Israel legalizes its plan to liquidate UNRWA
On Monday, October 28, the Israeli parliament passed by an overwhelming majority two pieces of legislation aimed at banning the UN refugee agency (UNRWA). The agency will no longer be able to act on the entire Palestinian Territory (West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) that Israel has illegally occupied since 1967, as confirmed by the International Court of Justice on July 19, 2024. The closure of the UNRWA headquarters in Jerusalem, already attacked several times by settlers who tried to set it on fire, is recorded.
With this vote, Israel jeopardizes humanitarian assistance for millions of people by opposing the United Nations Charter and is once again violating its obligations under international law. This is the final stage of an operation to discredit and delegitimize UNRWA, with the ultimate goal of liquidating this UN agency. Israel wants to prevent it from providing Palestinian refugees with the services they need. Services that are particularly essential in the current context both in Gaza and in the refugee camps in the West Bank where UNWRA intervenes.
These laws are yet another collective punishment against the Palestinian people, whose protection Israel has an obligation to ensure. They will aggravate the already unbearable suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and also throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, with the role of UNRWA being central in the delivery and provision of the little humanitarian aid that Israel allows into the Gaza Strip. .
Despite the destruction of schools and health centers, despite the loss of 233 agents killed by the bombings, UNRWA is making considerable, although insufficient, efforts to prevent the mass extermination of Palestinians from Gaza in the context of this worsening genocide. This is precisely why she is the target of those who seek to annihilate the Palestinian people as a whole.
These laws will also worsen living conditions in refugee camps in the West Bank, where Israel has already been systematically destroying infrastructure and services for months in an attempt to break the pockets of resistance and restore the lives of Palestinians impossible. UNRWA provides education and health services there, among other things.
UNRWA is the UN body that registers Palestine refugees, the card issued to families giving access to services, and serving as proof of their status. By liquidating UNRWA, Israel seeks to rid itself of the issue of Palestine refugees in a deliberate attempt to strip them of their status and right of return.
This new Israeli legislation contravenes not only the fundamental principles of human rights which led to the creation of UNRWA by the United Nations General Assembly but violates a whole series of Israel’s international legal obligations, in particular those arising from the Convention for the Prevention of Genocide and the orders of the International Court of Justice as well as the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court.
Ending UNRWA and its services would not deprive Palestinians of their refugee status but would significantly weaken their livelihoods.
The France Palestine Solidarity Association denounces the inertia of States including France which, despite the alerts launched by officials of the UNWRA or NGOs who warned of Israel’s intentions, have contented themselves with more or less firm condemnations. As members of the UN, States have an obligation to ensure respect for its Charter as well as the agencies created by it; this is particularly the responsibility of France, a permanent member of the Security Council.
They must impose the presence of UNRWA wherever it has received its mandate (West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan) and guarantee more than ever the conditions for its functioning by putting an end to Israel’s impunity which has lasted since too long. The credibility, even the survival, of the UN is at stake, too often degraded by the passivity and complicit renunciation of its members.
The AFPS National Office, October 30, 2024
Photo: UNRWA provides humanitarian response to 2.2 million people © UNRWA