JJP lobbies MPs about UNRWA
On 30 January 2024, JJP wrote to all MPs about Israel’s attempt to stop UNRWA from doing its job in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. If Israel succeeds in its aim, the immediate consequences for the people of Gaza will be devastating. The long-term consequences in Gaza and the West Bank will be to pile pressure on the refugees to try to force them to leave, thereby helping Israel in its aim of ethnically cleansing the OPT in order to create Greater Israel.
Our letter to MPs is below:
Dear MP, 30 January 2024
We are Jews for Justice for Palestinians. With some 2,750 members, we are the largest Jewish peace group in the UK or Europe. You can view our principles and range of advocacy work on our website, jfjfp.com
We are writing about the Israeli ban on UNRWA operating in Israeli territory, preventing Israeli authorities from having any contact with the agency, and labelling UNRWA as a “terror” group.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is the UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. It was created by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1949 to provide relief, health, and education services for the 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled by Zionist forces from the part of Palestine they conquered in the 1948-1949 war that led to the creation of Israel.
Those people, their children and grandchildren comprise the 6.4 million Palestinian refugees today. Some 2.7 million refugees live in Gaza and the West Bank, with the rest in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. UNRWA provides services such as schools, primary health centres and other social services to all of them.
Since UNRWA operates outside Israeli sovereign territory under the regularly renewed United Nations mandate, Israel does not have the right to stop its operations. However, since UNRWA has to liaise with Israeli officials in order to operate in Gaza and the West Bank, the ban would gradually close down its operations there.
UNRWA’s network of staff, medical and logistic capabilities cannot be replicated by other organisations. If the ban goes ahead, delivery of desperately needed food, medical aid and temporary shelters in Gaza would be severely compromised.
Israeli claims that UNRWA allowed Hamas to infiltrate its organisation have already been found to be without merit. In January last year, Israel claimed that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7th attack. Seventeen donor countries suspended their UNRWA funding, but later reinstated it when Israel failed to provide any credible proof for its claims.
UNRWA has and had careful employment vetting procedures. However, no procedures, however strict, could guarantee that no one could ever slip through the net, considering that UNRWA employs some 13,000 people in Gaza.
The falseness of Israel’s claim is laid bare by the fact that Israeli security agencies are said to be willing for UNRWA’s employees to be managed by other UN agencies in order to allow services to continue. Clearly, they do not think UNRWA is riddled with Hamas operatives.
We believe Israel’s reasons for wanting to ban UNRWA can be found elsewhere. First, the continued existence of UNRWA keeps the Palestinian refugee issue alive. Second, the UNRWA food aid, logistics, clinics and schools allow the refugees in the OPT to have a bearable life. Some three quarters of the population of Gaza and one third of the population in the West Bank are refugees. Making their lives unliveable would serve Israel’s purpose of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population of the OPT in order to permit creation of Greater Israel.
We urge you to speak out in Parliament and elsewhere to demand that our government, together with other concerned countries, puts pressure on Israel to allow UNRWA to continue all its operations unhindered. The repeated demarches delivered to Israel by the UK and other governments over the past 20 years that have prevented settlement building in the strategic E1 area of the West Bank can serve as a model for action. We further urge you to demand that the UK should have no truck with American efforts to replace UNRWA, which we believe have more to do with helping Israel achieve its objectives than with helping the Palestinians.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur Goodman
Parliamentary and Diplomatic Officer