- by William Briggs
- The Guardian
- Issue #2124
Rally for Palestine/Boorloo, Sunday 27 October.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has long been the target of Israeli aggression. Now a massive vote in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, has made the aggression official. The Knesset has passed a bill that declares UNRWA a terrorist organisation, banned from operating inside Israeli territory. It has deliberately and successfully brought civil and military structures into one genocidal machine. There is now just an Israeli military state.
The bill to ban UNRWA from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel passed by a majority of 92-10. A second bill, declaring UNRWA a “terrorist organisation” passed 87-9. Only one Jewish member of the Knesset voted against this appalling bill. Not surprisingly that vote came from an Israeli communist. The Party has two members in the Knesset; one Jewish and one Arab Israeli.
HISTORY OF AGGRESSION
The vote sends a chilling message to the Palestinian people, to the Israelis who oppose the genocide and to the world. The rulers of Israel do not care a fig for public sentiment. They can and do act with total impunity.
The attacks against UNRWA go to the very heart of Israel’s decades-long aggression and hostility towards the Palestinian people. The UN relief agency came into being when the first Palestinian refugees came into being. The state of Israel was declared in 1948. It resulted in the expulsion of 80 per cent of the Palestinian population, or 750,000 men, women, and children. The Nakba or ‘catastrophe’ quickly led the United Nations to create UNRWA in 1949. Its role then, as now, was to administer to Palestinian refugees.
The Nakba was an exercise in wholesale ethnic cleansing. The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, recently said that “grave suspicions have arisen that Israel is effectively perpetrating ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza,” and that the military is actively engaged in an operation to “permanently empty this area of Palestinians.” After more than 70 years, the story has not changed.
Israel’s war on the Palestinian people has been brutal. The last weeks have seen the level of brutality increase. The assault in northern Gaza has outstripped all that has gone before it. Northern Gaza has been sealed off from aid, from medical support, from food and water. Those that can move south do so. Those who cannot are dying in increasing numbers.
While this goes on, Israel has turned its fire on UNRWA, often literally.
Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, called the vote to ban the agency a “dangerous precedent.” Outlawing the relief agency violates the principles of the UN charter and Israel’s obligations under international law.
UNRWA only exists to take care of Palestinian refugees. The state that created the problem is denouncing the primary relief organisation. If Israel really wanted to get rid of UNRWA, then it could stop the oppression, work towards a just settlement, and promote a state for Palestinians. Then there would be no need for UNRWA and no work for it to do. Instead, there is greater misery and greater bloodshed.
Since October 2023, 237 UNRWA workers have been killed. Two hundred buildings used by the agency have been destroyed or damaged. That’s two thirds of all UNRWA infrastructure in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge in these buildings, many of which had once been schools. 560 Palestinians who sheltered in UNRWA facilities have also died.
The assault on this relief agency has spread beyond the border of Gaza. UNRWA’s office in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, was bulldozed by Israeli forces. Lazzarini issued a statement saying that the office had been severely damaged and was no longer usable.
The fact that Israel is capable of tearing up all international law, and that it treats the United Nations with contempt, is only possible because it has its “ironclad” guarantee of support from the USA. There are hollow calls for Israel to moderate its behaviour, to find ways to end the conflict. The US has made vague threats of limiting arms shipments. These are all hollow calls. Israel feels safe in the embrace of its major sponsor, the USA, despite the charade of finger wagging.
ATTACKS ON UN
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, spoke at a session of the Security Council, immediately after the anti-UNRWA legislation was passed. In his speech he made reference to the fact that UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, had been declared persona non grata and barred from entry into Israel. Mansour also reminded the Security Council that Israeli forces have “killed, detained and tortured UN staff and UN peacekeepers.”
He went on to point out that many countries, member states of the UN, have condemned the outlawing of UNRWA, “and yet Israel still sits among us and utilises its seat to incite against the UN. When will the condemnations lead to actions and accountability?” Mansour made it clear – the Israeli decision is “a new level in this war against the UN and an integral part of an all-out assault on the Palestinian people.”
He is right. Israel, in wantonly destroying UNRWA infrastructure, killing its workers, destroying its capacity to do the work it has been doing for seven decades, is waging war on the UN. By declaring the agency to be a terrorist organisation, the Israeli military will have carte blanche to increase their attacks.
The ban will not come into effect until the end of January 2025, cold comfort for those already suffering. With or without any legal backing, the Israeli forces have been, as Riyad Mansour, said, waging war on the UN.
GENOCIDE CONTINUES
While the world looks on, aghast at such brazen behaviour, the tanks, the planes, the soldiers go about their grisly work. The last weeks in Gaza have seen some of the worst atrocities yet recorded.
In just one day, two separate attacks on residential buildings in northern Gaza left 84 dead, 54 of them children. It was the same day that the USA repeated its rather tired mantra that more needs to be done to find a way to a ceasefire. Hamas made it clear that Israel was not taking any talks of a ceasefire seriously.
Northern Gaza remains cut off from aid. A statement, signed by the heads of UNICEF, the World Food Programme and other UN agencies, calls the situation “apocalyptic.” The statement declares that “the entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.” The scale of the crisis in northern Gaza is now such that humanitarian efforts are not able to keep up with demand, “due to constraints on access for aid workers … Basic, life-saving goods are not available. Humanitarians are not safe to do their work and are blocked by Israeli forces and by insecurity from reaching people in need.”
After all this, the Knesset calls UNRWA a terrorist organisation.
