Adnan Abu Hasna: 3 weeks to implement Knesset laws on banning UNRWA, and this will have serious consequences

Sami Mshasha: The existence of UNRWA and the right of return are in imminent danger, and the displacement and settlement plan is being implemented on a slow fire

Atallah Hanna: The conspiracy against UNRWA falls within the framework of the conspiracy against the right of return and the abolition of the Palestinian cause

Dr. Fawzi Al-Samhouri: Part of an American-Israeli plan to cancel UNRWA without finding a just solution to the refugee issue

Adel Shedeed: Disrupting UNRWA's work will cause hunger, epidemics, chaos and the destruction of life in Gaza

Lawyer Moein Odeh: The presence or absence of UNRWA does not affect the historical and legal right of refugees to return

The law passed by the Israeli Knesset on October 28, which bans the activities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in areas under Israeli control, will come into effect on January 31, 2025. If implemented, this will cause a complete halt to all UNRWA operations in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

The final approval of the draft law was the culmination of the campaign launched by the occupying state against the International Relief Agency (UNRWA), as it is the living witness to the Palestinian refugee issue for more than seven decades, which reached its peak following the war of extermination launched by the occupying state on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, when it accused its employees of participating in the attack launched by the resistance on its settlements and military sites in the Gaza Strip envelope on that date, in addition to its sharp attack on the United Nations in general and its Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the point of considering him an undesirable person, bombing the agency’s headquarters in the Gaza Strip, and assassinating, arresting, and wounding large numbers of the agency’s employees.

Analysts, writers and clerics considered the occupation state’s targeting of UNRWA as targeting the entire Palestinian cause, which began with the emergence of the Palestinian refugee issue in the Nakba of 1948, where UNRWA was established later and took over providing services to the masses of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the surrounding Arab countries.

They warned of the danger of any Israeli move targeting UNRWA with closure, both in terms of its implications for the refugee issue and its disastrous effects on millions of Palestinian refugees who depend on it for many aspects of their lives, including health, education, relief, and other aspects.

The collapse of the humanitarian system in the Gaza Strip

Adnan Abu Hasna, the official spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said that there are about three weeks left before the implementation of the decisions or laws adopted by the Israeli Knesset regarding the ban on UNRWA in East Jerusalem, as well as the other decision related to preventing communication with UNRWA in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

He added: "These decisions have serious consequences that affect the movements of UNRWA employees, as visas for international employees are now banned, in addition to consequences related to bank transfers and UNRWA's financial and banking situation. Operations related to the Egyptian and Israeli systems, such as purchasing and others, have also been affected.

Abu Hasna stressed that preventing communication in general means practically stopping operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which will have serious consequences at all levels.

He said: "In Gaza, for example, it will lead to the collapse of the humanitarian work system, as UNRWA is the main factor in providing basic services and constitutes the lifeline of the sector, stressing that removing UNRWA from this system means a death sentence for the place.

He added: "We have more than 13,000 employees in Gaza, in addition to 10,000 contract holders."

The UNRWA spokesman continued: “We receive about 16,000 patients in our clinics every day, and last year alone we provided about 6 million medical visits. We play a major and central role in distributing food and aid, as well as distributing fuel to UNRWA organizations and non-governmental organizations.

UNRWA represents the collective memory of Palestinians

He believed that removing this role from the Gaza Strip means sentencing the place to death. The question that arises now is: What about UNRWA in the West Bank and Gaza?

“We have about 350,000 students, millions of medical visits to UNRWA clinics, in addition to hundreds of facilities, institutions and vehicles,” he said.

He stressed that UNRWA represents the collective memory of the Palestinians, and therefore removing it from this place will have serious repercussions at all levels.

Regarding the education sector, Abu Hasna wondered: Who will take care of these students? Pointing out that UNRWA is the only entity in the Middle East that offers and teaches human rights.

He warned that halting UNRWA operations would foster extremism and increase instability in an already fragile region. He said: “The alternative to UNRWA is UNRWA itself.”

Abu Hasna noted that previous Israeli attempts to create alternatives to UNRWA had failed, pointing out that other UN organizations such as the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF had expressed their inability or unwillingness to be an alternative to UNRWA. He concluded by emphasizing that "the alternative to UNRWA is UNRWA."

UN officials' statements are hollow and come too late

For his part, Sami Mshasha, an expert in international institutions, considered the statements of UN officials and the UNRWA Commissioner-General that time is running out to ban UNRWA from working in Palestine, and their successive statements about the impact of this on the services provided to millions of Palestinian refugees, hollow because they came too late, and because they are warnings issued in this way without a clear and implementable plan of action to confront the Israeli Knesset’s decisions to expel the international institution from Jerusalem, and to stifle its ability to work in occupied Palestine.

"Not only is there no movement or plan for confrontation, but there is an acceptance of the reality and an attempt to position and adapt," said Mish'ash'a.

He stressed that the transfer of the Commissioner-General's office and UNRWA headquarters offices outside Jerusalem, and the relocation of the West Bank headquarters offices located in its historical headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah to branch offices in the West Bank, are two clear indications of this development.

Mshasha said: “The agency and the Secretary-General were required to take action and sound the alarm months ago, before the systematic attacks on the agency’s headquarters and facilities, and on UNRWA workers in Gaza, 263 of whom have been martyred so far, as humanitarian service providers.”

He pointed out that expelling the agency from Jerusalem, cancelling the camp status of the Shuafat camp within the borders of Jerusalem, and closing UNRWA schools and other services is a matter of time.

He pointed out that it is a matter of time before pressures and restrictions on UNRWA's work in the West Bank are lifted, with the expansion of Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

He explained that the occupying state has curbed the agency's work in Gaza, and that the ambiguity of the refugee situation in Syria today is a cause for great concern.

The emergence of the scarecrow of refugee settlement in Lebanon is a cause for fear and anxiety

He stressed that the destruction that befell the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon during the recent incursion into southern Lebanon and the capital Beirut, and the emergence of the scarecrow of settlement and mobilization against the Palestinians there, is a cause for fear and concern.

He said: “Demonizing the agency and trying to bring it to its knees financially are all attempts aimed at abolishing the agency, encouraging voluntary displacement, activating forced displacement and deportation, and eliminating the right of return as a basic and central goal that the occupation has set its sights on implementing for decades.”

Mshasha explained that all these developments have direct impacts on the educational services of more than half a million students, a large number of whom have lost an entire academic year and are about to lose a second academic year, and that UNRWA’s health, relief, social and emergency services for millions of refugees who live in extremely dire economic, political, security and psychological conditions will be affected, with the majority of them already living below the poverty line and extreme poverty.

He stressed that all those concerned with the refugee and return file, internationally, Arab, and Palestinian in particular (with our official apparatuses, political capabilities, diplomatic movement, media efforts, and popular and factional work), are all waiting for the implementation of Israel’s decisions, following the multiple field steps taken by the occupying state against UNRWA, the refugees, and the right of return.

He said: "Everyone is waiting, and no one has a practical, effective, influential and immediately implementable plan, apart from statements of condemnation and denunciation."

Mish'sha concluded his talk to Al-Quds by warning that the right of return file is in imminent danger, that the UNRWA file is in existential and catastrophic danger as well, and that the displacement and settlement file is being implemented on a slow fire, and this year will be a difficult and dark year.

UNRWA is an urgent necessity in light of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba

In turn, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, Archbishop of Sebastia for the Greek Orthodox, said that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established in the wake of the Nakba of the Palestinian people in 1948, with the aim of caring for Palestinian refugees in their camps.

Bishop Hanna explained that the repercussions of the Nakba still exist to this day, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees has not been achieved, which makes the basic reason for establishing UNRWA ongoing and urgent.

He said: “It is neither fair nor logical to ban UNRWA while refugees are still suffering in their camps. Rather, we are witnessing a new catastrophe and ongoing displacement, especially in the Gaza Strip, which increases the need for UNRWA’s presence and the continuity of its services and its role in supporting Palestinian refugees.”

Bishop Hanna added: “The conspiracy against UNRWA falls within the framework of the conspiracy against the right of return. They seek to liquidate this right and cancel the entire Palestinian cause.”

He continued: "What we are witnessing today in Gaza in terms of a war of extermination and ethnic cleansing is part of this plan aimed at targeting the Palestinian people and their just cause.

Bishop Hanna pointed out that attempts to cancel UNRWA reflect an insistence on escalating the conspiracy against the Palestinians and their cause, stressing the importance of the agency’s existence in light of the difficult circumstances that the Palestinian people are going through.

Bishop Hanna called on all international organizations, UN and human rights bodies, in addition to Arab countries and free people in the world, to work hard to preserve UNRWA and ensure its continuity.

"The existence of UNRWA is a matter of utmost importance, especially at this critical stage in the history of our people," he said.

A step to erase the Palestinian refugee issue

For his part, writer and political analyst Dr. Fawzi Al-Samhouri, head of the Juzur Center for Human Rights in Amman, said that targeting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) represents part of an American-Israeli plan to abolish the agency without finding a just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue.

Al-Samhouri explained that this targeting aims to achieve two main goals: the first is to eliminate the living witness to the crimes of ethnic cleansing, adding: Israel seeks to obscure the crimes committed by the Zionist gangs, with the support of the British occupation, which resulted in the birth of the Palestinian refugee issue.

Al-Samhouri said: The second goal is to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority by punishing the refugees, and this is done by depriving them of the basic services provided by UNRWA, including health, education and social services, which may push them to leave the camps, thus paving the way for their destruction later, given that they are considered starting points for resisting the occupation.

Al-Samhouri stressed that these steps constitute a flagrant violation of Israel's obligations as a member of the United Nations. He called on the international community to take immediate action to impose sanctions on Israel in response to the ban on the work of a UN institution.

He pointed out that the only alternative in the event of the cancellation of UNRWA is to oblige Israel, as an occupying power, to assume all services provided by the agency, in accordance with the United Nations Charter and the decision of the International Court of Justice, with the imposition of political and economic sanctions in the event of its failure to do so.

Al-Samhouri warned that targeting UNRWA does not only aim to undermine refugee services, but also to liquidate the entire Palestinian cause.

Targeting UNRWA is a link in the plan to liquidate the Palestinian cause

For his part, researcher and political analyst Adel Shadid said that the Israeli targeting of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is not new, but rather dates back more than fifty years.

Shadid explained that this targeting was not limited to Israel alone, but also included members of the US Congress, especially those who are strongly influenced by the Zionist lobby in the United States and are among the strongest supporters of Israel.

Shadid pointed out that this targeting is political in essence, and aims to eliminate the Palestinian refugee issue, considering that liquidating this issue means liquidating the entire Palestinian issue.

He explained that the current efforts to achieve this goal include two basic dimensions: the first goal is to close UNRWA and prevent it from performing its duties, which will lead to the exacerbation of the humanitarian situation and the spread of chaos, especially in the Gaza Strip.

He pointed out that UNRWA represents a lifeline for many Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, who depend on the food aid and basic services it provides.

He stressed that disrupting UNRWA's work would lead to: starving the Palestinian people, spreading poverty and epidemics, causing chaos, and destroying the foundations of life in Gaza.

Disintegrating the social fabric and increasing the suffering of the Palestinians

He explained that these steps are part of the goals of the current Israeli war, which seeks to dismantle the Palestinian social fabric and increase human suffering.

He continued: As for the second goal, it is related to seeking to liquidate the Palestinian refugee issue and reconsidering the definition of who is a refugee from Israel's point of view.

He explained that this step aims to eliminate the right of return as an essential part of the Palestinian cause.

Shadid pointed out that the issue of refugees and their camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere represents the last living evidence of the catastrophe of the Palestinian people in 1948, when Zionist gangs, with Western imperialist support, displaced three-quarters of the Palestinian people and destroyed more than 540 Palestinian cities and villages.

He stressed that there are no alternatives capable of filling the void that UNRWA will leave, as the only alternative under the occupation is the continuation of UNRWA's work.

Analyst Shadid stressed that the real solution lies in settling the Palestinian issue in a fair manner by granting the Palestinian people their political rights, including building their independent state and the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes.

"Then, it can be said that the Palestinian issue has found a comprehensive and just solution," he said.

A step to remove the status of "refugee" from the Palestinians

“Israel has always viewed UNRWA as the agency that maintains the ‘refugee’ status of Palestinians who were displaced from their homes and lands in 1948 and 1967,” said lawyer Moein Odeh, an international law specialist.

He explained that Israel sees ending UNRWA's work and withdrawing it from the legal framework as a step that would lead to the Palestinians being stripped of their refugee status, and thus cancelling their right to return.

Awda pointed to an important point related to UN Resolution 194, issued in 1948, which affirms the right of refugees to return to their homes, and which was issued before the establishment of UNRWA in 1949. Accordingly, he said: “The presence or absence of UNRWA does not affect the historical and legal right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.

In terms of services, Awda stressed the importance of the role played by UNRWA in areas such as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

He pointed out that the majority of Gaza's population suffers from a severe shortage of food and health services, in addition to the deterioration of education, stressing that UNRWA is working to alleviate the suffering of the population and provide basic support in these sectors.

Stopping coordination between UNRWA and Israel will create a big problem

Awda pointed out that targeting UNRWA would create major problems related to coordinating the agency's work, especially in the Gaza Strip, which depends on coordination to bring in humanitarian aid and necessary trucks.

He said: "UNRWA's departure from the framework of coordination with the Israeli side will lead to a large gap, especially in the reconstruction efforts after the end of the war, which it is not yet clear who will take over."

He added that Israel is promoting allegations linking UNRWA to the events of October 7, accusing some of its employees of supporting terrorism, despite the absence of any evidence for these allegations.

He expected that this position would complicate logistical operations and increase UNRWA's costs, in addition to the possibility of the emergence of intermediaries and brokers to manage the relationship between UNRWA and Israel, which would further complicate matters.

Attorney Odeh stressed that the current Israeli government, led by some Knesset members and ministers, is making these decisions without considering their consequences or effects on the Palestinians and even on Israel itself in the future.

He explained that the main goal of some Israeli politicians is to achieve electoral gains by claiming to have achieved accomplishments against UNRWA, without caring about the suffering that will be exacerbated as a result of these policies.

At the end of his interview with Al-Quds, Awda stressed that such steps complicate the situation, emphasizing the need to find just solutions that guarantee the rights of the Palestinian people.