<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-top-anchor"></div>
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" lang="en" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israels-allies-accelerate-genocide-freezing-unrwa-funds">electronicintifada.net</a>
<div class="gmail-domain-border"></div>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel’s allies accelerate genocide by freezing UNRWA funds</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy">Maureen Clare Murphy</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-blog"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability">Rights and Accountability</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">28 January 2024</span></span> </p>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<span>
<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-01/110124_dair_el-balah_naa_2_0011.jpg?itok=9W3sHjnX×tamp=1706412671" width="416" height="285" alt="A boy carries a metal tray while walking on clay-like soil in between plastic-sheeted tents" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
</span>
<p>A boy at an encampment for displaced Palestinians at an UNRWA school in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, 11 January.</p><small>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>Several of Israel’s allies have <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/britain-italy-finland-pause-funding-un-refugee-agency-gaza-2024-01-27/">suspended funding</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>UNRWA is the principal provider of humanitarian assistance and <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/242-unrwas-reckoning-preserving-un-agency-serving-palestinian-refugees">second-largest employer</a> in the Gaza Strip, where two-thirds of its population of 2.3 million Palestinians are refugees.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/top-israeli-rights-group-breaks-apartheid-taboo">stated in a 2017 report</a>.</p>
<p>UNRWA says the funding suspension by some of its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/27/world/israel-hamas-gaza-news">largest donors</a> would endanger its aid work in Gaza, where famine is setting in as Israel uses food and other life essentials as <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-cuts-food-water-millions-palestinians-it-calls-human-animals">weapons of war</a>.</p>
<p>More than 150 of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza have been <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-111">killed</a> since 7 October – the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143512">largest loss of staff</a> during a conflict in the 78-year history of the United Nations.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-fire-kills-palestinians-waiting-food-aid-and-un-shelter">killed</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.
</p>
In recent days, Israeli protesters <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-103">blocked aid trucks</a> from delivering urgently needed assistance through the Kerem Shalom crossing. The UN says that Israel is <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-insists-there-no-hunger-humanitarian-crisis-gaza">systematically denying</a> humanitarian access to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza, where people are increasingly starving.
<p>Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, <a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelFakhri/status/1751448773790986279">said</a>
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.”</p>
<p>Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the embattled agency, <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/unrwa%E2%80%99s-lifesaving-aid-may-end-due-funding-suspension">said</a>
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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“The lives of people in Gaza depend on this support and so does regional stability,” he added.
</p>
<h2>UN to cooperate in prosecution</h2>
<p>António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, <a href="https://twitter.com/Raminho/status/1751479103121678539">said</a>
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.</p>
<p>He signaled the UN’s readiness to cooperate in the prosecution of the accused individuals.</p>
<p>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.
</p>
The move also stands to harm millions of Palestinian refugees living in
the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria who depend on the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-warns-catastrophe-palestinians-aid-dries">chronically underfunded</a> agency for government-like services.
<p>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.</p>
<p>An unnamed senior Israeli official <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/26/unrwa-gaza-hamas-israel-attack">told <em>Axios</em> reporter Barak Ravid</a>,
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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-using-its-national-anthem-noise-torture-against-detainees">previously admitted</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Torture</h2>
<p>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, <em>The Times of Israel</em> <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-hoping-to-push-unrwa-out-of-gaza-post-war-report/">reported</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In 2016, Israel arrested <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mohammed-el-halabi">Mohammed El Halabi</a>,
an aid worker with the international Christian charity World Vision,
over fabricated charges of funneling international aid to Hamas.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Despite this, Australia suspended its funding to World Vision in Gaza, which in turn <a href="https://www.worldvision.org/lp/update-child-sponsorship-gaza#1470867014179-6ee41b65-c491">suspended its operations</a> in the territory.</p>
<p>World Vision stood behind El Halabi and stated upon his <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-sentences-gaza-aid-worker-12-years-after-sham-trial">conviction in 2022</a>
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.”</p>
<p>Israel similarly <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-experts-press-action-over-terror-designations">criminalized</a>
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.</p>
<p>UNRWA attempted to safeguard its operations in Gaza by summarily
terminating the employees that Israel accuses of involvement in the 7
October attacks.</p>
<p>“Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held
accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” Lazzarini <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/serious-allegations-against-unrwa-staff-gaza-strip">said</a> on Friday – language that the UN secretary-general <a href="https://twitter.com/Raminho/status/1751479103121678539">echoed on Sunday</a>.</p>
<p>Analyst Mouin Rabbani <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egp4pfCzo40">said</a>
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.”</p>
<p>That the Israeli accusations appear to be based on confessions
extracted under torture “should raise question marks pending further
investigation,” Rabbani added.</p>
<p>Three prominent Palestinian human rights organizations – Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – <a href="https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/22337.html">accuse</a> Israeli authorities of torturing and otherwise abusing people arbitrarily arrested in Gaza.</p>
<p>The Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also <a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6082/In-Israeli-army-camps,-Gazan-detainees-subjected-to-torture-and-degrading-treatment">says</a>
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.</p>
<h2>“Directly violating Genocide Convention”</h2>
<p>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 <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/world-court-orders-israel-halt-gaza-genocide">orders Israel to halt genocidal acts in Gaza</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”
</p>
Under the Genocide Convention, states have a duty to prevent acts of genocide.
<p>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, <a href="https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1751332704056930475">stated</a> on Saturday.</p>
<p>By doing so, Albanese added, those countries are “most likely violating their obligations under the Genocide Convention.”
</p>
She <a href="https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1751554749659324847">added</a>
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.’”
<p>“This will entail legal responsibilities – or the demise of the international legal system,” Albanese said.</p>
<p>Francis Boyle, the <a href="https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1742177392297144690">first lawyer</a>
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.</p>
<p>Boyle <a href="https://twitter.com/samhusseini/status/1751318841232122202">told</a>
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.’”</p>
<h2>“Trying to eliminate UNRWA altogether”</h2>
<p>“Israel has always hated UNRWA,” former senior UN official Craig Mokhiber said during an interview with journalist Katie Halper.
</p>
“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.”
<p>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.”
</p>
As the scholar Dalal Yassine <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/end-unrwa/35786">wrote for The Electronic Intifada</a> last year, “for decades, Israel and its supporters in the United States have <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/trump-cut-causes-worst-financial-crisis-unrwa-history">targeted UNRWA</a>.”
<p>Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has called for <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-israel-hopes-make-palestinian-refugees-disappear">UNRWA to be dismantled</a> because it “perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem.”</p>
<p>“The Trump administration adopted similar rhetoric and sought to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/trump-palestinians-unrwa-funding/569167/">change the definition of a Palestinian refugee</a>,” Yassine observed.
</p>
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.
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>UNRWA has been dealt a potential death blow as 1.3 million Palestinians are <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-fire-kills-palestinians-waiting-food-aid-and-un-shelter">now concentrated in Rafah</a>
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 <a href="https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-783992">may be imminent</a>.</p>
<p>Indicating a growing <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2023/11/27/can-a-divided-eu-have-any-meaningful-policy-on-gaza">division</a>
among European countries regarding Israel’s military campaign in Gaza,
at least two states have declared their intention to continue funding
UNRWA.</p>
<p>Instead of sanctioning UNRWA, the government of Norway <a href="https://twitter.com/NorwayPalestine/status/1751284913070846409">reaffirmed its support</a> of the Palestinian people through the agency.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>Likewise, Ireland’s foreign minister <a href="https://twitter.com/MichealMartinTD/status/1751227813242315162">said</a> that the country, which provided $19.5 million in 2023, “has no plans to suspend funding for UNRWA’s vital Gaza work.”</p><br>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div></div>
</div>
</div>