“It is time to stand up”
Summary: British diplomat Martin Griffiths enunciates the costs
and consequences of the world allowing Israel to defenestrate UNRWA from
Palestine.
On Tuesday on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One Martin Griffiths who
served as Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency
Relief Coordinator at the United Nations from 2021 to 2024 described
the Knesset vote to outlaw UNRWA as “deeply, deeply shocking and illegal
if implemented.” The Israelis have given UNRWA just 90 days from the
day that the bills were passed (28 October) to get out.
As we noted in our 25 October newsletter and as Griffiths affirmed
should the Israelis be allowed to get away with a decision the Knesset
voted 92-10 to implement the precedent it would set would further
undermine the UN’s legitimacy and authority not just in the Middle East
but throughout the world:
It sets a terrible precedent for other places who will say ‘well
you didn’t object to Israel shutting sown your agency so we will do it
here, thank you very much.’
For Griffiths of course the most immediate concern is the impact it
will have on Palestinians who are already in a catastrophic situation
stalked by hunger, disease and the ever constant fear and the
devastating reality of Israeli air and ground strikes. Griffiths was
asked if he saw the Knesset vote as UNICEF did, that it is “a new way to
kill children.” He replied
I do. UNICEF is right to focus on children and God knows the
tragedy for children is as we all have seen it day to day and it is
getting worse and worse and worse. This is a new way to kill children.
It is also a new way to take away hope from the people of Palestine. As
we all know and I know from my own experience as a mediator you remove
hope from people and they start to die because they have no horizon for
themselves of for their families. So it is a new way to end the
aspirations of the Palestinian people and it must be challenged. The
implementation must be stopped.
Although it loudly proclaims the organisation is a terrorist front,
the core reason for the Israeli effort to evict UNRWA is that it would
end the refugee status for Palestinians, a key part of Israel’s vision
to redraw the map of the Middle East and end once and for all the right
of return while destroying any hopes for a Palestinian state. UNRWA
holds the archival records for what is estimated to be one and a half
million Palestinian refugees. “UNRWA,” Griffiths said “is the precise
companion created to support the right of return and the future of the
Palestinian people toward a two-state solution.”
However the immediate concern is that “UNRWA runs all the convoys in
Gaza and will not now be able to. Its staff will now be at (further)
risk.” Reflecting on how so little humanitarian aid is currently being
allowed by the Israelis into North Gaza while “it is being scrubbed
clear of civilian life and presence” he said that though there are other
medium and long term issues that are equally important the most
immediate one is the urgency of getting aid in now.
Israel has justified the vote by repeating the allegation that UNRWA
staff were participants in the 7 October Hamas attack. Griffiths
referred to the Independent Review Group led by Catherine Colonna,
former French Foreign Minister which had noted that Israeli authorities
had not responded to repeated requests for “the names and supporting
evidence that would enable UNRWA to open an investigation.”
As he said: “they were very clear in their report that the evidence
provided by Israel was not authenticated, not as it were court ready. No
evidence was provided that could lead to a conviction.”
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