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Israel’s ban on UNRWA will make Palestinians’ lives ‘unbearable’ | Israeli-Palestinian Conflict News

Israel’s ban on UNRWA will make Palestinians’ lives ‘unbearable’ | Israeli-Palestinian Conflict News

Beirut, Lebanon – Israel’s much-criticized ban on the United Nations Palestinian Relief Agency (UNRWA) is part of a broader effort to undermine the rights of Palestinian refugees and drive them out of the occupied territories, analysts have told Al Jazeera.

The ban on the agency will take effect in three months and will worsen the already catastrophic situation in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

“The latest legislation is part of a campaign (by Israel) to destroy any aid infrastructure,” said Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel and Palestine for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit dedicated to solving of conflicts.

“But it is also part of a broader objective to permanently remove Palestinians from their land,” she told Al Jazeera.

As the largest provider of aid to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has played an important role in keeping people alive in Gaza, where civilians are at risk of genocide, according to the International Court of Justice.

Over the past year, Israel has uprooted almost the entire population of 2.3 million people and killed about 43,000 people in Gaza. The war began after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed 1,139 people and captured about 250.

Palestinians in Gaza have been living under an Israeli-imposed land, sea and air blockade since 2007, prompting leading rights groups to call the enclave an “open-air prison.”

Israel now appears to be trying to depopulate Gaza by ending the services of UNRWA, an irreplaceable lifeline for the population, analysts said.

“It is very clear from the way Israel is waging this war that Israel is trying to make life in Gaza so difficult that people will leave,” said Khaled Elgindy, an expert on Israel and Palestine and a senior fellow on the Middle East Institute. .

Palestinians gather to buy bread at a bakery, amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Deir Al-Balah
Palestinians gather to buy bread at a bakery in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on October 24, 2024 (Ramadan Abed/Reuters)

Erase evidence of the Nakba?

In 1948, Zionist militias expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their land to create the state of Israel – an event called the ‘Nakba’ or catastrophe.

Many Palestinians became stateless and languished in the occupied territories and refugee camps in neighboring countries, while Israel was recognized as a full member of the United Nations.

The same year, the UN General Assembly also established UNRWA to assist Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria until they could return to their homes, as provided for in UN Resolution 194.

Israeli and American leaders traditionally saw UNRWA as a way to pacify Palestinians by providing them with essential services without granting them political rights, Elgindy explained.

However, he added that Israel and the United States have increasingly tried to sabotage the aid agency over the past decade.

Former US President Donald Trump went so far as to suspend his country’s support for UNRWA in 2018, causing a funding crisis.

Palestinian refugees saw Trump’s move as an attack on their right to return to their homeland, which is enshrined by UNRWA.

Elgindy believes that Israel is now explicitly trying to undermine that right by erasing any legitimate reference to the Nakba or Palestinian refugees.

“(UNRWA reminds us) that the creation of Israel came at the expense – of the dispossession – of the Palestinian people, and that is what (Israel) wants to erase from history.

“UNRWA is a constant reminder of the Nakba in 1948.”

Irreplaceable

The Israeli attack on UNRWA is part of a broader effort to cut off a vital lifeline for Palestinians, argues Zaid Amali, a UNRWA card holder and a civil activist in the West Bank.

He noted that millions of Palestinians depend on UNRWA for employment, housing reconstruction, sanitation, health care and education.

The loss of these vital services, coupled with Israel’s daily raids and destruction of Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, is intended to uproot the population, Amali told Al Jazeera.

“UNRWA is irreplaceable with all its experience and personnel. The mandate alone is so big that it is irreplaceable, so I don’t see any organization – international or local – that can fill this gap,” he told Al Jazeera.

Israeli soldiers operate next to UNRWA headquarters in the Gaza Strip, February 8, 2024.
Israel has tried to portray UNRWA as linked to Hamas – despite a lack of evidence and the organization’s protests (File: Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

Diana Buttu, an expert on Israel and Palestine and former legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), added that the Palestinian Authority (PA), which administers a certain area in the occupied West Bank, will not be able are to the vacuum.

The PA emerged from the Oslo Accords, which saw then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shake hands with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in 1993.

The agreement aimed to lay the foundation for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Since 2006, the PA’s presence has been limited to the West Bank, after Hamas expelled it from Gaza following a short-lived conflict.

The PA could now face the impossible task of replacing UNRWA, Buttu said.

“The Palestinians will either leave (the West Bank and Gaza) or they will be absorbed into the structures of the PA,” she added. “That is extremely problematic because the PA does not have the resources to fund all those schools and medical clinics.

“(The PA) just can’t do it. There is not even a PA in Gaza distributing food.”

A cause at risk?

The Palestinian cause is at risk if the world community allows Israel to unilaterally destroy structures and institutions that recognize Palestinians as a people with rights, Amali warns.

He noted that Israel had killed hundreds of UN workers in Gaza, denied UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres entry to the country, and that Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan had even torn up the UN Charter in front of the General Meeting.

Israel’s provocative gesture to the UN came in response to a non-binding vote in the General Assembly that effectively recognized Palestine as a state in May 2024.

“All Israel’s behavior (towards the UN) is an indicator that Palestine’s presence in the international forum is threatening to Israel, because it means (global) recognition of Palestinian rights,” he told Al Jazeera.

Tahani, the Crisis Group expert, believes Israel may step up its attack on the PA, a body that de facto represents Palestinians at the UN and in the world community. She noted that Israel already withholds $188 million in tax revenues it collects on behalf of the PA – part of the agreement in the Oslo Accords.

According to her, UNRWA is only the main target at the moment.

“This is not just an arbitrary decision by Israel, doing as it pleases. There is a clear objective behind it, which is to make life for the Palestinians on the ground so completely unbearable,” she told Al Jazeera.

“In this way, they are either expelled by force or they leave ‘voluntarily’.”