Mansour Barati – Expert on Zionist Regime Issues

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA, which is considered an aid and employment agency for Palestinian refugees, is, in fact, the most important UN agency in helping the Palestinians. This agency is mainly active in the Palestinian territories themselves and historic Palestine, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and also in Egypt; that is, the places where Palestinian refugees are present and live. For example, Jordan has the largest number of Palestinian refugees, and for this reason, UNRWA is very active in Jordan. UNRWA has 30,000 employees, and its actions include delivering humanitarian aid and preparing food for Palestinian refugees. Before the war, this organization tried to provide services to Palestinian refugees who were in refugee camps, even in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There were 8 UNRWA camps in the Gaza Strip, which are now damaged but still partially active.

UNRWA is also active in the field of education and has established many schools for Palestinians because most Palestinian children have not been able to study due to their conditions of displacement and asylum.

In the meantime, the Israelis have raised some claims since October 7, 2023, that some UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 event and the attack Hamas carried out against the southern regions of the occupied territories. They claimed, for example, that Hamas forces used the surroundings of UNRWA buildings, schools, or shelters as bases for their attacks. The Israeli regime used this as a pretext and asked various countries to cut off their aid to UNRWA. In October 2023, many countries cut off their financial support to UNRWA in the very first days. This is even though UNRWA’s lifeblood was the intermittent support from various countries worldwide to this organization.

After this request from the Israeli regime, the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Spain, Ireland, and France cut off their support. The head of UNRWA then announced that this process had allowed the organization to continue its activities for only two months and that the organization’s budget would run out within the next two months.

At the same time, the UN opened an investigation into UNRWA’s activities during the October 7th incident to find out whether the Israeli regime’s claims were true or not. The investigation that was conducted ultimately concluded that nine UNRWA employees had taken actions in favor of Hamas during the October 7th attack. Still, no action was taken at the organizational level, and it remained neutral. So, this investigation exonerated UNRWA, but the Israeli regime did not accept this and declared that this investigation was not sufficient and that the UN had ignored the evidence. So they decided to cut off cooperation with this institution themselves. Of course, the Israeli regime was not very keen on UNRWA’s activities even before October 7th because UNRWA is essentially one of the components of the Oslo Accords, which is based on the two-state solution. This is while since then, the Israeli regime has tried to weaken the two-state solution even more.

It should be noted that UNRWA facilitates UN access to Palestinian territories, especially in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, so the Israelis are seeking to cut off cooperation with this institution and do not want the UN to have direct and unmediated access to Palestinian territories by the Israeli regime. Weakening UNRWA will also mean further weakening the two-state solution.

Another issue is that when UNRWA is weakened as an international institution, the Israeli regime will have greater access and control over the aid Palestine is supposed to receive. In such a situation, the Israeli regime will try to filter and organize this aid and, through this organization and delivery of aid to the part of Palestinians who are in need, have somewhat modified the world’s view of the Israeli regime as an army that seeks genocide.

At the same time, weakening UNRWA could lead to worse conditions for the Palestinians and intensify and accelerate their withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Finally, one of the Israeli regime’s objections to UNRWA was that the lessons that UNRWA schools teach Palestinian children have some anti-Israel content and are about the occupation. Therefore, the Israeli regime would like to be able to plan and compile this content itself in a way that will influence future generations of Palestinians and, in its opinion, weaken their anti-Israel and anti-occupation sentiments so that they do not attract resistance groups. This is while weakening UNRWA directly means weakening the Palestinians even more and is one of the aspects of the occupation.