Perspective: UNRWA: A Source of Dignity, Support, and Hope Whose Banning Leaves an Unfillable Void

Abu Imad, 72, had been engaged in an interesting conversation with his friends while driving in his luxurious Mercedes in a neighborhood in Amman, when he heard the news bulletin on the radio and suddenly fell silent. The Israeli Knesset had just passed a law prohibiting the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Israel, the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Gaza Strip.1 The Knesset also voted to declare UNRWA a “terror group,” meaning that any contact between UNRWA and the state is banned.

The decision regarding the institution all Palestinians know as al-wakala (the agency) means that its headquarters in Palestine will be closed, its employees laid off, and the services it provides to the Palestinian refugees there will come to an end. If the Israeli decision leads to the collapse of UNRWA or its budget, then its operations in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria could collapse as well.

Abu Imad, a Palestinian Jerusalemite who is a very successful businessman in the Gulf, broke his silence: “If it weren’t for the agency, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have now in terms of education, wealth, and social status. I received a great education in the agency’s schools in the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, where we lived before we were displaced to Amman. In addition to supplies like flour, oil, powdered milk, canned goods, and lentils and medical services, the agency hired the best teachers in Palestine. It was every teacher’s dream at that time to work in the agency’s schools because their salaries were high and they had many incentives, not to mention the end-of-service bonus.”2

He said that closing the agency in Palestine could effectively mean announcing the demise of thousands of Palestinian families. Many in the camps and cities in the West Bank currently live on the services provided by UNRWA, especially since the economic situation deteriorated after October 7, 2023.

Fouad al-Daqqaq, a well-known Palestinian Jerusalemite engineer and public figure, said that this decision will not change the fact that Palestinians carry the agency card that proves that they have the right to return to their homes in West Jerusalem that were stolen from them by Israel in 1948. “This card,” he said, “is the international recognition of this right that we will not give up because of the decision of an extremist right-wing government that controls Israel.”3

In front of the closed door of the UNRWA clinic in the Zawiyat al-Hindiyya at the entrance to Herod’s Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, Saad Mustafa, 78, stood leaning on a cane waiting for the clinic to open its doors at eight in the morning. He lives in Jerusalem’s al-Sa‘diyya neighborhood. “One can’t imagine Jerusalem without the agency clinic in the Zawiyat al-Hindiyya. Let us see how the European countries and America, which support Israel in its unjust war against the Palestinians, will deal with this unjust decision, and let us see how the United Nations itself, which approved the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, will deal with our right of return that is guaranteed by all international conventions.”4

Jawdat Manna, a resident of Dheisheh camp, a veteran journalist, and head of the Palestinian Memory House in Amman, echoed similar thoughts. “This [Israeli] legislation confirms to the world once again that Israel has completely distanced itself from its commitment to international law and is a challenge to an international organization that recognized Israel as a state. It is time to expel Israel from the United Nations institutions and allow the Palestinian people to exercise their right to national independence.”5 Manna called for the full recognition of the State of Palestine, “whose people are being expelled, starved, and deprived of the most basic rights stipulated by international laws. There is no need for an investigation into whether Israel has committed war crimes, because this legislation constitutes additional evidence for the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice that Israel has committed crimes against humanity.”

“It is necessary to expedite the enforcement of international law against this rogue state,” Dimitri Diliani, spokesman for the Democratic Reformist Current in the Fatah movement,6 told Jerusalem Story. He called on the international community to break its silence regarding this blatant attack. More than 50 human rights organizations, including Oxfam and Human Rights Watch, had urged world leaders to take immediate action to stop this legislation before it is voted on.7 Unfortunately, world governments remained silent.

Diliani stressed the need for the international community to hold Israel accountable for its blatant disregard for UN resolutions and humanitarian principles. He asserted that the international community had to take swift and decisive action to protect UNRWA and defend Palestinians’ inalienable right to self-determination; this is of utmost importance to preserve what the occupying state has not yet destroyed.

Israel’s decision, which attempts to end UNRWA’s work in the Palestinian occupied territories, is based almost totally on manufactured stories that Israel was unable or unwilling to corroborate to a neutral investigative committee set up by the UN secretary-general.8 The UN agency has long been the target of right-wing Israeli protests. The decision is consistent with other decisions taken by Israel, such as the smearing of Palestinian NGOs and journalists as terrorists without ever providing any evidence.9 The timing of the Knesset’s UNRWA vote, taken during Israel’s war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and its deliberate and sustained attacks on UNRWA facilities and staff there, is hardly coincidental.