By YOUSEF ALJAMAL
Ahmad Alhaaj, a 90-year old Palestinian, was displaced from his village of Al-Sawafir Al-Sharqiya at gunpoint by a Zionist militia in 1948. He lived his entire life in a rental house in the hope that he would one day return, but passed away on January 17 in the north of Gaza under Israel’s siege.
Alhaaj was among the 70% of Palestinians, including my family, who remain refugees of the 1947 – 1948 war. The UN created the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in 1949 to support those refugees, after Israel refused to implement UN Resolution 194 mandating Palestinian refugees’ return and it became clear to the world that the their plight would not end soon. Today, 4.7 million refugees like Alhaaj turn to the UNRWA for basic necessities like shelter, food and education. I attended UNRWA schools, and without the free access to schooling and healthcare UNRWA gave me and my family, I would not be holding a PhD today.
The agency is now under a fierce attack by the Israeli government, which aims to dismantle it based on allegations that Israeli intelligence has so far failed to prove.
It is no surprise that the Israeli government launched this latest attack on UNRWA, an agency it has long smeared as an arm of Hamas. It wants to eradicate UNRWA because it sustains millions of refugees who are living on Israel’s doorstep and demanding the right to return — or, in the words of the Israeli foreign minister to the UN, because UNRWA “perpetuates the refugee problem.”
The Israeli government claims that a dozen UNRWA employees played a role in Hamas’ October 7 attacks. Once Israel officially announced the accusations on January 26, countries such as the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom rushed to suspend their funds to UNRWA. These countries didn’t stop their arms to Israel, however, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on the same day that Israel is plausibly engaging in genocide in the Gaza Strip.
The way these countries jumped to cut UNRWA aid, even before investigating the Israeli government’s claims, suggest that they did so under Israeli pressure. According to news outlets that obtained copies of an Israeli intelligence dossier shared with donor nations, the dossier contained no evidence, only allegations. UNRWA says some of its employees were forced to confess to taking part in the attacks. A UN investigation has released no findings yet.
YOUSEF ALJAMAL holds a doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies. He is a Palestinian refugee from Gaza and is a senior non-resident scholar at the Hashim Sani Center for Palestine Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia.
21 March 2024
Source: inthesetimes.com