[News] Israel’s allies accelerate genocide by freezing UNRWA funds

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israels-allies-accelerate-genocide-freezing-unrwa-funds>
Israel’s allies accelerate genocide by freezing UNRWA funds

Maureen Clare Murphy
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> Rights and
Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 28 January
2024
------------------------------
[image: A boy carries a metal tray while walking on clay-like soil in
between plastic-sheeted tents]

A boy at an encampment for displaced Palestinians at an UNRWA school in
Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, 11 January.
APA images

Several of Israel’s allies have suspended funding
<https://www.reuters.com/world/britain-italy-finland-pause-funding-un-refugee-agency-gaza-2024-01-27/>
to the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) following allegations that
12 of its employees were involved in the 7 October attacks led by Hamas.

The Israeli allegations appear to be based off of confessions made by
Palestinian detainees, likely under conditions of torture. Human rights
experts warn that suspending aid to UNRWA at present is a violation of the
1948 Genocide Convention.

UNRWA is the principal provider of humanitarian assistance and second-largest
employer
<https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/242-unrwas-reckoning-preserving-un-agency-serving-palestinian-refugees>
in the Gaza Strip, where two-thirds of its population of 2.3 million
Palestinians are refugees.

Israel prevents Palestinian refugees from exercising their right to return
to lands it now occupies because doing so “would alter the demographic
character of Israel to the point of eliminating it as a Jewish state,” as
the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia stated in a 2017
report
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/top-israeli-rights-group-breaks-apartheid-taboo>
.

UNRWA says the funding suspension by some of its largest donors
<https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/27/world/israel-hamas-gaza-news>
would endanger its aid work in Gaza, where famine is setting in as Israel
uses food and other life essentials as weapons of war
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-cuts-food-water-millions-palestinians-it-calls-human-animals>
.

More than 150 of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza have been killed
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-111>
since 7 October – the largest loss of staff
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143512> during a conflict in the
78-year history of the United Nations.

Palestinians who sought protection under the UN flag have been killed as
UNRWA facilities have been repeatedly struck. Last week, more than a dozen
Palestinians were killed
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-fire-kills-palestinians-waiting-food-aid-and-un-shelter>
after Israeli tank fire hit a building in an UNRWA training compound in
Khan Younis where 30,000 people were sheltering after being displaced from
other areas of Gaza.

More than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October and
thousands more are missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings while
many others have died from hunger and disease after Israel imposed a
complete siege on the territory.
In recent days, Israeli protesters blocked aid trucks
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-103>
from delivering urgently needed assistance through the Kerem Shalom
crossing. The UN says that Israel is systematically denying
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-insists-there-no-hunger-humanitarian-crisis-gaza>
humanitarian access to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in northern
Gaza, where people are increasingly starving.

Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said
<https://twitter.com/MichaelFakhri/status/1751448773790986279> that before
the defunding of UNRWA, “famine was imminent” in Gaza. With the “collective
punishment” over “the alleged actions of a small number of employees,”
Fakhri added, “famine is now inevitable.”

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the embattled agency, said
<https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/unrwa%E2%80%99s-lifesaving-aid-may-end-due-funding-suspension>
that he was shocked by the suspension of funding after UNRWA terminated the
contracts of the accused staff members. He said that the “highest
investigative authority in the UN system, has already been seized of this
very serious matter.”

Lazzarini said that it was “immensely irresponsible to sanction an agency
and an entire community it serves because of allegations of criminal acts
against some individuals.”

“The lives of people in Gaza depend on this support and so does regional
stability,” he added.
UN to cooperate in prosecution

António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said
<https://twitter.com/Raminho/status/1751479103121678539> on Sunday that “of
the 12 people implicated, nine were immediately identified and terminated”
by UNRWA. One of the UNRWA employees “is confirmed dead, and the identity
of the two others is being clarified,” he added.

He signaled the UN’s readiness to cooperate in the prosecution of the
accused individuals.

The decision to suspend support of UNRWA affects virtually all Palestinians
enduring Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza, which the International
Court of Justice said on Friday was plausibly a genocide.
The move also stands to harm millions of Palestinian refugees living in the
West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria who depend on the chronically
underfunded
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-warns-catastrophe-palestinians-aid-dries>
agency for government-like services.

The US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Finland
based their decision to suspend funding to UNRWA on information provided by
Israel’s domestic spy agency the Shin Bet and military intelligence.

An unnamed senior Israeli official told *Axios* reporter Barak Ravid
<https://www.axios.com/2024/01/26/unrwa-gaza-hamas-israel-attack>, himself
an Israeli military reservist who is frequently fed information by that
country’s spy agencies, that “a lot of the intelligence is a result of
interrogations of militants who were arrested during the [7 October]
attack.”

This gives rise to serious concern that the aforementioned countries are
withholding critically needed assistance to millions of Palestinians on the
basis of intelligence that was extracted under torture.

Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has previously
admitted
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-using-its-national-anthem-noise-torture-against-detainees>
that measures that may amount to the use of torture are being used against
alleged members of the Nukhba commando unit of the Qassam Brigades, the
military wing of Hamas.

Statements made by Israel Prison Service director Katy Perry and other
officials strongly suggest that Palestinians suspected of affiliation with
the Nukhba force are being systematically tortured.
Torture

Israel’s Channel 12 network reported last month on a “high-level,
classified foreign ministry report” that lays out a three-stage process by
which UNRWA would be pushed out of Gaza. The first stage “involves a
comprehensive report on alleged UNRWA cooperation” and “entanglement” with
Hamas, *The Times of Israel* reported
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-hoping-to-push-unrwa-out-of-gaza-post-war-report/>
.

In this latest attack on UNRWA, which Israel has long sought to defame and
destroy, Tel Aviv may both be following that foreign ministry plan and
operating from a familiar playbook.

In 2016, Israel arrested Mohammed El Halabi
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mohammed-el-halabi>, an aid worker
with the international Christian charity World Vision, over fabricated
charges of funneling international aid to Hamas.

In their classified ruling made in 2022, a panel of Israeli judges based
their verdict almost entirely on a confession that El Halabi purportedly
made to an informant after he was allegedly beaten by Israeli interrogators.

The UN human rights office has “continuously raised serious concerns” in El
Halabi’s case over “cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment that may amount
to torture.”

The Australian government, which provided around a quarter of World
Vision’s budget in Gaza between 2014 and 2016, commissioned an external
audit that “found no evidence of diversion of funds and no material
evidence that El Halabi was part of or working for Hamas.”

Despite this, Australia suspended its funding to World Vision in Gaza,
which in turn suspended its operations
<https://www.worldvision.org/lp/update-child-sponsorship-gaza#1470867014179-6ee41b65-c491>
in the territory.

World Vision stood behind El Halabi and stated upon his conviction in 2022
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-sentences-gaza-aid-worker-12-years-after-sham-trial>
that “the arrest, six-year trial, unjust verdict and [12-year] sentence are
emblematic of actions that hinder humanitarian work in Gaza and the West
Bank.”

Israel similarly criminalized
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-experts-press-action-over-terror-designations>
several prominent Palestinian human rights and social service
organizations, including three groups engaged with the International
Criminal Court’s investigation in Palestine. Israel branded the groups as
“terror” organizations in an effort to starve them of funding from European
donors.

UNRWA attempted to safeguard its operations in Gaza by summarily
terminating the employees that Israel accuses of involvement in the 7
October attacks.

“Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held
accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” Lazzarini said
<https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/serious-allegations-against-unrwa-staff-gaza-strip>
on Friday – language that the UN secretary-general echoed on Sunday
<https://twitter.com/Raminho/status/1751479103121678539>.

Analyst Mouin Rabbani said <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egp4pfCzo40> in
an interview with journalist Owen Jones that the UN “made several missteps”
in its response to Israel’s accusations. He said that UNRWA’s termination
of its employees “can be read as somehow validating” Israel’s accusations
and may have been viewed by the US and others as “an admission of guilt.”

That the Israeli accusations appear to be based on confessions extracted
under torture “should raise question marks pending further investigation,”
Rabbani added.

Three prominent Palestinian human rights organizations – Al-Haq, Al Mezan
and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – accuse
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/22337.html> Israeli authorities of
torturing and otherwise abusing people arbitrarily arrested in Gaza.

The Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also says
<https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6082/In-Israeli-army-camps,-Gazan-detainees-subjected-to-torture-and-degrading-treatment>
that it has collected testimonies “concerning the systematic torture and
inhumane treatment meted out to Palestinian detainees in Israeli army
camps” after being forcibly disappeared in Gaza.
“Directly violating Genocide Convention”

The US announced that it was suspending its support of UNRWA immediately
after the International Court of Justice in The Hague made a
much-anticipated interim ruling that orders Israel to halt genocidal acts
in Gaza
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/world-court-orders-israel-halt-gaza-genocide>
.

The World Court issued several provisional measures while it considers the
full case brought by South Africa, which accuses Israel of violating the
1948 Genocide Convention.

One of the six provisional measures ordered by the court requires that
Israel “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of
urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.”
Under the Genocide Convention, states have a duty to prevent acts of
genocide.

By sanctioning UNRWA, states are “collectively punishing millions of
Palestinians at the most critical time,” Francesca Albanese, the UN special
rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, stated
<https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1751332704056930475> on Saturday.

By doing so, Albanese added, those countries are “most likely violating
their obligations under the Genocide Convention.”
She added <https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1751554749659324847>
that the defunding of UNRWA “overtly defies the International Court of
Justice’s order to allow effective humanitarian assistance ‘to address the
adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza.’”

“This will entail legal responsibilities – or the demise of the
international legal system,” Albanese said.

Francis Boyle, the first lawyer
<https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1742177392297144690> to
successfully argue a genocide case at the International Court of Justice,
said that states were going beyond aiding and abetting Israel by cutting
off funding to UNRWA.

Boyle told <https://twitter.com/samhusseini/status/1751318841232122202>
journalist Sam Husseini that “these states are now also directly violating
Genocide Convention article 2(c) by themselves: ‘Deliberately inflicting on
the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part.’”
“Trying to eliminate UNRWA altogether”

“Israel has always hated UNRWA,” former senior UN official Craig Mokhiber
said during an interview with journalist Katie Halper.
“UNRWA represents a lifeline that prevents them from totally destroying
civilian life in Gaza,” Mokhiber explained, and that’s “a threat to
Israel’s ethnonationalist plan for the occupied territory.”

He added that the survivors of the genocide in Gaza “will rely upon a
well-functioning UNRWA. That’s going to be the difference between life and
death today and for many days and weeks and months going forward.”
As the scholar Dalal Yassine wrote for The Electronic Intifada
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/end-unrwa/35786> last year, “for
decades, Israel and its supporters in the United States have targeted UNRWA
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/trump-cut-causes-worst-financial-crisis-unrwa-history>.”


Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has called for UNRWA to be
dismantled
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-israel-hopes-make-palestinian-refugees-disappear>
because it “perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem.”

“The Trump administration adopted similar rhetoric and sought to change the
definition of a Palestinian refugee
<https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/trump-palestinians-unrwa-funding/569167/>,”
Yassine observed.
The Biden administration renewed funding to UNRWA that was cut by Trump but
“linked funding to a number of issues related to the identity and national
rights of the Palestinian people,” according to Yassine.

The eminent Palestinian author and historian Salman Abu Sitta told The
Electronic Intifada last year that the US and Israel were “trying to
eliminate UNRWA altogether by transferring its activities to other
agencies.”

“This means that Palestinians will not have a right of return and they can
only seek food and shelter elsewhere, away from their homeland,” he added.

UNRWA has been dealt a potential death blow as 1.3 million Palestinians are now
concentrated in Rafah
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-fire-kills-palestinians-waiting-food-aid-and-un-shelter>
along Gaza’s southern boundary with Egypt. The UN human rights office has
raised “grave alarm” that they “may be forced out of Gaza” with any
escalation of hostilities in that area, which may be imminent
<https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-783992>.

Indicating a growing division
<https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2023/11/27/can-a-divided-eu-have-any-meaningful-policy-on-gaza>
among European countries regarding Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, at
least two states have declared their intention to continue funding UNRWA.

Instead of sanctioning UNRWA, the government of Norway reaffirmed its
support <https://twitter.com/NorwayPalestine/status/1751284913070846409> of
the Palestinian people through the agency.

“We need to distinguish between what individuals may have done, and what
UNRWA stands for,” Norway’s representative office to the Palestinian
Authority stated on Saturday.

“The organization’s tens of thousands of employees in Gaza, the West Bank
and the region are playing a crucial role in distributing aid, saving lives
and safeguarding basic needs and rights,” Norway’s office added.

Likewise, Ireland’s foreign minister said
<https://twitter.com/MichealMartinTD/status/1751227813242315162> that the
country, which provided $19.5 million in 2023, “has no plans to suspend
funding for UNRWA’s vital Gaza work.”
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