In recent days, a number of Western governments, led by the Biden administration, have announced a temporary halt in funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides critically important humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. The move follows the recent landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found that Israel might be committing genocide in Gaza.
The decision to cut UNRWA’s funding comes in response to Israel’s claims that a dozen out of about 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza were implicated in the Hamas attack on October 7, and is part of a long pattern of measures by Israel and its allies that threaten the lives and well-being of Palestinians enduring Israel’s devastating onslaught. More importantly, the attack on UNRWA undermines the very post-World War II international order from which Israel itself emerged.
The cuts in funding to UNRWA will exacerbate the already dire situation in the Gaza Strip, where the actions of Israel have had devastating effects on Palestinians. Around 70 percent of Gaza’s residents now face extreme hardships of starvation and disease as Israel continues to impose restrictions on essential resources like food, water, electricity, and medical supplies. Israeli bombardment did not spare hospitals, schools, United Nations facilities, and bakeries. Entire towns and neighborhoods have been destroyed, leading to widespread displacement. These relentless actions have subjected Palestinians in Gaza to unprecedented levels of brutality and harshness.
The rush to cut funding to UNRWA by Western governments adds more pain to the many wounds of Palestinians in Gaza. Before Israel’s assault began, hundreds of thousands of families in Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli-imposed siege and blockade for more than 16 years, suffered from the highest rates of poverty and unemployment on a global scale, relying on UNRWA for food, medical treatment, and education. Today, with Gaza in ruins, the task of UNRWA and the very few humanitarian organizations operating on the ground in catching up to the ever-increasing humanitarian disaster becomes nearly impossible.
Rather than holding Israel accountable for its crimes or halting its disastrous aggression in Gaza, especially after the ICJ ruling, Israel’s allies rushed to undermine the ruling of the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, doubling down by attacking the UN agency responsible for providing essential aid to millions of Palestinian refugees, especially under a severe humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
The attitudes of Israel and its Western allies towards international legal and humanitarian bodies are not only seen as hypocritical by Palestinians and many others in the Global South and elsewhere, but also actively contribute to the erosion of the role and credibility of these institutions.
Undermining bodies like the ICJ and UNRWA to shield Israel from accountability compromises the integrity of these bodies, and while the ICJ ruled that there are plausible grounds that Israel is committing acts of genocide in Gaza, this did not result in a similar suspension of aid or military assistance to Israel by the U.S. or other countries.
Continuing Trump’s legacy and enabling genocide
Prior to this war, Israel and its supporters made defunding UNRWA a priority. When President Biden came to office, he wanted to position himself in stark contrast to the Trump administration, but it has become obvious that when it comes to Palestine, Biden has not only continued Trump’s legacy, but expanded upon it. This was evident in Biden’s rewarding of Israel’s extreme right-wing government with his push for expanding the Abraham Accords with Israeli-Saudi normalization, granting Israel entry to the Visa Waiver Program even though it doesn’t meet the requirements, aiding and abetting Israel in unleashing a genocide against Palestinians, and cutting funding to UNRWA, a move first introduced by the Trump administration.
For Palestinians, however, the reliance on UNRWA is a product of the harsh reality of living under Israeli military occupation for decades. Historically, Palestinians have not asked for aid, and institutions like UNRWA were created by Western powers as part of their approach to managing the Palestine question. These same powers now threaten to undermine UNRWA. Palestinians have always been a self-reliant and independent people, a nation of farmers, craftsmen, and merchants who have always demanded their right to return to their homes, lands, businesses, properties, and sources of livelihood. Yet Western countries that back Israel have prevented Palestinians from returning to their homes, using humanitarian aid to manage, pressure, and control them.
Recent events, however, have underscored the unsustainability of this status quo. Rather than courageously reevaluating their stance and acknowledging that Israel’s system of racist oppression of the Palestinian people, recognized as apartheid by countless rights groups and experts, is untenable, the Biden administration and other Western powers have backed Israel as it has unleashed a war of genocidal proportions in Gaza. This war has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and displaced nearly two million Palestinians.
The cutting of UNRWA funding, in this context, represents complicity in the genocide and the continuation of a long-standing Western stance that confers unwavering support upon Israel and neglects Palestinian rights. Instead of snatching the last piece of bread from the hands of a starving child in Gaza, the Biden administration and other Western governments must urgently restore funding to UNRWA, call for a ceasefire, and act to end Israel’s relentless onslaught on Gaza.
The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.