By Nicholas R. Micinski and Kelsey Norman
The Israeli parliament’s vote on Oct. 28, 2024, to ban the United Nations agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees is likely to affect millions of people – it also fits a pattern.
Aid for refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees, has long been politicized, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, has been targeted throughout its 75-year history.
This was evident earlier in the current Gaza conflict, when at least a dozen countries, including the U.S., suspended funding to the UNRWA, citing allegations made by Israel that 12 UNRWA employees participated in the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. In August, the U.N. fired nine UNRWA employees for alleged involvement in the attack. An independent U.N. panel established a set of 50 recommendations to ensure UNRWA employees adhere to the principle of neutrality.
The vote by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to ban the UNRWA goes a step further. It will, when it comes into effect, prevent the UNRWA from operating in Israel and will severely affect its ability to serve refugees in any of the occupied territories that Israel controls, including Gaza. This could have devastating consequences for livelihoods, health, the distribution of food aid and schooling for Palestinians. It would also damage the polio vaccination campaign that the UNRWA and its partner organizations have been carrying out in Gaza since September. Finally, the bill bans communication between Israeli officials and the UNRWA, which would end efforts by the agency to coordinate the movements of aid workers to prevent unintentional targeting by the Israel Defense Forces.
Refugee aid, and humanitarian aid more generally, is theoretically meant to be neutral and impartial. But as experts in migration and international relations, we know funding is often used as a foreign policy tool, whereby allies are rewarded and enemies punished. In this context, we believe Israel’s banning of the UNRWA fits a wider pattern of the politicization of aid to refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees.
What is the UNRWA?
The UNRWA, short for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was established two years after about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes during the months leading up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war.
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Prior to the UNRWA’s creation, international and local organizations, many of them religious, provided services to displaced Palestinians. But after surveying the extreme poverty and dire situation pervasive across refugee camps, the U.N. General Assembly, including all Arab states and Israel, voted to create the UNRWA in 1949.
Since that time, the UNRWA has been the primary aid organization providing food, medical care, schooling and, in some cases, housing for the 6 million Palestinians living across its five fields: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, as well as the areas that make up the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The mass displacement of Palestinians – known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe” – occurred prior to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which defined refugees as anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution owing to “events occurring in Europe before 1 January 1951.” Despite a 1967 protocol extending the definition worldwide, Palestinians are still excluded from the primary international system protecting refugees.
While the UNRWA is responsible for providing services to Palestinian refugees, the United Nations also created the U.N. Conciliation Commission for Palestine in 1948 to seek a long-term political solution and “to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.”
As a result, UNRWA does not have a mandate to push for the traditional durable solutions available in other refugee situations. As it happened, the conciliation commission was active only for a few years and has since been sidelined in favor of the U.S.-brokered peace processes.
Is the UNRWA political?
The UNRWA has been subject to political headwinds since its inception and especially during periods of heightened tension between Palestinians and Israelis.
While it is a U.N. organization and thus ostensibly apolitical, it has frequently been criticized by Palestinians, Israelis as well as donor countries, including the United States, for acting politically.
The UNRWA performs statelike functions across its five fields, including education, health and infrastructure, but it is restricted in its mandate from performing political or security activities.
Initial Palestinian objections to the UNRWA stemmed from the organization’s early focus on economic integration of refugees into host states.
Although the UNRWA officially adhered to the U.N. General Assembly’s Resolution 194 that called for the return of Palestine refugees to their homes, U.N., U.K. and U.S. officials searched for means by which to resettle and integrate Palestinians into host states, viewing this as the favorable political solution to the Palestinian refugee situation and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this sense, Palestinians perceived the UNRWA to be both highly political and actively working against their interests.
In later decades, the UNRWA switched its primary focus from jobs to education at the urging of Palestinian refugees. But the UNRWA’s education materials were viewed by Israel as further feeding Palestinian militancy, and the Israeli government insisted on checking and approving all materials in Gaza and the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.
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While Israel has long been suspicious of the UNRWA’s role in refugee camps and in providing education, the organization’s operation, which is internationally funded, also saves Israel millions of dollars each year in services it would be obliged to deliver as the occupying power.
Since the 1960s, the U.S. – the UNRWA’s primary donor – and other Western countries have repeatedly expressed their desire to use aid to prevent radicalization among refugees.
In response to the increased presence of armed opposition groups, the U.S. attached a provision to its UNRWA aid in 1970, requiring that the “UNRWA take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) or any other guerrilla-type organization.”
The UNRWA adheres to this requirement, even publishing an annual list of its employees so that host governments can vet them, but it also employs 30,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom are Palestinian.
Questions over links of the UNRWA to any militancy has led to the rise of Israeli and international watch groups that document the social media activity of the organization’s large Palestinian staff.
In 2018, the Trump administration paused its US$60 million contribution to the UNRWA. Trump claimed the pause would create political pressure for Palestinians to negotiate. President Joe Biden restarted U.S. contributions to the UNRWA in 2021.
While other major donors restored funding to the UNRWA after the conclusion of the investigation in April, the U.S. has yet to do so.
‘An unmitigated disaster’
Israel’s ban of the UNRWA will leave already starving Palestinians without a lifeline. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said banning the UNRWA “would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.” The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. issued a joint statement arguing that the ban would have “devastating consequences on an already critical and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, particularly in northern Gaza.”
Reports have emerged of Israeli plans for private security contractors to take over aid distribution in Gaza through dystopian “gated communities,” which would in effect be internment camps. This would be a troubling move. In contrast to the UNRWA, private contractors have little experience delivering aid and are not dedicated to the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality or independence.
However, the Knesset’s explicit ban could, inadvertently, force the United States to suspend weapons transfers to Israel. U.S. law requires that it stop weapons transfers to any country that obstructs the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid. And the U.S. pause on funding for the UNRWA was only meant to be temporary.
The UNRWA is the main conduit for assistance into Gaza, and the Knesset’s ban makes explicit that the Israeli government is preventing aid delivery, making it harder for Washington to ignore. Before the bill passed, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller warned that “passage of the legislation could have implications under U.S. law and U.S. policy.”
At the same time, two U.S. government agencies previously alerted the Biden administration that Israel was obstructing aid into Gaza, yet weapons transfers have continued unabated.
Nicholas R. Micinski is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Maine. Kelsey Norman is Fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University.
jackson says
Netanyahu got what he wanted in Trump. Part of his motivation to not ceasefire & stop this war is he knew it would reflect well on Biden/Harris.
Like DT, Netanyahu needs to stay in power to avoid indictments & prosecution for his crimes.
The potential for Peace & Justice in the M.E. is a casualty of this election.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Funny…. Last time TRUMP was president, we had a the Abraham Accords. Peace in the Middle East, & the world was a safer place. Biden & company tried so hard to sobatage everything TRUMP did. The Jews have been our strongest alli in this part of the world, for decades! Biden wasn’t 100% on Bibi side, he did just enough to keep the USA Jews silent. BIDENS true colors came out yesterday, after undermining Isreal he showed off a book that shows the Jewish state shouldn’t exist! The book, written by a radical Columbia professor, argues that Israel shouldn’t exist & is a product of a colonial war against Palestinians.The book untitled The Hundred Years of war on Palastine. Biden left a book store yesterday holding a copy of this book, in full view of the press. Palastine, got what they deserved. They voted in the people that starve them, killed them, using THIER hospitals for cover! This killing spree will soon be coming to an end now that TRUMPS back. BIBI wont stop until these radical killers are gone, And unlike Biden TRUMP will support them to wipe out all these terrorist, and make thier homeland safe. In time there will be a free Palistine, without the fear of terrorists destroying their country. Free ellections, free speech, & a free democracy.
jackson says
The entire IDF is nothing but a terrorist organization that has been doing this since 1920 when they were called the Irgun, Stern, and Haganah! Hamas and Hezbollah were created and funded by Israel for political reasons. Now, Hamas and Hezbollah are nothing more than proxy groups fighting on behalf of the Palestinian people just as Ukrainians are being as a proxy army to fight Russia on behalf of the US!
Jake from state farm says
Hamas and Hezbollah are nothing but proxies of Iran, throwing rocks over the fence at Israel, knowing that they will strike bike and innocent civilians that Hamas and Hezbollah are hiding behind will be killed and idiots around the world like you, and the media, will only blame Israel and not the head of the snake Iran. The government and people of Lebanon and the Palestinians in Gaza need to toss out the terrorists who are hiding behind them. The world should be helping eliminate those terrorists and the world should be holding Iran responsible and taking care of them. And you @jackson should stop supporting Hamas who is still holding innocent Israelis hostage and and hiding behind innocent Palestinians and who does not care of innocent civilians are killed and Hezbollah who has taken over Lebanon and also do not care if innocent civilians die.
Pierre Tristam says
The mass-killing ratio of 50 to 1 in Israel’s favor tells me Jake from state farms’s political actuarials are as suspect as his Fox-cribbed opinions, themselves fed American networks by Hamas’s Israeli kin known as Aipac.
Jake from state farm says
And yet sir you still will not admit the cause of the problem and address it even as your own friends and countrymen die. You want to continue to put a band aid on the problem. Why don’t you just support fixing it? Until Israels neighbors stop allowing terrorists to through rocks at them from their yard this does not stop. Until Israels neighbors stop allowing terrorists to hold captives this never stops. You keep trying to use the ratio of the dying. Perhaps you would be happy if the terrorists started marching Israelis into an oven. Would that make it equal to you? To stop the death of innocents, you should stop hiding behind them and support cutting off the head of the snake, Iran. Israel is not going to stop hunting down and killing those who are trying to kill them.
Pierre Tristam says
The equalizer is not more death, but a cease-fire. And before making such obnoxious, race-baiting suggestions of ovens, you might recall who is doing the ethnic cleansing right now, and by what means. You could have a look at this.
https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1862925093015539865
Pogo says
@P.T.
Check your link.
Proud Trumphole says
Wasn’t there a cease fire prior to HAMAS invading a civilian concert with a bunch of unarmed young innocents?
Jake from state farm says
So another cease fire that Hamas and Hezbollah will break. Another cease fire that they will maybe go into Israel and take more hostages. Through more rocks from Gaza and Lebanon? Was not race baiting at all. Just trying to make you happy since you seem to think death is only ok, when it’s equal. I for one don’t think any death is ok. I want it to end and another and another and another cease fire is not going to do make it end. It just prolongs it and we go through this over and over again. Israel is not going to stop defending itself and not go after those who want them eliminated even if they are hiding amongst innocents. It does not stop until something is done about Iran. You lay perfectly into what Iran wants… You are not a stupid man Pierre. Is there some other reason you will not hold Iran responsible? Except for your one commentary on the radio, I have not forgotten.
Wait for it says
The idf and gop are terrorist organizations spreading pain and suffering wherever they go.
Kennan says
This is gonna be fun. I love it when hacks keep changing the narrative every other day. They have one narrative to apologize for Israel’s genocide. The world sees it. Punches holes in it over and over and over again. We continue to final billions of dollars to Israel to wipe out every Arab and Gaza and now Lebanon. The state department stutters mindlessly trying to make excuses for why they do this and say they want to cease-fire.. They vote no with the UN constantly while Hollow words like cease-fire trickle from their lying tongues.
Let me make this very clear to all the pogo sticks Jake’s, Trump‘s holes and others that do nothing more than put their ignorance out on display for the whole world to see and call the world idiots while doing so. Wow! Netanyahu and the IDF turned water off and electricity because they knew what they were gonna do. They are unsure at best which Hamas leaders they killed or didn’t kill, but the world is very well aware of the 50,000 people that we know of that they’ve bombed and killed. Women and children mostly women and children that they aimed at mostly. Hospitals, mosques, refugee camps, almost 200 reporters, over 200 UN workers, doctors, nurses and others targeted on purpose. Little to the flow of humanitarian aid coming in with the aid of Secretary Of state Blinkon, Who by the way lied to Congress when pro-Republica and the refugee bureau of the state department told him that no humanitarian aid was going in. He chose to decide with Israel and they’re lying words that it was going in.
It’s absolutely staggering to me that we still have this conversation 14 months after this whole thing started. I don’t wanna hear about Hamas making the situation what it is for Palestinians. Israel with the help of the United States is one of the most sophisticated in the world. They prove that when they made a pinpoint strike on Ishmael Hania, blowing him up in a guest house in Iran. Hamas is a militant group. They are not the supercharged industrial military that Israel is. Israel met a terrorist act, which was condemned by all with the biggest state sponsored, industrial terrorist act in the history of the 21st century. What now can only be described as a 21st century holocaust on Arabs. Arabs, that had nothing to do with what Hamas did. 1+1 = 2 not five people.
Here’s a fun fact. When you attack a territory that you already occupy that’s a war crime. They started initiating a war crime on day one. Listen I know Netanyahu and I know how that mind works. He never wanted a two state solution and he said it on many occasions. Go ahead and continue to apologize for what Israel is doing. Continue to justify what Israel is doing, because the cold hard truth is coming in hard, and it’s coming in fast and when the smoke clears anyone on that side of thinking is gonna look like a fool. I wanna stop short of calling anybody a racist, but certain comments and behaviors that I see abound certainly make some folks look like full-blown racists.Full stop.
Genocide is bad says
Haha I’m positive there will be no accountability for murdering children in Gaza.