The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday 31st October 2024 that Israeli legislation to shut down the main lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza Strip “will be deadly” if fully implemented.1
The Israeli Knesset adopted two bills the previous Monday banning United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the main UN agency aiding Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem – from operating in its territory and prohibiting authorities from having any contact with it.
“UNRWA is indispensable in delivering the urgent, life-saving assistance that 2.2 million people in Gaza urgently need,” UNICEF said in its statement.2
The statement stressed that UNRWA is the only UN General Assembly-mandated agency to provide for Palestinian refugees.
“UNRWA runs a range of social services, with over 18,000 employees in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, providing health, education and other essential services for Palestinian refugees,” it said. “No UN agency can take over this responsibility.”3
Overall, UNRWA provides essential services and protection to more than five million Palestinian refugees across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
UNICEF noted that UNRWA is “the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza”, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said that “there is no alternative to UNRWA”.4
Some 90 per cent of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have seen their homes destroyed by Israeli ground and air operations, with the majority of the population having been displaced several times.
James Elder, a spokesperson for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said the Knesset’s decision “means that a new way has been found to kill children”. He said UNICEF “would become effectively unable to distribute lifesaving supplies”. These include deliveries of vaccines, winter clothes, hygiene kits, health kits, water, and ready-to-use therapeutic food to combat malnutrition.5
Intense Israeli attacks on around 400,000 Palestinians trapped in northern Gaza have been ongoing since early October.
In recent days, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported that Israeli strikes have targeted civilians in Jabalya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun.6
OCHA said the third floor of Kamal Adwan Hospital was bombed, destroying medical supplies delivered just five days ago during a joint mission led by the World Health Organization (WHO), with its support.
The agency added that hospitals in the north are under assault and rescue teams are unable to work due to the arrests of medical personnel and the confiscation of essential equipment, including ambulances and a fire truck.
OCHA has also reported that almost no aid trucks have been permitted by Israeli forces into northern Gaza and the humanitarian crisis is being exacerbated by dwindling supplies, high casualties, relentless strikes on healthcare facilities and personnel, along with widespread displacement.
Acts of impeding or blocking the distribution of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in northern Gaza represent a deliberate strategy of starvation. This is classified as a war crime in international law.
This egregious crime has increased speculation that the Israeli government is implementing a plan proposed by a group of former Israeli generals known as “the generals’ plan”. Under this criminal plan, the civilian population in northern Gaza would be ordered to evacuate, aid supplies cut off and anyone surviving in this area treated as a terrorist to be killed at will.
Not surprisingly, the Israeli military has denied it is carrying out such a plan. However, the extreme nationalist Netanyahu government has so far failed to clearly deny that it is implementing “the generals’ plan” in whole or in part.
In keeping with its long term objective of undermining Palestinian resistance and self-determination, Israel has wanted to cripple the indispensable support provided by UNRWA for decades.
As a result of Israel’s relentless ground and air attacks, more than 230 of the agency’s staff have been killed in Gaza over the last year.
Despite Israeli allegations that UNRWA actively supports Hamas, a recent independent report stated that UNRWA had “a more developed approach to (political) neutrality” than other aid agencies.7
An integral part of Israel’s war on Gaza is the insidious propaganda it regularly regurgitates – often repeated uncritically by the mainstream media – to justify its daily atrocities and violations of international law. Actions, however, speak louder than words i.e. the best guide to Israel’s military and political policy is to pay heed to its actions, rather than its duplicitous justifications.
In the ongoing case that South Africa brought before International Court of Justice on 23 December 2023, it was argued that Israeli had committed and was committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, contravening the Genocide Convention, including Israel’s 75-year apartheid, 56-year occupation, and 16-year blockade of the Gaza Strip.8
Judging by events over the last couple of months, aspects of Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon and Beirut, in particular, are replicating Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, including the forced evacuation of the civilian population, followed by the destruction of their residential buildings and infrastructure.
This criminal strategy has also entailed the assassination of a number of Hezbollah’s leaders, indiscriminate killing of civilians, along with brazen attacks on peacekeepers attached to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and their command post in southern Lebanon.9
Those resisting Israel’s strategy of bombardment, displacement and extermination, including organisations such as UNRWA, are denounced as supporters or sympathisers of terrorists.
In reality, however, it is Palestinian and Lebanese societies as a whole that are being targeted and destroyed by Israeli state terrorism dedicated to the indefensible goals of occupation and expansion.
Notes
1. UNICEF, Statement on Israeli legislation on UNRWA, UN News, Oct 31, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, ‘No alternative to “indispensable” UNRWA’, United Nations, Oct 29, 2024.
5. James Elder, ‘UNRWA cannot be replaced, say UN top officials in response to Knesset ban’, United Nations, Oct 19, 2024.
6. OCHA, Report on Occupied Palestinian Territory in ‘Today’s top news: Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lebanon, Ukraine, West and Central Africa’, Nov 4, 2024.
7. UNRWA, ‘UNRWA Preliminary Response – Final Report of the Independent Review of Mechanisms and Procedures to Ensure Adherence by UNRWA to the Humanitarian Principle of Neutrality’, Apr 20, 2024.
8. MPG post, ‘ICJ issues interim ruling in South Africa’s case against Israel for violations of the Genocide Convention’, Jan 29, 2024.
9. Al Jazeera, ‘Israel ‘demolished’ watchtower in latest attack on UN Lebanon peacekeepers’, News, Oct 20, 2024.
More information
Ruwaida Kamal Amer, ‘‘I will stay inside my hospital until the last moment’’, +972 Magazine, Nov 5, 2024.
Mat Nashed, ‘Israel’s outlawing of UNRWA will make life ‘unbearable’ for Palestinians’, Al Jazeera, Oct 31, 2024.
Leonie Fleischmann, ‘Israel’s ‘generals’ plan’ to clear Palestinians from north of Gaza could pave the way for settlers to return’, The Conversation, Oct 25, 2024.
Samer Jaber, ‘The Israeli ‘generals’ plan’ for northern Gaza is unlikely to succeed’, Al Jazeera, Oct 16, 2024.