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'Grotesque': Israeli Knesset Bans UN Agency in Charge of Humanitarian Aid in Gaza
"This legislation not only contravenes the basic principles of human rights that led to the U.N. General Assembly's founding of UNRWA, but also violates a range of Israel's international legal obligations."
Oct 28, 2024
Over a year into Israel's obliteration of the Gaza Strip, Israeli lawmakers faced sharp criticism on Monday after voting for a pair of bills targeting the United Nations agency responsible for humanitarian aid in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
The first bill, which says that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) "will not operate any missions, won't provide any service, and won't hold any activity—directly or indirectly—in the sovereign territory of the state of Israel," passed the Israeli parliament 92-10.
The second legislative proposal—under which the Israeli agency that handles humanitarian issues, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), will have to cut off contact with UNRWA—passed the 120-member Knesset 87-9. Critics called the votes "grotesque" and "outrageous."
The Israel-based organization Adalah said in a statement that "despite widespread international pressure and condemnation, the Knesset has nearly unanimously passed two bills aimed at dismantling UNRWA, all while Israel continues its genocidal assault on Gaza and intensifies violence across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem."
"This legislation threatens a vital lifeline for over 2.5 million Palestinian refugees throughout the occupied Palestinian territory," the group warned. "It represents a deliberate attempt to fundamentally undermine UNRWA and its essential mission of supporting the relief, education, and human development of Palestinian refugees. Specifically, the laws aim to strip Palestinians—who were forcibly displaced from their homes during the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 war—of their status as refugees and their right of return."
The United Nations General Assembly created UNRWA in 1949, in the wake of the Nakba, or "catastrophe," when more than 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homeland to establish the modern state of Israel—whose officials have claimed without providing evidence that a dozen of the agency's 13,000 staffers in Gaza were involved with the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
"This legislation not only contravenes the basic principles of human rights that led to the U.N. General Assembly's founding of UNRWA, but also violates a range of Israel's international legal obligations, including those under the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court," said Adalah. "The international community must hold Israel accountable."
Although Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its war on Hamas-controlled Gaza—which has killed at least 43,020 people and injured another 101,110 since last October—governments around the world have not acted to stop the bloodshed. The U.S. Congress and President Joe Biden's administration have even provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and blocked cease-fire resolutions at the United Nations.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration finally threatened to cut off weapons if the Israeli government does not take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's letter specifically raised concerns about the legislation that passed the Knesset Monday.
Asked about the Israeli bills on Monday, Matthew Miller, a U.S. State Department spokesperson frequently slammed for his statements about Israel, pointed to the secretaries' criticism of the legislation in the recent letter and acknowledged that UNRWA serves the West Bank and plays "an irreplaceable role" in Gaza, where Palestinians are starving to death.
Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam's regional director in the Middle East and North Africa, said Monday that "Israel has bombed Palestinians to death, maimed them, starved them, and is now ridding them of their biggest lifeline of aid. Piece by piece, Israel is systemically dismantling Gaza as a land that is autonomous and liveable for Palestinians."
"Its banning of UNRWA today is condemnable and another step in this crime," she argued. "The decision will further undermine the ability of the international community to provide sufficient humanitarian aid and to save lives in any safe, independent, and impartial way. UNRWA was not only the biggest and most established agency that has been delivering aid and sustenance to the people of Gaza for years, it was also a thread that connected them in some hope of solidarity and security to the United Nations."
"We are in no doubt that Israel and its allies are fully aware of the terrible consequences that this decision will have on Palestinians living in Gaza, many of whom are already starving," she added. "We join others in warning again that this will result in more death, more suffering, and more forced displacement of people from their besieged homeland. It is impossible not to believe that this is their aim."
Leading up to the votes, human rights advocates have been sounding the alarm. On Saturday, over 50 groups including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and ActionAid released a joint statement demanding action and warning that "dismantling UNRWA would be catastrophic for Palestinians especially in Gaza and the West Bank as they are deprived of essentials such as food, water, medical aid, education, and protection. It will also have catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, where essential humanitarian aid is crucial for both the refugees and the host communities."
Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general, delivered a similar warning on social media Monday, declaring that the Knesset action not only "is unprecedented and sets a dangerous precedent" but "it opposes the U.N. Charter and violates the state of Israel's obligations under international law."
"This is the latest in the ongoing campaign to discredit UNRWA and delegitimize its role towards providing human-development assistance and services to Palestine Refugees," he continued. "These bills will only deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell."
"It will deprive over 650,000 girls and boys there from education, putting at risk an entire generation of children," Lazzarini added. "These bills increase the suffering of the Palestinians and are nothing less than collective punishment."
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Israel Accused of 'Thought Policing' as Legislation Criminalizes Viewing Pro-Palestinian Media
Arab citizens of Israel "are now criminalized for simply sitting in their homes following the news on Gaza," lamented one professor.
Nov 09, 2023
Human rights and free speech advocates on Thursday decried Israeli lawmakers' passage of legislation criminalizing the viewing of social and other media supportive of the Palestinian resistance struggle.
Knesset lawmakers voted 13-4 to amend Article 24 of Israel's Counterterrorism Law—which prohibits "demonstrating identification with a terrorist organization and incitement to terrorism"—to include a temporary two-year ban on "systematic and continuous consumption of publications of a terrorist organization under circumstances that indicate identification with the terrorist organization."
The amendment identifies Hamas and Islamic State as terrorist groups and allows the Ministry of Justice to add more organizations to the list.
Offenders face up to one year behind bars. Videos posted on social media Thursday showed Israeli police at the home of an Arab Israeli woman informing her she was being arrested for allegedly "sharing content that sympathizes with and encourages terrorist actions... and supporting content that incites violence and terrorism."
Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said in a statement that "this law is one of the most intrusive and draconian legislative measures ever passed by the Israeli Knesset, since it makes thoughts subject to criminal punishment" and "violates the constitutional right to freedom of speech and is used to muzzle legitimate political expression."
Adalah continued:
At a time when Israeli authorities are ramping up their campaign to stifle the freedom of expression of Palestinian citizens of Israel, conducting extensive surveillance of their online communications, and making unprecedented arrests for alleged speech-related offenses, the Israeli Knesset has enacted legislation that criminalizes even passive social media use. This legislation encroaches upon the sacred realm of an individual's personal thoughts and beliefs and significantly amplifies state surveillance of social media use. Adalah will petition the Supreme Court to challenge this law.
The New Israel Fund (NIF), a U.S.-based progressive advocacy group, called the amendment "dangerous" and "driven by far-right extremists intent on taking Israel backward."
NIF warned that "at a time when dissent is being crushed all over Israel, this law seeks to further silence any internal critics."
The group said the Counterterrorism Law already "has a history of discriminatory use" and "includes extremely blurry concepts" that "if read broadly could include... the entirety of Palestinian society."
Israel's Counterterrorism Law is rooted in the 1945 Emergency Rules enacted by British rulers of what was then called Mandatory Palestine amid a yearslong wave of terrorist attacks by Jewish militant groups targeting U.K. officials, British and Arab civilians, and even a ship full of Holocaust refugees. Many of its provisions remain in place today.
Even before the current war on Gaza, Israel's government faced international condemnation for designating humanitarian groups as "terrorist organizations."
In a joint statement, far-right Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the amendment "will strengthen the administrative measures that can be used against the terrorist organizations and terrorist operatives, and will enable a more effective suppression of channels of recruitment, financing, and transfer of funds for terrorist purposes."
The 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel are the descendants of the approximately 150,000 Palestinians allowed to remain in the country following the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 of their compatriots during the foundation of the modern Israeli state. Although they officially enjoy equal rights under the law, human rights defenders in Israel and around the world say Arab Israelis live as second-class citizens due to structural discrimination.
Since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel last month that killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers, Palestinian citizens of Israel have faced a sweeping campaign of arrests for defending resistance against Israeli crimes including occupation, settler colonization, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and a war in which Israeli forces have now killed over 10,800 people, while displacing 70% of the population of Gaza and obliterating much of the strip.
Many Arab Israelis have been fired from their jobs and face societywide attacks on freedom of speech and association. There is also widespread police harassment and intimidation, including arrests for protesting what even Israeli scholars are calling the "genocide" in Gaza.
Since October 7, more than 100 Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested for social media posts, including well-known singer and influencer Dalal Abu Amneh, who was accused of "incitement" for expressing online solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Critics say no one is immune from the Israeli crackdown on free speech, pointing to Thursday's arrest of former Knesset lawmakers for holding a peace vigil in Nazareth.
"Arresting Arab leaders is an alarming escalation by the government, revealing a perilous disregard for the entire Arab community," the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said on social media. "The police unjustly interfered with a protest vigil in Nazareth, violating freedom of expression and acting irresponsibly against the law."
"The past month represents an unprecedented juncture in the government's relationship with Arab society," the group added. "Despite the responsible leadership demonstrated within the Arab community, the minister of national security takes every measure to sow incitement and division."
Ironically, that minister—Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Jewish Power party—was convicted in 2007 by an Israeli court of inciting racism and supporting terrorism.
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