The Israeli War Against UNRWA and Its Impact on Palestinian Refugees

Authors

  • Author

  • Ayat Hamdan

Keywords:

UNRWA, Palestinian Refugees, Hamas, Aid Infrastructure

Abstract

When Israel accused twelve UNRWA employees of participating in Hamas’s military operation on 7 October 2023, more than twenty states announced the suspension of aid to the agency. UNRWA responded by dismissing 9 of the accused employees and opening an investigation, despite this measure violating its internal policy. The funding cuts to UNRWA affect about 6 million refugees, among them 1.7 million Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and an additional 500,000 Palestinians without refugee status who benefit from UNRWA infrastructure and services. This paper elucidates the reasons for Israeli incitement against UNRWA and provides possible scenarios for the agency’s future operations and the implications for Palestinian refugees. It calls for framing the Palestinian refugee issue and UNRWA in explicitly political terms, rather than solely humanitarian ones.

References

  1. Its current mandate is valid until 30 June 2026.
  2. “General Assembly Adopts 33 Resolutions Recommended by Its Fourth Committee, Including Renewal of UNRWA Mandate until 30 June 2026: Texts on Space, Information, Non-Self-Governing Territories Also Adopted,” United Nations , 12/12/2022, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/yej84zee Israel, the United States, Canada, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia voted against the resolution.
  3. “Where We Work,” UNRWA , accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/fk7zahpb.
  4. “Resolution 302,” UNRWA , accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/2yjs5e23 The responsibility for finding a political solution fell within the remit of the the Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), established by the UN in 1948, with the mission to seek a political solution to the Palestinian question and “facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation”. “UNCCP initially sought to resolve the problem of the refugees through return to Israel and compensation. When despite its efforts it was unable to advance the return of the refugees, it concentrated on collecting Palestinian property records with a view to facilitating restitution and compensation whenever this would become possible. Once the UNCCP had completed its meticulous work on these records, in 1964 it suspended its operations and has been effectively inoperative since”. Francesca Albanese & Lex Takkenberg, “UNRWA and the Palestinian Refugees: Protecting Refugee Rights While Structurally Addressing the Agency’s Financially Unsustainable Modus Operandi,” Working Paper , no. 138, Refugee Studies Centre at University of Oxford , 27 February 2023, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/368mstfz
  5. Anne Irfan, Refuge and Resistance (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2023).
  6. “How We Are Funded,” UNRWA , accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/v9khe733
  7. “al-Umam al-Muttaḥida Tuḥadhdhir min Inhiyār Mālī Washīk, li-l-Unūrwā wa-Tadʿū ilā Daʿm Malāyīn al-Lājiʾīn al-Filasṭīniyyīn,” UN News , 2/6/2023, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/4zzaar9j
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  10. “Making UNRWA Funds Conditional on the Content of Palestinian Schoolbooks,” European Parliament , 12/9/2023, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/3wassnxt
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  13. Bezen Balamir Coşkun, Analysing Desecuritisation (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), p. 9.
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  16. Cutting food, water, and electricity to the Gaza Strip is not new. Israel has pursued the same policy in previous wars, and it is a key instrument of the blockade on the Strip. It is moreover tantamount to a war crime, according to various international institutions. See: “Israel/OPT: Israel Must Lift Illegal and Inhumane Blockade on Gaza as Power Plant Runs out of Fuel,” Amnesty International , 12/10/2023, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/46f4amcf; “Mufawwad Huqūq al-Insān Yaḥuthth ʿalā Nazʿ Fatīl al-Waḍʿ ‘al-Mutafajjir’ fī Isrāʾīl wa-l-Arḍ al-Filasṭīniyya al-Muḥtalla,” UN News , 10/10/2023, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://bit.ly/3tJv1zU; Sari Bashi, “Nowhere to Go in Gaza,” Human Rights Watch , 13/10/2023, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://bit.ly/46IciTM. The disruption of food, water, and electricity is also a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and its additional protocols. Article 14 of Protocol II states, “Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless, for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works”. See: “Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II),” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner , 8/6/1977, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://bit.ly/3SaQ9Jr
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  21. This process is integral to settler colonialism in Palestine, which is based on the expulsion and extermination of the native inhabitants of historic Palestine. Today, we see this logic play out in Gaza in its most savage form. The ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine since the Nakba is a fundamental pillar of the Zionist project.
  22. The only ones to escape this closed loop are those who manage to leave the Gaza Strip. This option is available to the very few people who may be permitted to leave for the purpose of medical treatment or by paying exorbitant sums on the Egyptian side.
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  31. Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states, “To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate”. Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War , 12 August 1949, https://tinyurl.com/yxhkn66u
  32. “When crafting the post-war international refugee regime, the international community committed to deal with the question of the Palestinian refugee issue until it is ‘definitively settled in accordance with the relevant resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations’ as reflected in art. 1D of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. The latter, in addition to article 7 (c) of the UNHCR Statute, recognizes a distribution of responsibilities among various UN agencies, primarily UNCCP and UNRWA and then UNHCR, in dealing with Palestinian refugees as internationally recognized refugees as of 1948”. Albanese & Takkenberg, p. 10.
  33. Bethan McKernan, “Israeli Ministers Attend Conference Calling for ‘Voluntary Migration’ of Palestinians,” The Guardian , 29/1/2024, accessed on 2/4/2024, at: https://tinyurl.com/y5bxwtjw
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Vol. 7 No. 015 (2024): Issue 015

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