UNRWA

What’s behind the Israeli war on UNRWA?

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/what’s-behind-israeli-war-unrwa

A Palestinian girl reacts as a child is carried from the rubble of a building after an airstrike in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, October 21, 2023

RAMZY BAROUD exposes the systematic targeting of UN facilities in Gaza, explaining how this is part of a broader strategy of erasing Palestinian refugee rights and history while blocking international aid

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Israel does not attempt to mask or justify its attacks on the organisation as it did during previous Gaza wars. This time around, the Israeli war was accompanied, from the very start, with the outlandish accusation that UNRWA members had participated in the October 7 assault by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

Without providing any evidence, Tel Aviv launched an international campaign of vilification against the UN organisation which has, for decades, provided educational, medical and humanitarian services to millions of Palestinian refugees.

Sadly, and tellingly, some Western, and even non-Western governments, answered the Israeli call of punishing UNRWA by withholding badly needed funds, the urgency of which did not only stem from the direct impact of the Israeli war, but the acute famine resulting from the war, as well.

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Jared Kushner, Trump’s former adviser on the Middle East, said in January 2018 that it was “important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.” For him, the dismantlement of the organisation meant the dismissal of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Indeed, the issue is not just about UNRWA, but rather the historic role the organisation has served as a reminder of the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees in occupied Palestine, the Middle East and across the world.

UNRWA was established through general assembly resolution 302 (IV) of December 8 1949. The founding of UNRWA came one year after the passing of UN resolution 194, which granted Palestinian refugees the right to “return to their homes.”

Although UNRWA’s mission has turned into a permanent mandate, since Palestinian refugees were not granted their right of return, the role of the organisation remained as critical as it was decades ago.

Since Kushner and others have failed to dismantle UNRWA, the Israeli government has taken advantage of its war on Gaza to achieve the exact purpose. In Israeli thinking, without UNRWA, the issue of Palestinian refugees would lose its main legal platform and would ultimately disappear.

This would give Israel the space and leverage to “resolve” the problem of the refugees in any way it finds fit, especially if it has the full backing of Washington.

Israel must not be allowed to dismantle UNRWA or to dismiss the generational struggle of Palestinian refugees, which is the core of the Palestinian fight for justice and freedom.

The international community must challenge Israel’s vilification of UNRWA and insist on the centrality of the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Without it, no real peace is possible.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of the Palestine Chronicle (www.palestinechronicle.com).

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/what’s-behind-israeli-war-unrwa

Continue ReadingWhat’s behind the Israeli war on UNRWA?

UK Urged to Cut Off Arms Sales to Israel After Restoring UNRWA Funds

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaks at the NATO Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on July 10, 2024 (Photo: Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images)

“While the U.K. is giving aid with one hand, it continues to send weapons used in the ongoing killing of civilians with the other,” said one advocate.

Days after independent United Nations experts said the blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza over the past nine months has led to famine throughout the enclave, rights groups on Friday applauded the British government’s announcement that it will restore funding to the U.N.’s relief agency in Palestine—but said the Labour Party will remain complicit in the suffering of Gazans as long as it continues arming Israel.

Tim Bierley, a campaigner at Global Justice Now, said the decision to restore U.K. funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) six months after it was suspended was “welcome and long overdue,” following mounting reports of dozens of Palestinian children and adults dying of starvation in the intervening months.

The U.K. was one of several wealthy countries that suspended funding for UNRWA, which operates mainly on international donations, after Israel in January claimed without evidence that 12 out of 13,000 UNRWA staff members in Gaza had been involved in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The loss of hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S., Germany, the U.K., and other countries severely reduced UNRWA’s ability to provide food aid, healthcare, sanitation services, and employment to Palestinians, nearly all of whom have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment.

Following sustained advocacy by rights groups and Labour Party lawmakers who support Palestinian rights, Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Friday announced that the new Labour government, which took control after this month’s elections, has committed to providing £21 million ($27 million) to UNRWA following former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to suspend funding.

Lammy noted in his speech to Parliament that restoring UNRWA funding is “absolutely central” to ensuring humanitarian aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza.

“No other agency can deliver aid at the scale needed,” he said.

The government’s decision leaves the U.S.—UNRWA’s largest funder—as the only country that has not restored its financial support for the agency. In March, the U.S. passed a military spending package that prohibits UNRWA funding through at least March 2025.

Bierley was among those who noted that while the U.K. is committing to provide more humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza, the Labour government is still providing Israel with military aid.

“While the U.K. is giving aid with one hand, it continues to send weapons used in the ongoing killing of civilians with the other. Labour has had more than enough time to review the evidence: The U.K. must ban all arms sales to Israel with immediate effect,” said Bierley.

Journalist Owen Jones added that considering all countries except the U.S. have already restored funding—with many citing the U.N.’s finding that Israel’s accusations were unsubstantiated—the Labour government’s decision is “the bare minimum.”

“Now end arms sales and stop trying to wreck the [International Criminal Court] arrest warrants,” said Jones, referring to the U.K.’s bid to intervene in the ICC’s case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Member of Parliament Andy McDonald of the Labour Party called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to “clarify that it supports the processes that will prosecute war crimes and that the U.K. accepts the ICC jurisdiction over Israel, and has no truck with the nonsense legal argument of Israel being exempt from international law.”

The humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians said the Labour Party’s decision will restore “an irreplaceable lifeline” to a population of 2.3 million Gaza residents who “face an existential threat from Israel’s military bombardment and siege.”

“We hope that David Lammy and the U.K. government will now commit to increasing multi-year support to the agency,” said the group, “to bolster its vital humanitarian work across the region and ensure the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees are upheld.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingUK Urged to Cut Off Arms Sales to Israel After Restoring UNRWA Funds

Pressure mounts on Labour to ban arms sales to Israel as new foreign secretary meets with ‘war criminals’

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/pressure-mounts-on-labour-to-ban-arms-sales-to-israel-as-new-foreign-secretary-meets-with-war-criminals

Israeli tanks stand near the Israel-Gaza border as seen from southern Israel, July 14, 2024

FOREIGN Secretary David Lammy should focus on halting arms exports to Israel instead of associating with war criminals, campaigners charged today.

The calls came as Mr Lammy visited Israel and the occupied Palestinian West Bank on his first trip to the Middle East in his new role.

Today, he shook hands with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who last December was pictured proudly signing a shell headed for Gaza.

Mr Lammy said he hoped to see a hostage deal emerge “in the coming days” and a ceasefire to bring “alleviation to the suffering and the intolerable loss of life.”

Failing to lift the suspension of vital funding to the UN Relief & Works Agency, which the government gave £35 million last year, he announced that a slimmer sum of £5.5m would be given to medical aid charity UK-Med.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/pressure-mounts-on-labour-to-ban-arms-sales-to-israel-as-new-foreign-secretary-meets-with-war-criminals

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Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Continue ReadingPressure mounts on Labour to ban arms sales to Israel as new foreign secretary meets with ‘war criminals’

‘Shocking’: UNRWA Chief Decries Israel’s Destruction of Agency Headquarters

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A United Nations worker surveys destruction caused by an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip on July 15, 2024. (Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“Another episode in the blatant disregard of international humanitarian law,” said the commissioner-general of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees expressed horror Monday over Israeli forces’ destruction of the key aid organization’s headquarters in Gaza City, which Israel’s military recently attacked and left in ruins.

“Shocking,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), wrote in a social media post, which included photos of the bombed-out headquarters complex.

“UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, turned into a battlefield and now flattened,” Lazzarini continued. “Another episode in the blatant disregard of international humanitarian law. United Nations facilities must be protected at all times. They must never be used for military or fighting purposes. Every war has rules. Gaza is no exception.”

Photos of UNRWA’s destroyed headquarters emerged following a deadly weekend of Israeli bombings across the Gaza Strip that were overshadowed in the media by the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday.

More than 140 people were killed and hundreds more were wounded on Saturday and Sunday, including in Israeli airstrikes on a so-called “safe zone” in southern Gaza.

Tamara Alrifai, UNRWA’s head of external relations, told Al Jazeera on Monday that “the last week has been one of the deadliest weeks in Gaza since the war started.”

“The images coming out of the UNRWA headquarters are really shocking,” said Alrifai. “What I saw today in the footage is unrecognizable.”

UNRWA and its infrastructure in Gaza, including schools, have been major targets of Israel’s far-right government since its latest assault on the Palestinian enclave began in October following a deadly Hamas-led attack. Israeli officials have repeatedly claimed—without providing evidence—that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations.

Nearly 200 UNRWA facilities in Gaza, most of which have been serving as shelters for displaced people, have been damaged during Israel’s war on the besieged territory, Alrifai noted Monday. Around 500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on UNRWA facilities, according to Alrifai.

“It speaks volumes to the blatant disregard for international humanitarian law,” she said.

Israel’s aerial and ground attacks on Gaza continued Monday as much of the territory’s population is facing catastrophic levels of hunger. Since the start of the assault, Israel has dramatically restricted the flow of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip, depriving Palestinians of food, medicine, clean water, and other basic necessities.

Reuters reported that Israel “struck the southern and central Gaza Strip” on Monday and “blew up several homes.”

“Medical officials said they recovered 10 bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in eastern areas of the city, some of which had already begun to decompose,” the news agency added. “The military also stepped up aerial and tank shelling in central Gaza in the al-Bureij and al-Maghazi historic refugee camps. Health officials said five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Maghazi camp.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

UNRWA Says Its Facilities Have Been Attacked by Israel 453 Times Since October

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Israel Is Using Starvation as a Weapon of War in Gaza and the World Has Failed to Stop It

Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Continue Reading‘Shocking’: UNRWA Chief Decries Israel’s Destruction of Agency Headquarters

Israel Is Using Starvation as a Weapon of War in Gaza and the World Has Failed to Stop It

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Original article by RAMZY BAROUD republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Relief workers distribute food in Gaza City, Gaza on March 14, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Providing aid to Gaza and ensuring the reconstruction of the strip must not be a political item for negotiations. It is a basic human right that must be honored under any circumstance.

Humanitarian aid should never be politicized though, quite often, the very survival of nations is used as political bargaining chips.

Sadly, Gaza remains a prime example. Even before the current war, the Gaza Strip suffered under a 17-year hermetic blockade, which has rendered the impoverished area virtually “unlivable.”

That very term, “unlivable” was used by the then-United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Situation of Palestine, Michael Lynk, in 2018.

Scenes and images of thousands of starving Palestinians chasing after boxes of aid parachuted into Gaza will remain etched in the collective memory of humanity as an example of our failed morality.

As of mid-December of last year, “nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing experts who conducted a thorough analysis of satellite data.

As tragic as the situation was in December, now it is far worse.

Sixty-seven percent of Gaza’s water, sanitation facilities, and infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged, according to a statement by the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, on June 19, leading to the spreading of infectious diseases, which has ravaged the beleaguered population for months.

The spread of disease is also linked to the accumulation of garbage everywhere in Gaza. Earlier, the refugees agency reported that “as of June 9, over 330,000 tons of waste have accumulated in or near populated areas across Gaza, posing catastrophic environmental (and) health risks.”

The situation was already disastrous. Indeed, three years before the war, the Global Institute for Water, Environment, and Health (GIWEH) said, in a joint statement with the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, that 97% of Gaza water was undrinkable and unfit for human consumption.

Yet, so far, any conversation on allowing aid to Gaza, or the rebuilding of Gaza after the war, has been placed largely within political contexts.

By shutting down all border crossings, including the Egypt-Gaza Rafah Crossing—which, on June 17, was set ablaze—Israel has politicized food, fuel, and medicine as tools in its war in the strip.

This is not a mere inference, but the actual statement made by Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, who on October 9 declared that he had ordered a “complete siege” and that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water” entering Gaza.

The timing of the statement, which has indeed been put into action from the first day of the war, suggests that Israel did not apply the strategy as a last resort. It was one of the most important pieces in the war stratagem, which remains in effect to this day.

Instead of pressuring Israel, Washington tried to obtain its own political leverage, also by politicizing aid. On March 2, the U.S. Air Force started airdropping aid into northern Gaza. A far more conducive and less humiliating option for Palestinians, however, would have been direct U.S. pressure on Israel to allow access to aid trucks arriving through Rafah, Karem Abu Salem Crossing, or any other.

Scenes and images of thousands of starving Palestinians chasing after boxes of aid parachuted into Gaza will remain etched in the collective memory of humanity as an example of our failed morality.

News reports spoke of people who were killed under the weight of the dropped “aid,” much of which had fallen in the Mediterranean, never to be retrieved.

Even the Gaza pier, constructed by the U.S. military on the Gaza shore in May, did little to alleviate the situation. It merely transported 137 aid trucks, according to the U.S.’ own estimation, enough to cover Gaza’s need for food for a few hours only.

During the years of siege, an average of 500 trucks arriving daily in Gaza has kept the 2.3 million population of the strip alive, though malnourished.

To deal with the outcome of the war, and to stave off current starvation, especially in the north, the number of aid trucks would have to be much higher. Yet, whole days would pass without a single truck making its way to the suffering population. This is unacceptable.

Not only did the international community fail at ending the war, it has also failed in delinking humanitarian aid from political and military objectives.

The problem with politicizing aid is that innocent civilians become a bargaining chip for politicians and military men. This goes against the very foundation of international humanitarian law.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, citing the Hague Regulations, “international humanitarian law is the branch of international law that seeks to impose limits on the destruction and suffering caused by armed conflict.” In Gaza, no such “limits” have been “imposed” by anyone.

Providing aid to Gaza and ensuring the reconstruction of the strip must not be a political item for negotiations. It is a basic human right that must be honored under any circumstance.

Meaningful pressure must be placed on Israel to end the Gaza siege, and urgent plans must be drafted, starting today, by representatives of U.N. humanitarian institutions, the Arab League, and Palestinian and Gaza authorities to be the entities responsible for delivering aid to Gaza.

Humanitarian aid to Gaza must not be used as political leverage, or a tool in a cruel war, whose primary victims are millions of Palestinian civilians.

Original article by RAMZY BAROUD republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Continue ReadingIsrael Is Using Starvation as a Weapon of War in Gaza and the World Has Failed to Stop It