Banning UNRWA – is this (finally) too much?
JVL Introduction
The United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) is known to be the only agency that can distribute aid across Gaza. Israel has now voted to ban UNWRA the agency that: “distributes aid and runs shelters and key infrastructure – such as medical facilities, teacher training centres and almost 300 primary schools.”
This decision will directly affect Palestinians living in the West Bank as well as, of course, Gaza where, since October 2023, UNWRA has distributed food parcels to almost 1.9 million people and provided nearly six million medical consultations in Gaza. More than 200 UNWRA staff have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 in the course of those duties.
The USA has also written to Israel insisting that it allows more humanitarian aid to reach people in Gaza (while the bombs continue, Ed). This decision makes it impossible to fulfil and Israel’s consideration of private contractors doing this is very dangerous. See eg, this article from the Irish Times
LL
This article was originally published by Guardian on Mon 28 Oct 2024. Read the original here.
The Guardian view on Israel v the UN: the making of an outlaw state
Banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency with no replacement will only cripple aid to Palestinians in their hour of need. It is a deeply irresponsible move by Israeli lawmakers
Loading article text…
The terrorist state of Israel’s war on the United Nations is really amazing.
How does Israel get away with it? There is no logical explanation. The politicians who put on a show of despair but ensure that the huge flow of weaponry and funding to the terrorist state is sustained act as if deranged
The Guardian aricle contributes to the hypocrisy as it is obliged to give an impression that the Israeli war on the indigenous people (and the UN) began after last year’s reprisal raid into Israel. Murderous Israeli assaults on the indigenous people have been going on for over seventy years.
I believe that the creation of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, was the result of pressure by Israel to NOT allow the normal UN refugee agency to operate because Israel would then have to admit that it had created refugees which they deny to this day. Israel says that the Palestinians left their homes of their own accord and that they were not refugees and Israel has no responsibility to allow them to return to their homes. Israel then pressured the UN so that this separate agency ONLY exists for Palestinians and no one else. I would like JVL to find articles about how the US pressured the UN to declare a two state solution and one that gave far more land to Israel than the native Palestinians etc. A lot of skullduggery I have heard.