'We show up in places that some of the Jewish community has abandoned'
The Knesset's decision on 28 October to bar the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, from operating in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a spectacular own goal. It will elevate the 2.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank to a new level of international protection under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, whose preferred solution for protracted refugee situations is voluntary repatriation: the right of return.
This is precisely the opposite of what the Knesset in general – and Israel's far-right cabinet in particular – were hoping to achieve when they set out to destroy UNRWA.Intoxicated with their own power and high on their perceived military victory in Gaza, they were laboring under the misinformed delusion that if they stopped UNRWA from operating, the refugees it serves could be removed from the peace process, their history, identity, their rights and historical claims air-brushed out of the discourse.
But Israel is about to learn that 6.8 million people – the number of Palestinians registered with UNRWA – cannot be vaporized so easily, despite political support in Washington and Israeli military might.
UNHCR's responsibilities
UNHCR's obligation to Palestinian refugees is set out in Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The second sentence of the article makes this crystal clear: "When such protection or assistance has ceased for any reason, without the position of such persons being definitively settled in accordance with the relevant resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, these persons shall ipso facto be entitled to the benefits of this Convention."
In other words, if the Knesset legislation is implemented and UNRWA is prevented from delivering services, in the absence of a just and lasting solution, which is further away than ever, Palestinian refugees will then fall under the Refugee Convention and the mandate of UNHCR.
This is confirmed in guidelines issued by UNHCR in 2017, paragraph 29 of which emphasizes that "when it is established that UNRWA's protection or assistance has ceased … the Palestinian refugee is automatically or 'ipso facto' entitled to the benefits of the 1951 Convention."
Not only is this the case for Palestinian refugees today, but future generations who register with UNRWA in the absence of a resolution of their refugee status will also fall under the higher global protection mandate offered by the Refugee Convention. To be clear, like UNRWA, UNHCR registers children born to refugees as refugees under the principle of family unity. And thus the number of Palestinian refugees will continue to grow under UNHCR, just as it did under UNRWA, until a just and lasting peace can be found.
UNRWA's refugee database
In the meantime, UNRWA, to the best of its abilities, will continue to update its refugee registration records. During the current war, the agency heroically removed thousands of hard copies of key registration documents dating back to 1948 out of its Gaza headquarters (and also from the West Bank) to Amman. Thanks to the dedication of UNRWA staff, the agency's registration database is now fully digitized and stored in safe digital spaces around the world.
A boy carrying aid from UNRWA in Deir al-Balah in Gaza this month. Egypt doesn't let UNRWA operate on its territory.Credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters
The preservation of this backbone of refugee culture and identity will be a source of collective comfort to a scattered people, Nakba survivors facing what the UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese describes as "colonial erasure." This is important not least because it is now impossible for Israel to destroy this precious database, which will assume a pivotal significance if refugees decide to claim their right of return, restitution and compensation from Israel, to which they are entitled under international law as affirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Even if this isn't feasible immediately, UNRWA's now fully digitized database is keeping an ongoing account.
The responsibility to protect
Looking to the future, it is an abrogation of humanitarian leadership to say, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has done, that absent UNRWA, it falls exclusively to the occupying power, Israel, to deliver services to Palestinian refugees. This is particularly egregious at a time when that power is being accused at the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip and the International Criminal Court has just issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including using starvation as a weapon of war, persecution and other inhumane acts.
It is particularly sad to see Mr. Guterres invoking the responsibilities of the occupying power given that before he became the UN secretary-general, he served for 10 years as the UN's high commissioner for refugees and would be fully aware of the protections enshrined under Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Moreover, it would be helpful to see some robust public advocacy on this issue from the UN's current high commissioner, Filippo Grandi, who prior to this post served as UNRWA's deputy commissioner-general and then commissioner-general from 2005 to 2014. Mr. Grandi's stalwart commitment to the cause of Palestinian refugees is a matter of public record.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, center, arriving at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border with the Gaza Strip in March.Credit: Khaled Desouki/AFP
At this crucial moment, the senior UN leadership must robustly reassure the Palestinians, for whom the UN holds a historic responsibility, that their rights will be protected and that they will have equal status in terms of their right of return, along with tens of millions across the world, many of whom are also intergenerational refugees. The end of UNRWA, if that folly continues, will open an even stronger chapter for the Palestinian right of return, as their protection moves from a relatively small regional UN entity to a global organization that has long championed the right of return in "protracted refugee situations."
Invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter
With UNRWA under existential threat – at least in Gaza and the West Bank, if not in its other three areas of operation, in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria – and the refugees it serves facing "colonial erasure," I call on the UN General Assembly, which is responsible for UNRWA's mandate, to refer the issue to the Security Council as a matter of urgency.
I also exhort Mr. Guterres to exercise his powers under Article 99 of the UN Charter and demand that the Security Council acts to protect UNRWA and stand by its mandated responsibility to maintain international peace and security.
With the Middle East at war, nothing less than this is at stake if Israel is allowed to destroy an agency whose services have for 75 years engendered human capital and hope for a peaceful future among some of the most marginalized and vulnerable communities in the Middle East.
Chris Gunness was UNRWA's spokesman and director of communications from 2007 until 2020. He is now director of the Myanmar Accountability Project.