Israel forced the world to create UNRWA; now it wants UNRWA dead
At last, Israel took the decision it has been threatening for a long time: declare UNRWA an illegal entity, denying it the right to work from any territories under its control, including occupied lands in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Simply said, Israeli Knesset just banned the organisation that has been there since day one of the founding of the state of Israel. Not because it is no longer needed, but when it is needed the most.
In an ideal situation, any wise person would have expected Israel to take the easier and much more obvious route that would lead to the abolishing of UNRWA altogether and end all complaints that frequently arise in relation to its work. Israel, instead of giving the world any reason to condemn its policies toward the Agency, should solve the issue once and for all by taking the right decision.
What is the magical decision that would end everything related to the organisation and its existence – as if it had never existed – which Israel has been rejecting ever since it was established as a state in the region that keeps rejecting it?
Very simple: remove the reasons for UNRWA’s existence and the organisation will automatically disappear the following moment, or it might morph into something else better, serving the UN around the world instead of being confined to the Middle East and linked to Palestine; somewhat degrading.
Let the refugees for which UNRWA was created go back to their homes in villages and towns from which they were forced to flee when Israel was created and UNRWA will never bother Israel again. Since most of such people have died while they were eagerly waiting to go back, their descendants have inherited that right and they should be allowed to go back to their families’ properties, wherever these properties are inside today’s Israel.
Why should a Ukrainian Jew, an American Jew, a Russian or British Jew, who has never seen Palestine before, born and raised thousands of miles away have the right to “return to Israel” but not the late Ismail Haniyeh, the late Yahya Sinwar or the late Yasser Arafat, or their children who are a mere taxi ride away from their ancestors’ home? Why?
The simple answer to that is also very simple: Israel, as the only democracy in the region as any fanatic American Zionist preacher would tell you, does not want this. This practically means that Israel, whose existence is a prerequisite for the return of Jesus Christ, as the same fanatic would emphasize to you, should not trade the return of the Saviour for the return of poor and primitive Palestinians—let them live anywhere, but not in Israel.
This kind of twisted logic is dominant in the religious Zionist organisations that drum up support for Israel in the United States which, effectively, keeps Israel going. The same reasoning is used to justify the simple daily fact the world is witnessing: the killing of an estimated 110 plus innocent Palestinians every day since 7 October, 2023.
In such a debate, the fact why UNRWA was created in the first place gets drowned under a barrage of lies, allegations and disinformation and the world is left to deal with a huge problem without being able to identify its causes. When the causes of the problem are neither identified nor properly understood, it will persist and never get sorted out. In such a case, which has been prevailing since 1949 to date, the idea of the very existence of UNRWA and the people it cares for becomes irrelevant.The world has already forgotten why UNRWA is still around, focusing, instead, on why Israel hates it. The world news bulletins spend endless hours focusing on why Hamas, or the PLO itself, or why Sinwar decided to take the route of 7 October, or something similar. They simply forget the reasons why Sinwar, for example, his wife, children, his mum and dad and their neighbours have been unhappy clients of UNRWA—shamefully waiting for the next handout of a bag of rice, wondering if it will arrive. October came as a reminder to everyone that something is inherently wrong.
Deciding to occupy entire historical Palestine, however illegal under international law that might be, Israel should have protected the Palestinian civilians instead of taking their land, homes, farms and workshops to hand over to emigrants coming from New York, Kiev, Moscow, Warsaw and even the heirs of claimed to be lost-and-found Falasha tribes in Ethiopia and many others. Instead, it followed up on the same policy by displacing more and more Palestinians out to wherever they can go, in total disregard to every single legal or humanitarian principle the UN, the creator or UNRWA, ever represented.
After all these years, Israel has changed its mind and now wants the world to forget UNRWA without asking any questions, simply because UNRWA is irritating Israel and the Jewish State should not be irritated in any way since that might delay the return of the Saviour, just as the same Zionist Christian fanatic would, again, tell you.
Of course, declaring UNRWA illegal and shutting down its offices in Occupied East Jerusalem, will not be opposed by Israel’s financier, the US and, after a short period of rather mute, hesitant and carefully worded diplomatic statements, the world will forget and the Agency might die altogether.
However dead, UNRWA does not mean the death of its clients, who actually hate themselves for being its clients, despite the mass killing they are subjected to. Dead UNRWA does not mean the reasons behind its creation are no longer here, as long as Palestinians are still forced out of their land. And, in ten years’ time, or even after a couple of generations, the world will wake up to another Sinwar, identified as a former beneficiary of the former UNRWA, who just came out from decades in Israeli jail, launching another 7 October simply to remind the world, again, that he wants his ancestors’ land which Israel has already allocated to some not yet born Jew in New York or London, if in case such an individual decides, in due course, to take a flight and lands in Ben Gurion airport seeking a new home in Israel.
In such a scenario, which is not an imaginative hypothesis but historically correct and proven by experiences, will Israel then force the world, again, to create another UNRWA or will it simply keep reminding itself of its endless religious myths which dictate that the Palestinians are only myths not to be taken seriously and another agency for them is useless, giving rise to another infinite number of Sinwars?
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.