Israel is at war with the UN. It is time to revoke its membership
30 October 2024
By criminalising
Unrwa, Israel has translated its genocidal intent into national law and
officially stopped recognising UN values. It must be expelled from the
family of nations
Israel
Ambassador Danny Danon listens during a United Nations Security Council
meeting at UN headquarters in New York City, US on 2 October, 2024
(Reuters)
Israel’s unauthenticated and uncorroborated allegations,
to which the agency has responded with precautionary suspensions, is
that Unrwa’s staff participated in the attacks of 7 October.
Two new laws have been approved by the Knesset, which will come into
effect in 90 days, and which criminalise and de-facto expel the UN
agency for Palestinian refugees.
Unrwa’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, has warned that the Knesset vote "opposes the UN Charter and violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law".
In a letter to
the president of the UN General Assembly, Lazzarini added that "under
such physical, political and operational attack" Unrwa’s fulfilling of
its mandate will become impossible without the intervention of the
General Assembly.![]()
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One of the two bills approved by the Knesset, with a 92-10 majority, legislates that
Unrwa will no “longer operate any institution, provide any service, or
conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly” within the
territory controlled by Israel.
This includes the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, where almost three million Palestinians are registered as refugees, and hundreds of thousands are beneficiaries of life-sustaining services.
The second bill abrogates the 1967 agreement between the United
Nations and Israel, which allowed Unrwa to extend its services within
the occupied Palestinian territories, with Israel committing to
facilitating the agency’s work.
This measure also strips Unrwa of its diplomatic immunity.
Attacks on Unrwa have multiplied during the last decades, reaching
unprecedented intensity after 7 October, with more than 230 staff killed
in Israeli strikes.
The ultimate objective of Israel’s campaigns to erase Unrwa has
always been to erase the international legal protections in which the
United Nations has enshrined the Palestinian right of return to the
lands from which they have been expelled.
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Cancelling Unrwa’s presence is about normalising Israel’s settler-colonial conquest of Palestinian land through expulsion.
To make this message clear, in a highly symbolic move, two weeks before Monday's Knesset vote, Israel confiscated illegally
occupied Palestinian lands on which the Unrwa headquarters is located.
In place of the Unrwa headquarters, Israel is going to build a colony
hosting 1,400 settlement units.
Intensifying the genocide
The history and present of Palestinian dispossession are intertwined
in Israel’s attempt to eradicate Unrwa. Expelling Unrwa is also about
intensifying the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Expelling Unrwa is also about intensifying the ongoing genocide in Gaza
Since October 2023, as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri has demonstrated in his reports, Israel has used starvation
“to displace, kill, annihilate people […] as an attempt to erase
Palestinians from history and their land in order for Israel to fully
annex Palestinian territory”.
In more than a year of Israel’s attempts to impose this regime of
settler-colonial terror, Unrwa has been at the forefront of the efforts
to keep the Palestinian people alive, providing food, medical assistance
and shelter for the displaced Palestinian population in Gaza.
That is why, when in March 2024, South Africa submitted an urgent
request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue new
provisional measures to protect the Palestinian people in Gaza from the
risk of genocide, it denounced Israel’s
unsubstantiated international campaign to defund Unrwa as an effort to
intensify its starvation regime and a violation of the Genocide
Convention.
To which the ICJ responded at the end of the same month, issuing an
order for Israel to cooperate with Unrwa and other UN agencies and
ensure “the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently
needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food,
water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation
requirements”.
Instead of complying with the ICJ order, Israel intensified its
legislative efforts to outlaw Unrwa, while simultaneously attacking
Unrwa militarily.
Genocidal intent
In fact, the legislative and military efforts should be conceived as
part of the same process of violation of the Genocide Convention.
While Israel’s parliament was advancing the two different bills
approved on 28 October and its legislative effort to outlaw Unrwa, its
military has worked systematically to annihilate Unrwa’s staff, killing
233 of them as of 25 October.
As part of the genocidal campaign, 70 percent of Unrwa’s schools have been targeted, as well as its distribution and medical centres.
The laws approved by the Knesset on 28 October are further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent.
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In effect, what the laws ultimately do is to translate Israel’s
genocidal intent into national law. It is not a matter of individuals
with high-rank positions, or chains of command explicitly articulating
and implementing the intent to destroy Palestinians as a group.
With the new laws, it is the supreme “democratic” organ governing the
state of Israel which has voted in favour of directly contributing to
settler-colonial expansion and genocide by eradicating the main
institution that keeps Gaza Palestinians alive.
Israel is at war with the United Nations as an institution.
It kills and bombards its humanitarian staff in Gaza. It bombards,
bulldozes and uses gas against UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. It tries to
dismantle its refugee agencies. It ignores the orders of the UN's
highest judicial body, choosing to put the Genocide Convention at risk.
It bans its
secretary general from visiting the country, treating him as a threat.
It orchestrates diplomatic campaigns against UN functionaries and
special rapporteurs who call for an end to the genocide and justice in
Palestine. Its prime minister frames the entire UN as a “house of
darkness” and a "swamp of antisemitic bile".
It has become clear that Israel has officially stopped recognising itself in UN values and institutions.
The natural countermeasure for the UN to take is it stop recognising
Israel as a legitimate member of the family of nations, and revoke its
UN membership until it stops its genocide and dismantles its regime of
settler-colonial apartheid.
Back in 1974 the General Assembly voted to suspend South Africa from participation in its work due to international opposition to its apartheid policies.
It worked with South Africa, it will work with Israel.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.