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ISRAEL’S BAN ON UNRWA CONTINUES A PATTERN OF POLITICIZING
PALESTINIAN REFUGEE AID – AND PUTS MILLIONS OF LIVES AT RISK  
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Nicholas R. Micinski, Kelsey Norman
October 29, 2024
The Conversation
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_ Aid for refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees, has long been
politicized, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, has been targeted throughout its 75-year
history. _

Israeli soldiers operate next to the UNRWA headquarters in the Gaza
Strip, in February 2024 , Dylan Martinez/Reuters

 

The Israeli parliament’s vote on Oct. 28, 2024, to ban the United
Nations agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees is likely
to affect millions of people
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– it also fits a pattern.

Aid for refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees, has long been
politicized
[[link removed]],
and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees,
or UNRWA, has been targeted throughout its 75-year history.

This was evident earlier in the current Gaza conflict, when at least a
dozen countries, including the U.S., suspended funding to the UNRWA
[[link removed]], citing allegations
made by Israel that 12 UNRWA employees participated
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in the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. In August, the U.N. fired nine
UNRWA employees
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for alleged involvement in the attack. An independent U.N. panel
established a set of 50 recommendations
[[link removed]] to ensure UNRWA
employees adhere to the principle of neutrality.

The vote by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to ban the UNRWA goes
a step further. It will, when it comes into effect, prevent the UNRWA
from operating in Israel and will severely affect its ability to serve
refugees in any of the occupied territories that Israel controls,
including Gaza. This could have devastating consequences
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for livelihoods, health, the distribution of food aid and schooling
for Palestinians. It would also damage the polio vaccination campaign
that the UNRWA and its partner organizations have been carrying out
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in Gaza since September. Finally, the bill bans communication between
Israeli officials and the UNRWA, which would end efforts by the agency
to coordinate the movements of aid workers to prevent unintentional
targeting by the Israel Defense Forces.

Refugee aid, and humanitarian aid more generally, is theoretically
meant to be neutral and impartial. But as experts in migration
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and
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international relations
[[link removed]], we know
funding is often used as a foreign policy tool, whereby allies are
rewarded and enemies punished. In this context, we believe Israel’s
banning of the UNRWA fits a wider pattern of the politicization of aid
to refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees.

What is the UNRWA?

The UNRWA, short for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was established two years after
about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes
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during the months leading up to the creation of the state of Israel in
1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war.

[A man carrying luggage wades through water while another lifts an
elderly man on his shoulders.]
Palestinians flee their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
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Prior to the UNRWA’s creation, international and local
organizations, many of them religious, provided services to displaced
Palestinians. But after surveying the extreme poverty
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and dire situation pervasive across refugee camps, the U.N. General
Assembly, including all Arab states and Israel, voted to create the
UNRWA in 1949.

Since that time, the UNRWA has been the primary aid organization
[[link removed]] providing food, medical care,
schooling and, in some cases, housing for the 6 million Palestinians
living across its five fields: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, as well as the
areas that make up the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank
and Gaza Strip.

The mass displacement of Palestinians – known as the Nakba, or
“catastrophe
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– occurred prior to the 1951 Refugee Convention
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which defined refugees as anyone with a well-founded fear of
persecution owing to “events occurring in Europe before 1 January
1951.” Despite a 1967 protocol extending the definition
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worldwide, Palestinians are still excluded from the primary
international system protecting refugees.

While the UNRWA is responsible for providing services to Palestinian
refugees, the United Nations also created the U.N. Conciliation
Commission for Palestine in 1948 to seek a long-term political
solution [[link removed]] and “to
facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social
rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.”

As a result, UNRWA does not have a mandate to push for the traditional
durable solutions available in other refugee situations. As it
happened, the conciliation commission was active only for a few years
and has since been sidelined in favor of the U.S.-brokered peace
processes.

Is the UNRWA political?

The UNRWA has been subject
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to political headwinds since its inception and especially during
periods of heightened tension between Palestinians and Israelis.

While it is a U.N. organization and thus ostensibly apolitical, it has
frequently been criticized
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Palestinians, Israelis as well as donor countries, including the
United States, for acting politically.

The UNRWA performs statelike functions across its five fields,
including education, health and infrastructure, but it is restricted
in its mandate from performing political or security activities.

Initial Palestinian objections to the UNRWA stemmed from the
organization’s early focus on economic integration of refugees into
host states.

Although the UNRWA officially adhered to the U.N. General Assembly’s
Resolution 194 [[link removed]] that
called for the return of Palestine refugees to their homes, U.N., U.K.
and U.S. officials searched
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for means by which to resettle and integrate Palestinians into host
states, viewing this as the favorable political solution to the
Palestinian refugee situation and the broader Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. In this sense, Palestinians perceived the UNRWA to be both
highly political and actively working against their interests.

In later decades, the UNRWA switched its primary focus
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from jobs to education at the urging of Palestinian refugees. But the
UNRWA’s education materials were viewed
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Israel as further feeding Palestinian militancy, and the Israeli
government insisted on checking and approving all materials in Gaza
and the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.

[A woman holds a poster stating'Don't Defund UNRWA']
A protester is removed by members of the U.S. Capitol Police during a
House hearing on Jan. 30, 2024. Alex Wong/Getty Images
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While Israel has long been suspicious
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the UNRWA’s role in refugee camps and in providing education, the
organization’s operation, which is internationally funded, also
saves
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Israel millions of dollars each year in services it would be obliged
to deliver as the occupying power.

Since the 1960s, the U.S. – the UNRWA’s primary donor – and
other Western countries have repeatedly expressed their desire
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use aid to prevent radicalization among refugees.

In response to the increased presence of armed opposition groups, the
U.S. attached a provision
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its UNRWA aid in 1970, requiring that the “UNRWA take all possible
measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution
shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving
military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation
Army (PLA) or any other guerrilla-type organization.”

The UNRWA adheres to this requirement, even publishing an annual list
of its employees so that host governments can vet them, but it also
employs 30,000 individuals
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the vast majority of whom are Palestinian.

Questions over links of the UNRWA to any militancy has led to the rise
of Israeli and international watch groups
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that document the social media activity of the organization’s large
Palestinian staff.

In 2018, the Trump administration paused its US$60 million
contribution to the UNRWA
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Trump claimed the pause would create political pressure for
Palestinians to negotiate. President Joe Biden restarted U.S.
contributions to the UNRWA in 2021.

While other major donors restored funding to the UNRWA after the
conclusion of the investigation in April, the U.S. has yet
[[link removed](IN%2D07),the%20Near%20East%20(UNWRA).]
to do so.

‘An unmitigated disaster’

Israel’s ban of the UNRWA will leave already starving Palestinians
without a lifeline. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said
banning the UNRWA [[link removed]]
“would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated
disaster.” The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France,
Germany, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. issued a joint statement
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arguing that the ban would have “devastating consequences on an
already critical and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation,
particularly in northern Gaza.”

Reports have emerged of Israeli plans
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for private security contractors to take over aid distribution in Gaza
through dystopian “gated communities,” which would in effect be
internment camps. This would be a troubling move. In contrast to the
UNRWA, private contractors have little experience delivering aid and
are not dedicated to the humanitarian principles of neutrality,
impartiality or independence
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However, the Knesset’s explicit ban could, inadvertently, force the
United States to suspend weapons transfers to Israel. U.S. law
requires
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that it stop weapons transfers to any country that obstructs the
delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid. And the U.S. pause on funding for
the UNRWA was only meant to be temporary.

The UNRWA is the main conduit for assistance into Gaza, and the
Knesset’s ban makes explicit that the Israeli government is
preventing aid delivery, making it harder for Washington to ignore.
Before the bill passed, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller
warned that
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“passage of the legislation could have implications under U.S. law
and U.S. policy.”

At the same time, two U.S. government agencies previously alerted
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the Biden administration that Israel was obstructing aid into Gaza,
yet weapons transfers have continued unabated.

_Sections of this story were first used in an earlier article
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published by The Conversation U.S. on Feb. 1, 2024._

_==_

* Nicholas R. Micinski
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Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs,
University of Maine

* Kelsey Norman
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Fellow for the Middle East, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice
University

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* UNRWA; Palestinians; Refugees; International Law;
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