Force for stability

At a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the organisation’s Secretary General Antonio Guterres and envoys from Jordan, Spain and Brazil were once again obliged to beg for financial support for UNRWA, the agency caring for Palestinian refugees. Guterres made the point once again that UNRWA is a “force for stability in the most unstable region in the world.” He said, however, that UNRWA “is being forced to operate under extreme uand rising pressure. In Gaza, our staff are being killed. Our premises destroyed. And, everywhere UNRWA faces budget shortfalls – and a firehose of disinformation.”

Israel has shut down UNRWA’S field office, schools and health centres in occupied East Jerusalem and disrupted communications between UNRWA and Israeli officials. Lazarini argued, “The conditions under which the Agency works are deteriorating every day.” He called for an end to Israel’s campaign of “distortions” about UNRWA and its work and “ensuring that UNRWA has the resources to carry out its mandate.” The agency now has a deficit of $200 million in a budget of $1.46 billion.

The deficit looms as UNRWA’s role has expanded in Gaza due to Israel’s military campaign and in the West Bank where Israeli settlers are ramping up attacks on Palestinians. UNRWA is the only agency capable of providing aid to Gazans who have been repeatedly displaced by Israeli evacuation orders and bombing and offer some protection to West Bank camp dwellers subjected to Israeli assault and evictions. Hundreds of UNRWA staff have been killed or wounded in Gaza.

Overall, UNRWA serves six million refugees living in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza as well as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. More than one-third, 1.46 million persons, live in 58 UNRWA camps where they are provided with rations, shelter, education, and health care. UNRWA employs 30,000 people, most of whom are Palestinian refugees , as well as a small number of international staff.

For stateless Palestinians UNRWA’S education is the gateway to personal independence and a decent life. UNRWA operates 706 elementary and preparatory schools providing free basic education for more than 543,000 Palestine refugee children. UNRWA also offers university scholarships to students who excel academically and provides technical vocational training and higher scientific education to 8,000 youths at eight centres in all five operational areas and for 2,000 students in two teacher training institutes, one in the West Bank and one in Jordan. More than 6000,000 students have been shut out of UNRWA schools and educational institutes in Gaza ince Israel launched its offensive on the strip two years ago.

Educated Palestinians have found employment throughout the region and elsewhere. The late Ibrahim al-Abed, founder of the Emirates’ WAM news agency and media personality, grew up in an UNRWA camp outside Beirut and received his education in agency schools before attending the American University of Beirut. Another notable UNRWA graduate is Loay Elbasyouni who was a member of the electrical team involved in the Mars helicopter’s first flight in 2021.

UNRWA was established by a General Assembly resolution in December 1949 and began to operate in the spring of 1950 serving 750,000 Palestinians uprooted by Israel’s 1948-1949 war of establishment. Unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees which belongs to the UN system and funding comes from the organisation’s budget, UNRWA is a subsidiary of the UN and has to raise its own funds. For decades securing finance has always involved a struggle. This has intensified since the United States, formerly its chief donor, suspended funding after January 2024 under the Biden administration. Washington took this step Israel accused a dozen UNRWA staff in Gaza of taking part in the Oct.7, 2023, attack by Hamas which killed 1,200 and abducted 250 in Israel.

The outrage committed by Hamas at that time has been overtaken in horror by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s deadly and devastating war on Gaza which has slain 65,000 Palestinians, driven 90 per cent of Gazans from their homes, destroyed the strip’s infrastructure and commercial and public buildings, and ruined farmland. Netanyahu’s blockade of water, food, medicine and fuel has created starvation in Gaza where famine has been proclaimed in the north. By pursuing this offensive, he has reaped the whirlwind of Western recognition of a Palestinian state and revived demands for the “two-state solution” involving the emergence if a Palestinian state alongside Israel. UNRWA will gladly hand over its responsibilities if and when a Palestinian state is born.

For years, the Israeli government has campaigned for UNRWA’s disbandment although it is and has always been the “indispensable actor” as far as the Palestinians and their regional hosts are concerned. Israel seeks to eliminate UNRWA as the agency is in theory and practice, a quasi-state without territory. The agency helps to sustain Palestinian identity as well as well as sustaining life.

Israel wants Palestinian refugees who live outside occupied Palestinian territory to forget their national origin, their lost homes and homeland, and melt into host countries. Israel – with a population of 7.2 million – also wants the 7.2 million Palestinians who live under its control to accept apartheid, which has been outlawed internationally since the 1970s.

Photo: TNS