<div dir="ltr">
<h1 class="gmail-single_title">Palestinians are paying the price for the UN’s colonial complicity with Israel</h1>
<div class="gmail-article-author"><h3>By <a href="https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250011"> Ramona Wadi </a></h3></div>
<p class="gmail-single_date">Friday 1-March-2024 - <font size="1"><a href="https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/palestinians-are-paying-the-price-for-the-uns-colonial-complicity-with-israel/">https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/palestinians-are-paying-the-price-for-the-uns-colonial-complicity-with-israel/</a></font></p>
<div style="margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px">
<center>
</center>
</div>
<div class="gmail-post_content">
<p>The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was established
in December 1949 and commenced its operations in May 1950, supposedly
until a solution to what the UN termed “the Palestinian refugee problem”
is found. In those early days of Israeli colonization, the UN had the
option to oppose colonialism in Palestine. Instead, it opted to set up a
humanitarian framework for Palestinians while allowing Israel to expand
further into Palestinian territory.</p>
<p>Let us for a moment take note of three aspects of this issue:
Israel’s illegal colonization, humanitarian aid, and the legitimate
Palestinian right of return. Humanitarian aid cannot compensate
Palestinians for Israel’s settler-colonial expansion, and neither has it
aided the prospects for the Palestinian right of return.</p>
<p>The collusion between Israel and the UN cannot be clearer than in these five months of genocide in Gaza.</p>
<p>Take UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s recent comments to the
UN Human Rights Council, for example. The Israeli narrative prevails in
his words; Gaza is presented through the Israeli lens: “Israel’s
military operations in Gaza following the horrific terror attacks by
Hamas on 7 October.” Guterres also reminded the UNHRC that he invoked
Article 99, a sensational but meaningless move considering that the UN
allowed Israel to set itself above any parameters set by international
law. He describes humanitarian aid as insufficient, which is true, but
also fails to mention that the UN is allowing Israel to deliberately
starve Palestinians in Gaza. And he repeats the call “for a humanitarian
ceasefire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”
What genocide? Guterres has yet to acknowledge the connection between
Israel’s actions and genocide, let alone the UN’s complicity in the
slaughter.</p>
<p>Prior to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, humanitarian aid for the
Palestinians was already insufficient. The UN’s selective amnesia needs
to be corrected. Humanitarian aid is meant as a temporary alleviation of
distress, not a decades-long project existing alongside Israel’s
colonial expansion. Besides this intentional complicity in ensuring
Palestinians do not get their basic needs met in order to prevent them
from exercising their legitimate rights of resistance and liberation,
Palestinians in Gaza were also subjected to restrictions on humanitarian
aid and deprived of adequate supplies. That was before 7 October.
Israel has now shifted from the policy of “putting Palestinians on a
diet,” as Dov Weissglas once said so shamelessly, to mass starvation.
Snipers have targeted trucks carrying aid; settlers have blocked aid
from reaching Gaza; and many Palestinians have been killed by Israel
while trying to get some meagre supplies. The first victims of Israel’s
genocidal mass starvation plan in action have been announced, and all
Guterres can say is, “Humanitarian aid is still completely
insufficient.”</p>
<p>Israel has laid bare the cruelty of the UN’s humanitarian paradigm by
attacking both humanitarian aid and the Palestinian people for decades.
Yet even now, with evidence of mass starvation as a tool of genocide,
Guterres’s only fear is that, “An all-out Israeli offensive in Rafah…
would put the final nail in the coffin of our aid programs.” Guterres,
your humanitarian paradigm was doomed from the start. How does it feel
to see the humanitarian façade crumbling and have no Plan B, other than
relying on Israel to finish the job, to put it crudely? Palestinians,
however, have had a Plan B all along that should have been Plan A from
the beginning: decolonization. The UN has nowhere to turn if the
humanitarian paradigm is destroyed, other than align itself further with
Israel. Unfortunately, the Palestinians will continue to pay the price
for this colonial complicity.</p>
<p><em>-Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist,
book reviewer and blogger. Her writing covers a range of themes in
relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America. Her article appeared in
MEMO.</em></p></div>
</div>