Keeping an Eye on UNRWA

Israel recently launched a spate of attacks on UNRWA, the UN Agency serving Palestinian refugees, which could herald another attempt to shut the Agency down. At the same time, UNRWA faces serious external and internal challenges that, given the history of Western attempts to use it to resettle Palestinian refugees, could result in shifts in the Agency’s mission and mandate, as happened briefly in the post-Oslo period. Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Randa Farah analyses the Israeli, Western, and Arab challenges to UNRWA that call for Palestinian vigilance in 2012.

Israel Takes on UNRWA (Again)

Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, recently accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of perpetuating Palestine’s conflict with Israel. Ayalon called UNRWA “morally and politically unacceptable.” He claimed that the UN applied double standards by not resettling Palestinian refugees through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), thus, in his view, obstructing a peaceful resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Ayalon’s attack on UNRWA is part of a pattern of recent attacks against the Agency. It closely followed a similar Israeli accusation published in Israel Hayom on November 21, in which it was announced that Israel intends to ask the UN to close down UNRWA. In addition to accusing the Agency of being an “obstacle to peace,” the article (quoting Israeli officials) claimed that UNRWA had a “distorted definition” of the term “refugee” and that no other refugees in the world were afforded refugee status for generations.

The latest attacks on UNRWA are consistent with standard Israeli propaganda, which dismiss as irrelevant the root causes of the conflict, namely the Zionist settler-colonial project and Israel’s responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in1948 that produced the Palestinian refugees in the first place. They are also based on blatant lies, including, for example, ignoring the fact that millions of other refugees are in what UNHCR describes as “protracted refugee situations” that “stem from political impasses” and receive assistance. The accusations Israel levels against UNRWA are particularly absurd given its documented history of armed assaults on UNRWA’s installations, including schools, hospitals and ambulances, killing or injuring teachers, students, doctors and nurses.