When the West collectively punishes Gaza by suspending funding to UNRWA

UNWRA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East), the main humanitarian channel to Gaza, sees some of its employees suspected of having taken part in the October 7 massacres. UNRWA announced that it had “immediately terminated” the contracts of the identified employees and opened an investigation to “establish the truth without delay”. [1] In response, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Finland and the Netherlands decided to suspend their funding. 

Suspected of having participated in the massacres of October 7, 12 employees of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) led 15 Western countries to sanction all inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, which is currently the most serious humanitarian disaster zone in the world.

Based on evidence provided by Israel to support these suspicions, the United States, followed by Japan and European countries, quickly announced the suspension of their contributions to UNRWA.

The UN agency provides services to nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees in the three countries and territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including East Jerusalem.

UNRWA has been in Israel's crosshairs for many years, which naturally prompted it to welcome these measures, as if the demise of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees erased the Palestinians' connection with their lost homeland and left it forgotten.

Starting next month, around 30,000 UNRWA employees will no longer receive their salaries and the education and health services the agency provides to hundreds of thousands of people will be seriously affected.

In the absence of these essential funds, UNRWA personnel in the bombed and bloodless enclave that is today Gaza will gradually cease providing emergency services.

They will no longer be able to carry out the most vital operations they undertook - at the risk of their own safety - in order to alleviate some of the misery of people today: transporting fuel to hospitals and to the neighborhoods in Gaza where water and sanitation networks have not yet been destroyed by the war, so that the drinking water supply is not completely exhausted and sewage does not further flood the streets ; ensure the most basic hygienic conditions in UNRWA schools overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of people displaced within the Gaza Strip; treating the sick in clinics, including those who have contracted infections from overcrowding and polluted water, and providing basic food parcels and bottled water to distribution stations for hundreds of thousands of hungry and thirsty people.

No aid organization is able to replace UNRWA, which has years of experience caring for Gaza's refugee population, in a matter of weeks.

In response to the allegations, the UN agency fired nine of its employees, while one employee was reportedly killed and two are missing. In addition, two commissions of inquiry have been appointed: one will present its findings to UNRWA and the other to the United Nations headquarters in New York. But these measures did not satisfy the countries of the enlightened world.

Their decision to opt for collective punishment will worsen the hunger, malnutrition, thirst and disease ravaging the Gaza Strip. The rapid announcement by these states demonstrates their contempt for the interim order issued last month by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which ordered Israel to take all measures in its power to prevent genocide, including guaranteeing the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip - an area in which UNRWA plays a central role.

Fifteen countries, led by the United States and Germany, signal that they view the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip less seriously than suspicions raised by evidence about 12 agency employees, and that it is less urgent to reduce or stop this mass catastrophe than to please their ally, Israel.

And it is an ally which, for decades, has pursued a policy of colonization and forced displacement of Palestinians, to which these other countries are also opposed on paper. They are well aware of reports of Israeli soldiers and civilians killing unarmed Palestinians and of the fact that in most cases the perpetrators of these crimes go unpunished. High-ranking ministers from their ally Israel have openly advocated the crime of expelling Palestinians from Gaza.

Therefore, the contrast with the timid condemnation of the 15 countries - if they did so at all - only intensifies the ignominy of their decision to aid Israel in its campaign of vengeance and destruction against all residents of Gaza.

Source: la-bas Magazine