Why is the West falling for Israel’s plan to destroy UNRWA?
The UNRWA-run Sheikh Radwan Clinic in Gaza City, destroyed during Israel’s bombardment, in a photo taken on 3 February 2024
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye:
It is now crystal clear what Israeli officials had in mind when they briefed the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal about Hamas’ alleged infiltration of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
I still find it hard to understand how readily governments across the western world swallowed the bait, without any fact checking, and how, in the blink of an eye, 17 countries, accounting for just over $440m, half of the UNRWA’s operational budget, suspended funding.
On the weekend in which these countries should have been thinking about defunding Israel following the International Court of Justice verdict on provisional measures in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, all the talk was about defunding the one UN agency that is keeping Palestinians alive in Gaza.
In case anyone has forgotten, there is a war going on there.
UNRWA is currently giving shelter to over one million displaced Palestinians in Gaza in 154 sites. It’s not just the 13,000 Palestinians it employs; UNRWA is the largest relief agency operating in this war zone, a zone of unparalleled destruction.
UNRWA trucks driven by UNRWA drivers pick up the meagre supplies from the borders. They do the loading and unloading, sift through aid in their warehouses and distribute it. They supply other UN agencies. “If UNRWA disappeared, the consequences for Gaza are going to be catastrophic,” said Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications.
And yet UNRWA ceasing operations is now a very real possibility. “If the funding does not resume, we will not be able to continue our humanitarian work, including in Gaza, beyond the end of February. We don’t have reserves, no savings we can tap on a rainy day,” Touma added.
Protest during a hearing at the US Capitol, Washington DC, on 30 January 2024
A growing list of fabrications
None of this came to mind when 17 countries suspended funding.
In a blinding flash, the Israeli army that has killed over 152 UNRWA staff in Gaza, turned, in their minds, into the victim of the UN agency which had been “infiltrated by Hamas”. The international media reproduced without question the “dossier” of alleged evidence Israel distributed to journalists, a dossier which it never formally handed to UNRWA itself.
The UN agency first knew about the allegation that initially 12, then 190, then 1200 of its employees were “members of Hamas” when they read about it in the media. UNRWA regularly shares lists of its employees with Israel and with the governments of countries hosting Palestinian refugees.
…. …. ….
No one has paused to examine the credibility of the Israeli army’s claims, or weigh them against the growing list of known fabrications that the same army has manufactured to cover its tracks over the civilians it has killed in Gaza.