[News] Why Israel's war on UNRWA is so sinister

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Why Israel's war on UNRWA is so sinister

Tel Aviv's goal of dismantling the UN agency in the name of security is a
strategic move aimed not only at depriving Palestinian refugees of
lifesaving assistance, but completely eradicating the notion that they will
one day return to the lands they were expelled from.

William Van Wagenen <https://thecradle.co/authors/william-van-wagenen>

FEB 15, 2024 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/why-israels-war-on-unrwa-is-so-sinister

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA) is facing the gravest existential crisis in its 74-year history, as
funding cuts by several western countries come on top of ongoing atrocities
perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.

The UN agency is unique
<https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/news-releases/un-general-assembly-renews-unrwa-mandate>
in being the only one dedicated to a specific group of refugees in specific
areas, and the only relief organization that operates a full-fledged
educational system. UNRWA is also the only organization mandated to work in
Gaza
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/unrwa-funding-israel-gaza-war-palestine-aid-albanese-government-pressure#:~:text=UNRWA%20is%20the%20only%20UN,after%20the%20exodus%20of%20donors.>
and distribute aid to the two million people currently trapped and starved
in the besieged enclave.

To compound these challenges, the occupation wants to see it dismantled.

*UNRWA must be destroyed*

In January, Israel alleged that Palestinian members of UNRWA’s staff
participated in the resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October,
leading the US and 18 other nations to swiftly suspend funding for the
organization.

The suspensions were met with shock, as UNRWA plays a key role in providing
food and medicine to starving Gazans struggling to survive Israel’s siege
and bombardment of the coastal enclave.

However, Israel’s allegations are not based on any evidence. They are
instead part of a classified plan prepared in advance by Israel’s foreign
ministry to destroy UNRWA. It believes that UNRWA “works against Israel’s
interests” by perpetuating the dream of the right of return of Palestinian
refugees and the idea of armed struggle against occupation.

The foreign ministry plan leaked
<https://www.jns.org/israel-wants-unrwa-out-of-gaza/> to Israel’s Channel
12 on 28 December, set out a three-stage process to eliminate UNRWA in
Gaza, using the Hamas-led resistance operation as a pretext:

First, prepare a case alleging UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas; second,
reduce UNRWA’s field of activity and find replacement service providers;
and third, transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to another entity.

Channel 12 noted that Israel wants to move slowly, given that the US
government sees UNRWA as crucial to humanitarian efforts in Gaza. The
foreign ministry is seeking to gradually build the case for ousting the
organization as part of the discussions on “the day after” the war – should
Hamas be dismantled.

*A sequence of events*

According to a report
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/world/middleeast/united-nations-gaza-unrwa.html>
by *The* *New York Times*, the “sequence of events” that led the US to
suspend UNRWA funding began on 18 January when Amir Weissbrod, a deputy
director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, met with Philippe
Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA in Tel Aviv.

Weissbrod showed Lazzarini a dossier from Israeli intelligence claiming
that 12 UNRWA employees had participated in the 7 October attacks.

After the meeting in Israel, Lazzarini made no effort to confirm the
validity of the claims. Instead, he flew to New York to meet with UN
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and immediately began firing the
employees, a UN official said.

The *Guardian* reported
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/09/head-of-unwra-says-he-followed-reverse-due-process-in-sacking-accused-gaza-staff>
that Lazzarini was later asked in a press conference if he had looked into
whether there was any evidence for the allegations presented to him by
Weissbrod.

“No,” Lazzarini replied, “the investigation is going on now.”

Lazzarini said he made the “exceptional, swift decision” due to “the
explosive nature of the claims,” rather than any evidence.

Lazzarini said he did not even read the dossier himself because it was in
Hebrew. Instead, Weissbrod “was reading this and translating for me,” he
said.

*How did the US know?*

The same *New York Times* report notes that UNRWA informed US officials
about the allegations on 24 January. Just two days later, US Secretary of
State Antony Blinken announced the suspension of funding to UNRWA.

Shockingly, the State Department made the announcement amid reports that
Gaza was on the brink of famine, and despite acknowledging
<https://www.state.gov/statement-on-unrwa-allegations/> that “UNRWA plays a
critical role in providing lifesaving assistance to Palestinians, including
essential food, medicine, shelter.”

Like Lazzarini, Blinken made the decision without seeking any evidence from
Israel, but solely based on the supposedly serious nature of the
allegations alone. Blinken justified his decision to suspend aid to
starving Palestinians by saying
<https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240205-as-donors-suspend-critical-funding-to-unrwa-allegations-against-staff-remain-murky?utm_term=France24_en&utm_campaign=twitter&utm_source=nonli&utm_medium=social>,
“We haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But
they are highly, highly credible.”

In a seemingly coordinated effort, other countries – including Germany,
Britain, and Australia – swiftly followed suit. Even Australian Foreign
Minister Penny Wong acknowledged
<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-08/israel-senator-wong-request-evidence-unrwa/103444622?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=twitter&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web>
suspending aid without first receiving any evidence from Israel or even
asking Lazzarini to share any evidence he might have.

The funding crisis escalated to such an extent that Juliette Touma, the
UNRWA director of communications, said
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqG2yeF_4sg> that after “decades of
working together,” in “just over 24 hours, nine of our donors suspended
funding to UNRWA.”

*Another dodgy dossier*

As criticism of the aid suspensions mounted, Israeli foreign ministry
officials released a dossier to several foreign news organizations.

But after seeing the dossier, both the *Financial Times*
<https://www.ft.com/content/e326a1d3-7b45-4609-8179-dfb6a66abae9> and the
UK’s Channel 4
<https://www.channel4.com/news/israels-evidence-of-unrwa-hamas-allegations-examined>
reported that it provided “no evidence” for the claims.

Former UNRWA head Chris Gunness compared
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIlEUF5Iqwc> it to the “dodgy dossier”
used by Tony Blair to take Britain to war in Iraq.

“There is no actual evidence. There are accusations,” Gunness concluded.

Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, tried to justify
its refusal to provide any actual evidence by claiming, “the very nature of
the allegations makes it impossible for Israel to share all the evidence it
has with UNRWA.”

“They think that we can give them intelligence information, knowing that
some of their employees work for Hamas? Are you serious?” he asked.

But Israeli propagandist and spokesperson Eylon Levy declined to say if
Israel had provided evidence even to the US and UK governments. “I’m not
personally aware of what material may have been passed on between our
intelligence agencies,” he stated
<https://x.com/warcrimeswatch/status/1757576692619415802?s=20> to Channel 4
when pressed for proof of the claims.

*Links to Hamas?*

The Israeli foreign ministry continued to implement the three-step leaked
plan to destroy UNRWA by making additional allegations of UNRWA’s
cooperation with Hamas.

On 29 January, the *Wall Street Journal* (WSJ) reported
<https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/at-least-12-u-n-agency-employees-involved-in-oct-7-attacks-intelligence-reports-say-a7de8f36>
claims based on Israeli intelligence that “1,200 of UNRWA’s roughly 12,000
employees in Gaza has links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and
about half have close relatives who belong to the Islamist militant groups.”

The article also provided no evidence, citing only Israeli intelligence,
and was co-written by Carrie Keller-Lynn, an American who volunteered
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8kur583Vl0> for the Israeli military and
has a personal relationship with an Israeli army spokesperson.

Even if true, the allegations are meaningless. Hamas is the governing party
in Gaza, making it self-evident that many UNRWA employees would be
sympathetic or have family ties to the resistance movement.

Similarly, it would be unsurprising if an employee of an Israeli NGO or aid
group was sympathetic to the Israeli army or had family members in the
ruling Likud party.

As *Haaretz *noted
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-28/ty-article/.premium/unrwa-is-riddled-with-hamas-but-israel-has-no-alternative/0000018d-5122-d3ab-a5cf-53bf4b370000>,
UNRWA employees in the West Bank and other countries where the organization
operates are usually more aligned with whatever Palestinian faction is
dominant in that area.

*‘We could not verify this’*

The Israeli foreign ministry's plan to paint UNRWA as linked to Hamas soon
continued with new and bizarre allegations that Hamas had placed a massive
data center directly underneath the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.

The *Times of Israel* claimed
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/directly-beneath-unrwas-gaza-headquarters-idf-uncovers-top-secret-hamas-data-center/>
that the data center was “built precisely under the location where Israel
would not consider looking initially, let alone target in an airstrike.”

But Israel has been bombing
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/07/israelgaza-attack-un-school-gaza-potential-war-crime-must-be-investigated/>
UNRWA schools and other UN facilities for decades, including
<https://mondoweiss.net/2020/04/remembering-the-qana-massacres/> when large
numbers of civilians have been sheltering in them. No Hamas leader would
imagine this would provide it any protection.

But as OSINT analyst Michael Kobs has shown
<https://x.com/MichaKobs/status/1756821215212130459?s=20>, the alleged data
center the Israeli army showed to foreign journalists was not under the
UNRWA headquarters.

Kobs also notes that when *Tageschau* journalist Sophie van der Tann was
taken through a tunnel to see the alleged data center, she stated
<https://www.tagesschau.de/newsticker/liveblog-nahost-samstag-106.html>,
“We could not verify” it was under the UNRWA headquarters.

*Erasing the right of return *

But why is Israel determined to destroy UNRWA?

One reason is Israel’s ongoing effort to slowly starve Gaza’s 2.3 million
inhabitants.

At the beginning of the war on 7 October, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
notoriously ordered
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/>
a “complete siege” of Gaza, saying, “There will be no electricity, no food,
no fuel, everything is closed.” The late January campaign to suspend UNRWA
funding then came at a time when “famine” was already “around the corner”
in Gaza, according
<https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/05/middleeast/gaza-famine-un-warning-intl-hnk/index.html>
to UN Emergency Relief Chief Martin Griffiths. Israeli officials knew that
suspending funding for UNRWA at this time would only bring famine closer.
One Israeli military official acknowledged
<https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/rafah-hamas-israel-refugee-crisis-fd06a73d>
to the WSJ on 13 February that “Without UNRWA, there is no humanitarian aid
in Gaza.”

But there is another reason Israel wants to destroy UNRWA, which predates
the current war.

Palestinian political analyst and researcher Hanin Abou Salem explained
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/6/22/why-is-netanyahu-trying-to-disband-the-unrwa>
that Israel wants to dismantle UNRWA because it transmits refugee status
from generation to generation, which keeps the right of return for
Palestinian refugees alive and “ensures that their hopes for returning to
their ancestral homeland do not perish with the death of the original 1948
refugees.”

If UNRWA is dismantled and replaced by the United Nations High Commission
for Refugees (UNHCR), as Israel hopes, this will guarantee that
Palestinians can only be resettled in third countries and never return to
the homes and lands from which Israel forcibly expelled their grandparents
during the Nakba.

In 2017, Israel launched a propaganda campaign against UNRWA and succeeded
in convincing the Trump administration to cut around $300 million in
funding to the organization the following year, only for the Biden
administration to restore $235 million in 2021.

*Destroying an idea*

But with the start of the war on 7 October, Israel feels it has a second
chance, not only to destroy the right of return, but also the “idea” of
armed struggle to achieve it.

Noga Arbell, a researcher at the right-wing Kohelet Forum, recently
explained
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-02-01/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israels-beef-isnt-with-unrwa-its-with-palestinian-refugees-right-of-return/0000018d-6624-d971-a38f-77b6da230000>
that UNRWA needs to be “annihilated” because it is the “source of the
idea.”

“It gives birth to more and more terrorists in all kinds of ways. UNRWA
needs to be wiped out immediately – now – or Israel will miss the window of
opportunity."

UNRWA allegedly ‘gives birth to terrorists’ through its 706 schools, where
some 543,075 Palestine refugee children receive free basic education.

In Gaza, UNRWA uses Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks and supplements
these with its own materials. Israel has long been irked that these
textbooks include lessons on the life of one of the most famous symbols of
Palestinian armed resistance, an 18-year-old young woman and Palestinian
refugee born in Lebanon, Dalal al-Mughrabi.

In 1978, Mughrabi led a group of Palestinian guerrillas from PLO chairman
Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party to carry out an operation in Israel.

According to the Israeli version of events
<https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2023-12-12/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-unrwa-became-the-second-most-important-organization-in-gaza/0000018c-5deb-d798-adac-fdefaf450000>,
Mughrabi “led one of the deadliest suicide attacks in Israel's history,” by
hijacking a bus and taking its passengers hostage on the highway between
Haifa and Tel Aviv. During the operation, the bus exploded, and “38
Israelis were murdered, including 13 children.”

Israel claims that UNRWA is, therefore, teaching “mass murder” by using PA
books that encourage everyone to be like Mughrabi.

However, Palestinians claim that Israeli forces killed the hostages.

*You can kill a revolutionary, but not the revolution *

According to a 2008 report
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/16/lebanon.israelandthepalestinians1>
in the *Guardian*, Mughrabi and the Palestinian guerillas intended to
attack the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv and hijacked two buses carrying
civilians on the coastal road near Haifa. Along the way, they engaged in an
intense 15-hour gun battle with Israeli forces.

Palestinians maintain the bus exploded, killing the guerillas and hostages,
after it was fired on from the air by Israeli helicopters or elite Israel
commandos, in a possible early instance of the mass Hannibal Directive
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/13145>.

Israeli forces implemented <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/18512> the
Hannibal Directive on 7 October, killing large numbers of their own
civilians – and burning many of them alive – using attack helicopters,
tanks, and drones, while blaming all these deaths on Hamas.

Even if Israel succeeds in executing its plan to destroy UNRWA, while
starving and bombing tens of thousands to death in Gaza, it will not be
able to erase the spirit of Dalal al-Mughrabi and the thousands of martyrs
like her who have sacrificed themselves for the freedom of Palestinians.

Within 24 hours of the unsubstantiated accusations against UNRWA, the US,
the UK, and 14 other nations suspended funding to the organization the *Wall
Street Journal *described as the “main pillar of operations to move food
aid, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza.”

The abruptness of these cuts was particularly jolting in light of the looming
threat of famine
<https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/05/middleeast/gaza-famine-un-warning-intl-hnk/index.html>,
as highlighted by Griffiths, who warned that Gaza was on the brink of a
humanitarian catastrophe.

These drastic measures were instigated by allegations based on a dubious
six-page dossier, arguably part of a meticulously crafted plan orchestrated
by Israel's foreign ministry, aimed at dismantling the humanitarian and
educational infrastructure serving internally displaced Palestinians.

This concerted effort to undermine UNRWA is nothing short of a calculated
strategy to exert control over the narrative surrounding Palestinian
refugees and to once again reshape the demographics in Palestine.
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