappearance of the UNWRA would be catastrophic and many reactions have denounced Israel’s decision.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called it “intolerable” and predicted “devastating consequences”. “It contravenes Israel’s obligations and responsibilities,” he added, stressing that “UNRWA is an irreplaceable lifeline for the Palestinian people.” Questioned Monday by Al-Jazeera, UNRWA spokesperson Adnan Abu Hasna denounced an “unprecedented” escalation. For the UN agency official, the Israeli decision means “the collapse of the humanitarian process as a whole”, notes the Qatari channel.
On Sunday, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom all expressed opposition to the legislation and said that it could have “devastating consequences”.
“Never in the world has a state enforced a formal law prohibiting, not just restricting, the work of a UN agency. », Says Palestinian researcher and writer Majd Kayyal on his Facebook account. “This decision means banning education, health, food and public hygiene services, etc. for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. »
Even in Israel, the bill aroused concern on Sunday among senior officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reports the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. The latter warned that if the text was adopted in the second and third readings in the Knesset, Israel “would be suspended from the United Nations for violating the organization’s charter”.
“It is scandalous that a United Nations member state is trying to dismantle a United Nations agency which is also the main actor in the humanitarian operation in Gaza,” said Juliette Touma, spokesperson for Unrwa, in a press release. This unprecedented decision underlines Israel’s break with the international community, and the reactions of UN member countries will be decisive. Because this rupture, if it will have dramatic consequences on the lives of the Palestinians, could also have consequences for Israel by pushing the international community to condemn it for its contempt for international law.
In fact, the BDS campaign called this Monday for international action in this direction, recalling that “commitment to the right of return of Palestinian refugees was a necessary condition for Israel’s admission to the United Nations . Yet Israel continued to intensify its policy of ethnic cleansing. » Israel’s crusade against the UNWRA is further proof of its genocidal intent.
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