Alameen Templeton
Just two weeks remain before Nazi Israel’s “anti-UNRWA” bill is due to take effect, outlawing the Palestinian relief agency’s work and preventing the only UN agency dedicated to providing essential aid to Palestinians from operating.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has appealed to Israeli Fuhrer Benjamin Netanyahu not to sign the bill into law as it will result in unavoidable starvation and loss of life.
Danny Dannon, Israel’s UN “ambassador”, has fired back, saying the Nazi state will simply take over UNRWA’s sites and duties and can be trusted to provide aid to Palestinians – despite Israel openly blowing up aid trucks and their drivers, preventing others from getting from the south to the north of Gaza, and preventing others from getting from the Israeli borders to the enclave.
Essential agency in Gaza
The New Arab reports Israel has been doing a great deal of contingency planning with non-UNRWA agencies such as WFP, who are under strong US pressure to take over aid imports from UNRWA. As a result, the amount of aid taken into Gaza by UNRWA has reduced significantly.
In Gaza, only UNRWA has the infrastructure to distribute aid to scale, such as vehicles, warehouses, distribution centres and staff. However, Israeli authorities are making this extremely difficult. They claim to be “deconflicting” aid deliveries, but according to UN sources there is clear evidence that Israeli soldiers are firing on vehicles and allowing criminal gangs to plunder convoys with impunity.
Dr Lex Takkenberg, Senior Advisor with Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), and other researchers have just completed an as yet unpublished assessment of the implications of Israel’s ban on UNRWA. It says much the same thing.
Their study confirms that with the lack of contingency planning, the suffering of the Palestinian population, particularly in Gaza, will increase dramatically, as the backbone of the humanitarian operation crumbles without an alternative structure in place.
UNRWA has pointed out many of its facilities are schools – 10 schools, three clinics and a training centre. Pupils are likely to have their curricula subjected to “Judaisistation”, in contravention to its obligations under law and confirmed by the International Court of Justice to allow Palestinians to set their own curricula.
A home for settlers
The aid organisation’s massive headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah is another bone of contention. Its compound contains several huge warehouses that have been subjected to repeated attacks. Rumours are swirling Israel’s notorious “Land Authority” wants to seize the compound and turn it into 1 440 housing units for illegal settlers/squatters.
Its Al-Quds HQ is also in the twilight zone. Staff have been told to relocate to offices in Amman after their centre had been under “review” for several years. Staff were told the closure had been “fast-tracked” due to challenges in 2024, “including visa issuance, visa duration and lack of issuing diplomatic ID cards. These challenges have inhibited our effectiveness to work as a Headquarters in Jerusalem”.
UNRWA staff have already transferred thousands of archival refugee files from Gaza and the West Bank to a “safe location”. Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the organisation says UNRWA is “the custodian of the Palestinian refugee’s identity and history” going back 75 years.
That’s the entire history of occupation and Israeli would dearly love to wipe that out, like its trying to wipe out Palestinian lives in Gaza.
Even the memory of it is anathematic to Israel that likes to present itself as the land of “God’s chosen people”; every loaf of bread, every cup of sugar delivered by UNRWA throughout 75 years of occupation is evidence of Israel’s entire history of Palestinian brutalisation.
The data also represents an essential backdrop of evidence for legal cases, providing an undeniable, empirical audit of aid provided to Gaza before October 7 and during the sad genocide thereafter.
It is the essential proof that Israel has waged a starvation campaign aimed at extermination, with genocide at its core, ever since October 7 2023.
Proof of genocide
“The preservation of these files is essential to protecting the rights of Palestine Refugees under international law,” Lazzarini told Anadolu Ajensi, adding: “It is time for a peaceful diplomatic solution that will end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including addressing the plight of Palestine Refugees once and for all.”
On October 28, the Israeli Knesset passed a law prohibiting UNRWA’s operations in the occupied territories after accusing UN workers of participating in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel. The UN agency denies any involvement in the attacks.
According to Lazzarini, the ban would have a “disastrous impact on the people we support.”
Saudi Arabia’s The New Arab says UNRWA’s banning “would have profound political significance, particularly for the global Islamic community because it would set the seal on Israel’s illegal annexation of Jerusalem, home to Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam.
“It would also be a violation of the ruling last July by the International Court of Justice, (ICJ), demanding that the occupation ends.
“The annexation of Jerusalem as the “eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish state” which began with the occupation in 1967, would become another illegal fact on the ground.
“Crucially, Jerusalem will have been unilaterally removed from whatever is left of the Middle East peace process.
The time is now
“Arab governments, particularly Saudi Arabia and Jordan, must therefore act now, and decisively, to save their holy city. The loss of Jerusalem will undoubtedly provoke a violent reaction among Palestinians and likely lead to calls for jihad more widely. In the context of an explosive Middle East this can only engender further destabilising tensions for governments in the region.”
Denmark’s Foreign Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, affirmed on Monday that his country sees no viable alternative to UNRWA, stating, “for sure not in the near future,” Reuters reported.
Responding to a question from Haaretz regarding Israel’s decision to end cooperation with Unrwa,, Rasmussen noted, “We definitely do not see eye to eye on this issue.” He further stressed, “Unrwa, cannot operate in Israel under new laws, but what about the occupied territories? We support Unrwa.”
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