Sordid and calculated attempts to disqualify UNRWA target Palestinian refugees
Twelve employees among the 13,000 who work within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Gaza (UNWRA), were accused without proof, by the communications services of the Israeli Shin Beth, of having participated in the attacks of October 7.
They were immediately suspended by UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, who opened an investigation.
This did not prevent nine Western countries, United States in the leadimmediately followed in particular by the Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany and Finland to decide to interrupt their financial contributions to UNRWA! Full of shame, France quickly followed suit.
The UN institution and all of its teams are brutally accused and penalized. Carrying out their missions in extremely difficult conditions, all employees of the largest humanitarian organization in the Gaza Strip are prevented from providing food aid and hygiene products that it is practically the only one to provide. to a population threatened by famine and spreading epidemics.
More than 2 million Palestinian refugees and internally displaced people depend on UNRWA services to survive due to the war : find shelter, try to eat, be protected. Schools and health centers, already heavily damaged by the bombing, risk closing.
The Netanyahu government has never hidden its desire to see UNRWA disappear, just as it would like to see the right of return of refugees and the refugees themselves disappear, as well as of course their status guaranteed by UNRWA.
Financially weakened by the financial disengagement of the United States, UNRWA has already been targeted by disqualification campaigns instigated by Israel, it must regularly appeal to donors for its operation. It is therefore the 6 million Palestinian refugees who benefit from services provided by UNRWA (food aid, schools, primary health care) who are directly impacted at a time when Israel attacks refugee camps almost daily in the West Bank and destroys them. methodically the infrastructure.
Impossible not to see it as a shameless counter-offensive on the part of a State sinking into denial, a cynical and sordid response to the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of January 26? How can we not be horrified by this support from its Western allies for Israel in its genocidal acts? Have they lost all humanity?
While the urgency is to apply the orders of the ICJ to prevent the serious risk of genocide in Gaza, while these States have not found the slightest sanction to apply to Israel to stop it in its genocidal enterprise which lasts for 115 days, They do not hesitate to push a defenseless population of more than two million inhabitants even deeper into hell, almost half of them children.
By their decisions, they are now the ones depriving the Palestinians of Gaza of the means to survive, they are no longer just complicit but become responsible.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged countries that have suspended funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees to “at least guarantee” the continuation of its operations, on which two million people depend ” for their daily survival. »
History will judge this political and moral bankruptcy of countries generally inclined to give lessons to the world. Funding must return immediately to UNRWA.
The National Office of the France Palestine Solidarity Association
January 29, 2024
