9 countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Finland, Canada and Australia, suspended vital funding for UNRWA, which has been responsible since 1949 for the fate of Palestinian refugees (Reuters)
On January 26, the US State Department announced the temporary suspension of any additional funding allocated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) until the completion of an examination of the allegations of the participation of 12 of its employees in the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, which was carried out by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement. On the seventh of last October.
As a result, UNRWA immediately terminated the contracts of 9 suspected employees and another died. It also opened an investigation to determine the precise responsibilities of dozens of targeted employees.
Nine countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Finland, Canada and Australia, suspended vital funding for this organization, which has been responsible since 1949 for the fate of Palestinian refugees.
These countries ignored the killing of more than 150 agency employees at the hands of the Israeli army during the aggression on Gaza, which is the largest number of deaths recorded among United Nations employees in a single war since its founding.
What draws attention is; The rapid reaction of donor countries coincided with the issuance of the International Court of Justice’s order to “accept” the occurrence of genocide in Gaza, and its call to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians stranded in the Gaza Strip.
Before we discuss the reasons that led to this collective targeting of UNRWA at the present time, it is worth quickly noting the history of the agency’s founding and its funding mechanisms.
How was UNRWA formed?
Following the occupation of vast areas of Palestine in 1948, and the announcement of the establishment of the State of Israel, the issue of Palestinian refugees emerged, most of whom were displaced towards the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as neighboring countries in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
To mitigate the repercussions of the refugee tragedy, the United Nations General Assembly issued Resolution No. 302 in December 1949, establishing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
UNRWA actually began its work in 1950 with a work mandate of up to 3 years, subject to renewal, provided that its mandate includes providing assistance and employment programs for approximately 700,000 Palestinian refugees in 5 places including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
The American John Davis, director of UNRWA, in 1959 summarized his vision of the agency’s role as “a low cost paid by the international community in exchange for not solving the political problems of the Palestinian refugees.”
Davis pushed for expanding UNRWA's powers to include providing education and providing scholarships to universities, which was achieved over time. UNRWA's tasks included providing services in the field of health, education, social services, infrastructure, and emergency aid such as tents, blankets, water, and food in difficult winter conditions and times of combat tours.
As the scope of UNRWA services expanded, the percentage of aid from its total budget decreased from 61% in 1960 to only 6% currently.
The agency has become a lifeline for about 5.5 million Palestinian refugees by providing social and economic services in exchange for ignoring their political rights.
UNRWA funding
UNRWA submits its reports to the United Nations General Assembly, is headed by the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, and its mandate is renewed every 3 years by decision of the General Assembly.
The Palestinians represent the vast majority of the agency’s 31,000 employees, and the United Nations pays the salaries of 200 employees as well as some administrative expenses, equivalent to less than 5% of UNRWA’s budget.
The rest of the salaries and operating expenses are supplemented by donations from member states of the United Nations, and the United States is the largest donor to UNRWA with an average of $350 million, nearly a third of the agency’s annual budget of $1.2 billion. Due to insufficient contributions, there is usually a large deficit in the agency's budget.
The administration of former US President Donald Trump used the UNRWA funding card to put pressure on the Palestinians in the context of its proposal for the Deal of the Century and the Palestinian rejection of it. In 2018, Washington announced the cessation of funding for UNRWA under the pretext of the need for a more effective alternative in helping refugees.
Why does Israel want to get rid of UNRWA?
Israel believes that UNRWA contributes to perpetuating the refugee issue, and even amplifying it, with the number of refugees registered with it increasing from 700,000 people in 1948 to 5.5 million people currently due to granting the children and grandchildren of refugees in 1948 refugee status.
Tel Aviv considers the return of refugees to be a demographic threat to the Jewish majority in Israel, and therefore an unresolvable issue in any future negotiations with the Palestinians. Therefore, it pushes towards integrating refugees into their places of residence. Especially in neighboring countries.
To achieve this, I presented a longitudinal study in 2020 published by the Israeli National Security Institute; 4 alternatives, foremost of which is dismantling UNRWA and transferring its budget to the governments of the countries hosting refugees.
The study, entitled “70 Years of UNRWA: It’s Time for Structural and Functional Reforms,” proposed transferring the agency’s powers, budget and everything related to it to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Commission’s work is focused on transferring refugees to a third country, allowing them to obtain the right of permanent residence and naturalization, which will lead to the withdrawal of refugee status from Palestinian refugees if they are naturalized with the citizenship of other countries.
Strategic objectives
To achieve the strategic goal of eliminating the specter of refugee returns, Israel provides several justifications for distorting UNRWA, including:
UNRWA teaches local curricula in its schools, which represent 58% of its total budget, as these curricula emphasize the right of return and denounce the Zionist project in Palestine, and claim that this contradicts the spread of peace concepts.
UNRWA provides social and economic services to approximately 1.2 million registered refugees in Gaza, which allows Hamas to direct its financial resources to military activities instead of directing them to social and economic services.
The presence of only 1% of foreigners among UNRWA employees, which contributes to the preservation of Palestinian identity by Palestinian employees, and limits the ability of foreigners to communicate directly with Palestinian communities.
Finally, which is the most frequently used justification, the membership of some UNRWA employees in Palestinian resistance groups or the use of its facilities in resistance operations, a justification that appears with every wave of escalation.
When the first intifada broke out in 1987, Israel claimed that some UNRWA employees were members or supporters of Palestinian resistance organizations. It claimed that UNRWA vehicles were used to transport fighters and weapons, and demanded that it be granted permission to search the agency’s vehicles.
UNRWA then invoked diplomatic immunity for its employees and objected to the inspection of its vehicles, an accusation that was repeated with the outbreak of the second intifada, and then returned recently by claiming that only 12 UNRWA employees out of 31,000 employees participated in the Al-Aqsa flood attack.
Dismantling the refugee issue
The restrictions on UNRWA come in the context of efforts to dismantle the refugee issue in preparation for pushing towards unbalanced negotiations that put pressure on the Palestinians by putting them between the option of killing and displacement or accepting a distorted state devoid of weapons and sovereignty, and giving up the right of return in order to lose one of the most prominent components of demographic power.
Therefore, while many Western countries provide political and military support to Israel despite the horrific massacres that resulted in the deaths of more than 26,000 Palestinian martyrs, the same countries use the excuse of the participation of only 12 UNRWA employees in the Al-Aqsa flood to cut off funding.
This came despite the pledge of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, to open an investigation and dismiss any employee proven to participate in armed acts, and his actually terminating the contract with the employees accused by the West.
The Palestinians say that the step to stop funding about 60% of UNRWA’s funding, in addition to the siege of Gaza and the continuation of daily massacres, represents an effective execution of Palestinian refugees, especially in Gaza and the West Bank, which requires countries that reject the occupation to take the initiative to put pressure on completing UNRWA’s tasks, stopping the war, and lifting the siege so that the Palestinians achieve the minimum. Of life's requirements.
Source: Al Jazeera