Isreal Bans UN Aid Agency To Palestine

Israel’s much-criticised banning of the United Nations Palestinian aid agency (UNRWA) is part of a broader attempt to undermine the rights of Palestinian refugees and expel them from the occupied territories, analysts have told Al Jazeera.

The ban on the agency takes effect in three months and will exacerbate an already catastrophic situation in Gaza and the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem.

“The latest legislation is part of a campaign [by Israel] to kill any aid infrastructure,” said Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel and Palestine for International Crisis Group, a non-profit dedicated to conflict resolution.

“But it is also part of a broader objective to permanently remove Palestinians from their land,” she told Al Jazeera.

As the largest aid provider to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has played an instrumental role in keeping people alive in Gaza, where civilians face a risk of genocide, according to the International Court of Justice.

Over the last year, Israel has uprooted almost the entire population of 2.3 million people and killed some 43,000 in Gaza. The war started after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, during which 1,139 people were killed, and about 250 were taken captive.

Palestinians in Gaza have been living under an Israeli-imposed land, sea and air blockade since 2007, leading rights groups to refer to the enclave as an “open-air prison”.

Israel now appears to be trying to depopulate Gaza by terminating UNRWA’s services, an irreplaceable lifeline for the population, according to analysts.

“It seems very clear from the way Israel is carrying out this war…that Israel is trying to make life so difficult in Gaza that people leave,” said Khaled Elgindy, an expert on Israel and Palestine and a senior fellow for the Middle East Institute.

Many Palestinians ended up stateless, languishing in the occupied territories and refugee camps in neighbouring states, while Israel was recognised as a full member of the United Nations.

Israeli and US leaders traditionally saw UNRWA as a way to pacify Palestinians by providing them vital provisions without granting them political rights, explained Elgindy.

Israeli attack destroys medical supplies at Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital
Show more playlist items
However, he added that Israel and the United States have increasingly tried to sabotage the relief agency over the past decade.

Former US President Donald Trump went so far as to suspend his country’s support for UNRWA in 2018, triggering a funding crisis.

Palestinian refugees saw Trump’s move as an attack on their right to return to their homeland, which UNRWA enshrines.

Elgindy believes that Israel is now explicitly trying to undermine that right by erasing any legitimate reference to the Nakba or Palestinian refugees.

UNRWA is a reminder that Israel’s creation came at the expense – the dispossession – of the Palestinian people, and that’s what Israel wants to erase from history.

Al Jazeera/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma