Israel’s UNRWA ban is another declaration of genocidal intent

James Smith

Israel doesn’t attack UNRWA only for its memorialisation of the right of return, but because it helps to nourish, to educate, and to administer care to Palestinians.

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Israeli soldiers operate next to the UNRWA headquarters in the Gaza Strip, February 8, 2024 [Jack Guez/AFP]

Israel’s parliament has voted overwhelmingly to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating throughout occupied Palestine. A second vote has branded the UN agency a “terror” group.

Given the heightened existential threat that the Israeli state poses to the Palestinian people, further obstruction of UNRWA’s programmes will have immediate and catastrophic implications for millions of Palestinians.

No organisation can match UNRWA’s programme coverage, logistical capacity, or collective expertise. In Gaza alone, UNRWA has conducted more than 6 million medical consultations since October 2023 and has provided food assistance to almost 1.9 million people. In the immediate aftermath of the Knesset votes, representatives of several UN agencies objected publicly to the move. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres defended UNRWA as “indispensable” while WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus insisted the agency is “irreplaceable”.

Knowing that no agency can replace UNRWA but attempting to incapacitate its life-sustaining work regardless is a clear declaration of genocidal intent. This represents an obvious disregard for the January 26 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), including most directly Provision Four that ordered Israel to ensure the provision of “urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life”.

In South Africa’s second submission to the ICJ in March, its legal team cited various actions taken by Israel including blocking UNRWA staff from reaching schools and health centres, suspending the shipment of UNRWA goods, and attempting to evict UNRWA from its East Jerusalem headquarters. South Africa’s appeal was emphatic:

 “Palestinian children are starving to death as a direct result of the deliberate acts and omissions of Israel – in violation of the Genocide Convention and of the Court’s Order. This includes Israel’s deliberate attempts to cripple [UNRWA].”

Israel has repeatedly instrumentalised the deprivation and selective distribution of humanitarian aid as a pillar of its occupation, most recently to instigate population transfers and enact collective punishment in Gaza. This strategy long pre-dated October 2023 – almost the entire population of Gaza was forced to depend on humanitarian aid under Israel’s siege and occupation, with an average of 500 aid trucks entering Gaza per day.

Israel has a basic legal obligation as an occupying power to ensure the adequate supply of humanitarian aid and the maintenance of essential services throughout Gaza. There has not been a single day since October 2023 that this obligation has been upheld. As of November 8, Israel had only permitted the entry of 44,453 aid trucks into Gaza. Taking pre-October 2023 levels of humanitarian aid as a crude benchmark, the total number of trucks that should have entered during these 13 months stands at 199,500.

Even if those trucks had entered, Israel has debilitated any semblance of a humanitarian system. At least 237 UNRWA staff have been killed; many of Gaza’s clinics, schools, bakeries and warehouses have been destroyed; trucks lack the fuel to operate; and most of Gaza remains subject to forced displacement orders or direct Israeli military occupation from which UN convoys require – and are frequently denied – approval to enter.

Defending UNRWA at this critical moment should not be confused with overstating the role of humanitarian aid. Many critics have pointed out that a limited commitment to humanitarian assistance has undeniably drawn attention away from the centrality of Palestinians’ legal claims and political rights. This same criticism runs throughout the history of UNRWA. In Governing Gaza, anthropologist Ilana Feldman recalls a conversation with a Palestinian in Gaza who argued that the purpose behind UNRWA was to make “the Palestinian forget his homeland since he takes the flour sack”.

A year before the UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted to establish UNRWA, the UNGA passed Resolution 194(III), which affirmed the right of return for Palestine refugees and the need for reparations for those who were forced to resettle elsewhere. The same resolution established the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), which was tasked with actualising the right of return. The UNCCP faced persistent resistance from the newly formed Israeli state, rendering the Commission defunct by the 1950s. An annual report is still submitted to the UNGA on behalf of the UNCCP, but the wording of the single-paragraph submission has remained unchanged for more than 30 years.

In an attempt at ideological obfuscation, Israeli officials continue to claim that UNRWA “perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem”, rather than blame the states that have failed in their collective responsibility to negotiate just political solutions. The irrevocable recognition of the Palestinian right of return is seen by Israel as a threat to its very existence, insofar as Israel’s settler colonial foundations demanded the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the violent subjugation of the remaining Palestinian population.

Beyond Israel’s attempts to undermine the Palestinian right of return – which will persist irrespective of the future of UNRWA – repeated attacks on UNRWA must be understood in the context of wider attempts by Israel to exert complete control over the humanitarian system, which allows Israel to multiply the effects of its direct military violence.

Israel can’t control UNRWA in the way that it can manipulate private contractors or the international NGOs that have burgeoned in Gaza, and that are dependent on funding from governments complicit in the genocide. Senior Israeli officials have not attempted to hide the pursuit of greater control. Speaking on Israel’s Channel 13 in January, Israel’s representative to the UN, Gilad Erdan, explained of his desire to dismantle UNRWA, “you can’t oversee UNRWA because you can’t oversee the UN … no country is really able to monitor, and there needs to be a direct entity from which you can exact a price.”

Israel doesn’t attack UNRWA only for its memorialisation of the right of return, but because it helps to nourish, educate, and administer care to Palestinians. Any organisation whose activities function to counteract Israel’s genocidal ambition of destroying in whole or in part the Palestinian people will be perceived as a hindrance to the Israeli settler colonial logic of extermination.