Access denied

Israel has refused to renew visas for the directors of three United Nations Agencies operating in Gaza where they provide aid and care for 2.3 million Palestinians. Visas have been denied to Jonathan Whittall who heads Palestine mission of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, and to Ajith Sunghay, the representative in Palestine for the organisation for Human Rights, OHCHR. UNRWA’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini had already been barred from travelling to Gaza.

UN Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher told the Security Council that the UN’s mission is to provide aid, report on events witnessed by staff on the ground, and press for adherence to international law. He stated, “Each time we report on what we see, we face threats of further reduced access to the civilians we are trying to serve. Nowhere today is the tension between our advocacy mandate and delivering aid greater than in Gaza.” He added, “Visas are not renewed or reduced in duration by Israel, explicitly in response to our work on protection of civilians.”

UNRWA has long been an Israeli target. Israel’s Knesset adopted two laws last October which prohibited Israeli authorities from having contact with the agency and banned it from operating East Jerusalem. In November Israel began implementing these measures, claiming without providing evidence the agency has Hamas staff members who were involved in the Oct.7, 2023, attack when the movement killed 1,200 and abducted 250. In January, the agency’s international staff in East Jerusalem were compelled to relocate to Amman in Jordan while local staff remained in place.

If fully applied, the latest measures could violate the mandate of UNRWA, which was created in 1949 and in 1950 began providing shelter, food, medical care, education, and welfare services for most of the 750,000 Palestinians rendered stateless and homeless by the emergence of Israel by war in 1948. UNRWA currently cares for almost six million Palestinian refugees living in Israel, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. 

Israel has called for the dissolution of UNRWA and for Palestinian refugees to settle in host countries, despite their objections. On the permanent settlement issue UNRWA was not only not mandated to care for the refugees but effect the ultimate resolution of the “Palestinian refugee problem.” This was laid down in the General Assembly’s December 1949 resolution 194, paragraph 11, which called for a return of Palestinian refugees to their homes as soon as “practicable” and compensation for their losses.  For Israel, return was never “practicable” and compensation was refused. Consequently Palestinian refugees remain in limbo and UNRWA has become their quasi-state.

The plan for a Jewish state in Palestine was adopted by General Assembly partition resolution 181 of November 1947. The Zionists welcomed the resolution which awarded 55 per cent of Palestine to a Jewish state and 45 per cent to an Arab (Palestinian) state and provided for international administration for Jerusalem. But the Zionists had no intention of abiding by the terms of the resolution. Once the Zionist pre-state army Haganah received a large consignment of weapons in March 1948, it began a coordinated offensive to conquer the whole of Palestine by attacking the areas allocated to the Arab state and Jerusalem. By May 14-15 when the British mandate expired and the Jewish state was proclaimed, the Israelis had already expelled 200,000 of the 750,000 Palestinians ultimately made homeless. The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq only intervened after mid-May and could not contain the Haganah which had seized 78 per cent of Palestine before the truce was signed in March 1950. Jordan assumed control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Egypt of Gaza.

Alarmed by the Israeli onslaught, land grab, and flood of refugees, the UN appointed as mediator Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, who was responsible for rescuing 15,000 people, many of them Jewish, from Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As he was critical of Israel’s actions and put forward a peace plan rejected by the Zionists, Bernadotte was assassinated in September 1848 by the Israeli Stern Gang headed by Yitzak Shamir (who was prime minister in 1983-1984 and 1986-1992). The UN retaliated by adopting resolution 194 which Israel had no intention of respecting.

From its creation 77 years ago until now, Israel has seen the UN as an organisation intent on frustrating its ambitions and depriving it of conquests although the UN has abided by its 1945 Charter, which bans the acquisition of territory by force. 

On Oct.29, 1956, Israel invaded and occupied Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza and on November 5th, Britain and France – which had plotted with Israel – attacked Egypt to topple President Gamal Abdel Nasser who had nationalised the Suez Canal. However, an angry US President Dwight Eisenhower ordered an end to the war and Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory. He had little choice, because the Suez war coincided with Russia’s invasion of Hungary which had rebelled against Soviet rule.

The UN responded to the conflict by establishing the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) force to stabilise the Israel-Egypt border. As tensions peaked between Egypt and Israel in May 1967, Cairo ordered UNEF to evacuate. This was partially completed when Israel launched its third war against the Arabs on June 5 during which Israel completed its conquest of Palestine by occupying East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Israel conquered the Golan Heights of Syria and resumed its occupation of Sinai. In November 1967, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 242 which called for Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied that June.  Israel ignored the resolution and built settlements.

In October 1973, Egypt and Syria mounted the first Arab war against Israel by invading Sinai and the Golan. After Israel reconquered these territories, the Security Council passed resolutions 338, 339, and 340 calling for an end to the war and implementation of 242. Israel only pulled out of Sinai in 1979 after signing a peace treaty with Egypt. Israel evacuated its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 but retained control by air, land and sea.

Israel invaded south Lebanon in 1978 to halt attacks from Palestinian forces and in 1982 occupied Lebanon from the southern border to Beirut. The UN called for total Israeli withdrawal.  Israel pulled back to a wide border zone which it held until Hezbollah drove Israeli forces from the area in May 2000. If Israel had acted on UN resolutions, 18 years of violence could have been avoided. 

Photo: AP