Israel informed the UN on Sunday that it is pulling out of a key, decades-old agreement that allows the operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the lead agency providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
The move is part of Israel’s violent campaign to drive the agency out of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and comes as a supposed U.S. deadline to increase aid entry to Gaza is rapidly approaching.
In a letter, Israeli officials said that Israel is pulling out of a 1967 agreement that provides the legal basis for UNRWA’s operations in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, which serve Palestinian refugees driven out of their homes by decades of Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing.
The letter comes just after Israeli lawmakers passed two bills banning UNRWA’s operations in the region and maliciously labeling the agency as a “terror” group. Israeli officials have long sought to destroy UNRWA in order to expand Israel’s control over Palestinians and deepen its colonial mission.
UNRWA has said that it is still operational in the region in the immediate aftermath of the unilateral cancellation of the agreement. However, the agency has warned that implementation of the Israeli Knesset’s bills would totally destroy their operations in Israel and Palestine, and exacerbate already catastrophic conditions for Palestinians.
The collapse of UNRWA would lead to the collapse of humanitarian aid operations at large in Gaza, the agency has warned.
“If this law is implemented, it would be likely to cause the collapse of the international humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip — an operation of which UNRWA is the backbone,” an UNRWA spokesperson, Jonathan Fowler, told AFP.
Israel’s withdrawal from the agreement comes just three weeks after the Biden administration sent a letter to Israeli officials warning that they have 30 days to increase humanitarian access to Gaza. The letter cited U.S. laws that restrict military assistance to states that impede the delivery of humanitarian aid from the U.S. — despite evidence suggesting that the Biden administration has been purposefully ignoring these exact laws in order to continue a flow of weapons to Israel.
On Monday, State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said that Israel has so far “failed” to sufficiently increase aid, cracking an insensitive joke as he did so. He noted that Israel still has a week to go to fulfill those obligations. When asked specifically about whether the U.S. was concerned about the UNRWA ban, Miller said that he won’t speculate about what will happen in “the 87 — 83 days or whatever it is” in the future, when the bill is supposed to be implemented.
UNRWA is a unique agency in that it helps to run government-like services in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and beyond. As such, many humanitarian authorities have warned that the group’s work in subjects like education and health care make UNRWA irreplaceable.
“There is simply no alternative to UNRWA. UNRWA is one of the largest providers of essential health services in Gaza,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Israel’s decision to restrict UNRWA’s operations contravenes Israel’s obligations and responsibilities and jeopardizes the lives of all who depend on these essential services. The ban of UNRWA will not make Israel safer. It will only deepen the suffering of the people of Gaza and increase the risk of disease outbreaks,” the official said.
Experts have raised alarm that Israel’s attacks on UNRWA are an attempt to exterminate all Palestinian life and culture in the occupied territories. They are also an attempt to destroy Palestinians’ status and protections as refugees, experts say — thereby dismantling their internationally recognized right to return to the lands they were expelled from during Zionist ethnic cleansing campaigns in 1948 and beyond.
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