Palestinian refugees in the West Bank assert their right to return (Anatolia)

Palestinian refugees believe that the decision of 17 countries and the European Union to suspend their funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) represents American and European collusion with an Israeli plan aimed at liquidating the cause and rights of millions of refugees, stressing their adherence to the agency as an international witness to their catastrophe.

Palestinian refugees warned that cutting off the agency's funding represents collective punishment for about 6 million refugees inside and outside the occupied Palestinian territories.

Hold on to the right of return

Refugee Muhammad Khader Al-Anani (85 years old) considered that UNRWA is the backbone of the refugee issue, and “the spirit of life” that helps and supplies the refugees who are the origin of the Palestinian story, and the liquidation of the agency is the liquidation of the issue, and this is what Israel wants, according to his expression.

The octogenarian, who has lived since the Nakba (1948) in the Al-Amari camp near the city of Ramallah in the middle of the occupied West Bank, confirmed that he adheres to the right to return to his home in the city of Ramla.

He recalled how he was displaced at the age of 8, and witnessed the suffering of asylum, war, and killing. He continued that during the time of the Nakba, Israel used Zionist gangs, and today it uses settlers in the West Bank to displace the population again, and in the Gaza Strip, a war of extermination aimed at a new Nakba.

“We accept the release of the agency when we return.”

For his part, refugee Muhammad Hammad (52 years old), in Al-Amari camp, stressed that the refugee depends mainly on UNRWA services, and the decision to cut funding puts education, treatment, and services at stake in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Saying that the refugees can accept the dismantling of the agency if the refugee issue is resolved by their return to their occupied villages and cities, and there is international protection for the refugees so that their catastrophe is not repeated.

An invitation to Arab countries

Criticizing the position of the countries that froze UNRWA funding, Tayseer Nasrallah, a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), said that it is a dangerous matter that threatens to dismantle the international institution that is an international witness to the catastrophe of the Palestinian people.

Nasrallah, who is also a refugee in Balata camp near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, added that this decision is collective punishment without justifications.

The Fatah leader urged the Arab countries to provide a financial safety net for the agency, saying that if there are countries that side with the Israeli narrative and withhold funds at a time when refugees in the West Bank and Gaza need UNRWA services, the Arab countries must take the initiative and provide support to the agency.

He stressed that stopping funding is a "political decision", since since the establishment of the agency, Israel has been working to liquidate it so that there is no international witness to the Nakba, and then to liquidate the case.

Since January 26, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Italy, Britain, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Iceland, Romania, Estonia, and the European Union have suspended funding for UNRWA.

This is after Israel claimed that 12 of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the attack last October 7 against Israeli military bases and settlements adjacent to the Strip, while the agency announced that it was conducting an investigation into these allegations.

Source: Anadolu Agency