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| UNRWA teams providing polio vaccines in an UNRWA school in Khan Younis, Gaza southern area, October 2024. © 2024 UNRWA Photo |
Outrage over Israel’s attempt to dismantle our UN agency has largely petered out. The stakes are very high now
Opinion piece by Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General
The UN agency entrusted with the
protection and welfare of Palestine refugees for three-quarters of a
century, Unrwa, which I lead, was always meant to be temporary. The
conclusion of its mandate was foreseen at its establishment.
The choice before us today is whether to jettison a decades-long
investment in human development and human rights by chaotically
dismantling the agency overnight, or pursue an orderly political process
in which Unrwa continues to provide millions of Palestine refugees with
education and healthcare until empowered Palestinian institutions take
over these services.
The agency may be forced to halt its work in the occupied Palestinian territory next month if legislation passed by
the Israeli parliament is implemented. The laws would cripple the
humanitarian response in Gaza and deprive millions of Palestine refugees
of essential services in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. They
would also eliminate a vocal witness to the countless horrors and
injustices Palestinians have endured for decades.
The government of Israel’s brazen effort
to thwart the will of the international community – expressed through
multiple UN resolutions – and single-handedly dismantle a UN agency has
been met with public condemnation and outrage that has largely petered
out into political inertia. The dearth of political courage and
principled leadership when it matters most does not bode well for our
multilateral system.
What is at stake? For Palestine
refugees, it is their very lives and future. The impact of barring
access to education, healthcare and other social services will be
devastating and multigenerational. Complicity in this endeavour erodes
not only our humanity but also the legitimacy of our multilateral
system. The near total absence of political, economic or legal penalties
for flagrant violations of the Geneva conventions,
utter disregard for the resolutions of the security council and the
general assembly, and open defiance of the rulings of the international
court of justice is making a mockery of the rules-based international
order.
The war on Gaza and Palestinians is
coupled with an extraordinary assault on those who speak or act in
defence of human rights, international law and the victims of a barbaric
war. Humanitarian workers with decades of service to war-affected
populations are suddenly labelled as terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. Critics of Israeli government policies and actions are intimidated and harassed. Inflammatory propaganda sponsored by
the Israeli foreign ministry is now splashed on billboards in prime
locations in the US and Europe, complemented by Google ads promoting
websites replete with disinformation. These are well funded efforts to
distract from the brutality of an unlawful occupation and the
international crimes being committed with total impunity under our
watch.
The government of Israel and its
affiliates justify actions against Unrwa by claiming that the agency is
infiltrated by Hamas, even though all allegations for which any evidence
has been offered have been thoroughly investigated. Meanwhile, Hamas
accuses Unrwa’s leadership of colluding with the Israeli occupation and
opposes the agency’s efforts to promote human rights and gender
equality. Far from being a party to the conflict, Unrwa is a casualty of
this war.
The objective of efforts to malign and
eventually dismantle Unrwa is simple – to eliminate the refugee status
of Palestinians and shift, unilaterally, the long-established parameters
for a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The blind
pursuit of this goal has overlooked the fact that the refugee status of
Palestinians is not tied to Unrwa and is enshrined in a general assembly
resolution that predates the creation of the agency.
Today, the international community is at
a crossroads. In one direction lies a world where we have reneged on
our commitment to provide a political answer to the question of
Palestine. It is a dystopian world, where Israel, as the occupying
power, is solely responsible for the population in the occupied
Palestinian territory, possibly subcontracting the occupation to private
actors who are even less answerable to the international community.
In another direction lies a world where
the guardrails of the rules-based order hold firm and the Palestinian
question is resolved by political means. This is the path currently
being pursued by the global alliance for the implementation of the two-state solution,
led by Saudi Arabia, the EU and the Arab League. This effort, which
revives the Arab peace initiative, aims to lay down an irreversible
pathway towards a two-state solution, and to build the capacity of a
Palestinian administration that will govern a future state of Palestine,
including Gaza.
This is the path Unrwa was created to
support. Pending the establishment of a Palestinian state, the agency
will be critical for ensuring that children in Gaza are
not condemned to live in the rubble, without education and without
hope. No other entity except a functioning state can provide education
to hundreds of thousands of girls and boys, and primary healthcare for
millions of Palestinians. Within the framework of a political solution,
Unrwa can progressively conclude its mandate, with its teachers, doctors
and nurses becoming the workforce of empowered Palestinian
institutions.
We still have a window of opportunity to
avert a cataclysmic future where firepower and propaganda construct the
global order, determining where and when human rights and the rule of
law apply, if at all. The tools and institutions needed to defend and
reinforce our multilateral system and the rules-based order exist and
are adequate – we need only find the political courage to use them.
This opinion piece was first published in the Guardian newspaper on 20 December 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/20/unrwa-stop-saving-lives-gaza-israel-un-agency?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/notes/unrwa-may-be-forced-stop-saving-lives-gaza-will-world-let-happen
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