Will it survive? Since the end of January, following serious accusations by Israel that 12 of its employees in Gaza took part in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, has been going through an "existential crisis," according to its director, Philippe Lazzarini.
Lazzarini has not received any official report from the Israeli authorities detailing the nature of the alleged acts of the accused employees. He was only given their names on January 18. According to press leaks, seven of the suspects had infiltrated Israel during the massacre. Two of them were killed.
The UN is conducting an investigation. But UNRWA's reputation is already tarnished. The measures taken by the agency – sacking the staff involved rather than suspending them pending the outcome of the investigation – have not prevented a major fallout. Sixteen donor countries have suspended their funding, including the United States, its main backer.
Since then, other Israeli allegations have surfaced, fueling the theory of a collusion between Hamas and UNRWA. In particular, UNRWA has been accused of being aware of the existence of a tunnel built by Hamas under its main office in Gaza. Lazzarini denied these accusations.
Relations between Israel and UNRWA have long been fraught. The agency is seen as too localized – 99% of its 30,000 employees, including 13,000 in Gaza, are Palestinian – and too militant. It is accused of maintaining the refugee status of the beneficiaries of its services, perpetuating the memory of the Nakba (the founding tragedy of 1948, when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land by the fledgling state of Israel), and thus obstructing peace. Nevertheless, the Israeli army has long defended its role as a social stabilizer in the Palestinian territories thanks to the services (education, health, etc.) it provides.
Over the years, UNRWA – which is also active in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, the main host countries for refugees – has become a political symbol for Palestinians and Israelis alike: the guarantor of the refugees' "right of return," enshrined in UN resolution 194. However, this is a mistaken projection on both sides, as defending the right of return is not part of the organization's mandate, which is to support Palestinian exiles until a political solution to the conflict is found.
The agency was founded in 1949 in response to "an explicit request from the United States, to relieve Israel of the burden of refugees: to be an alternative to Resolution 194 and to focus on the integration of Palestinians in the host countries," explained Lex Takkenberg, a former senior UNRWA official who spent 30 years there, until 2019. Initially, the agency and the state of Israel had little interaction. But, as Takkenberg explained, "right at the start of the 1967 war, the Israeli authorities approached the UNRWA director asking that the agency continue its operations" in what were to become the occupied territories: Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. "Otherwise, the fate of the refugees would have been their responsibility," he added.
You have 54.19% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.