Lhe Israeli threat hangs more than ever over Rafah, the last town in Gaza to have escaped the massacres and massive destruction caused by the current military offensive. On the other hand, another target, this time political, seems to be on the verge of escaping the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. By announcing on April 26, with other countries, the resumption of its aid to the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, Germany, which is among its main contributors, has just testified that the latter hadn’t lost his confidence.
On January 26, the UN agency announced that 12 of its 13,000 Palestinian employees in Gaza were accused by Israel of having participated in the massacres of Israeli civilians perpetrated on October 7, 2023, during the assault by Hamas militiamen in Gaza. origin of the war. The news, then based solely on allegations, immediately led to a cascade of withdrawals among international donors, starting with the United States, with France remaining more cautious. As if possible individual errors were to condemn an entire agency, whose finances have always been fragile.
Benyamin Netanyahu jumped into the breach to accuse UNRWA of being “totally infiltrated by Hamas” and to request its deletion. Faithful to a proven strategy of faits accomplis, the Prime Minister saw this as an opportunity for a new attack against an institution created in December 1949 after the first of the Israeli-Arab wars, which had led to the exodus of tens of thousands of Palestinians. expelled from territories conquered by the Jewish state.
Scorched earth policy
Israel has always considered that this artificially maintains one of the main disputes in the conflict which opposes it to the Palestinians: the fate of refugees from the Israeli-Arab wars of 1948-1949 and 1967, whose number rises today. now several million. The question of their compensation, or for some of their return, was at the heart of all the negotiations which remained unsuccessful.
On April 22, a report published by a group of independent experts, chaired by former French Minister of Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna, however, brushed aside a large part of the Israeli accusations. While recognizing problems of “political neutrality”this report found that UNRWA “has more mechanisms to ensure” this neutrality “than what other UN agencies have”.
He also noted that Israel has yet to provide evidence for its accusations, showing that the international withdrawals have been hasty, to say the least. The report further assessed that UNRWA remains “irreplaceable and indispensable”without convincing the United States, which has frozen its contribution until 2025 although it has just granted, on the other hand, massive new military aid to the Jewish state.
The assault on this agency, at a time when Gaza is grappling for a long time with a multidimensional humanitarian, even existential, crisis, is an irresponsible scorched earth policy. There is a much better way to respond to the questions and criticisms about the status of UNRWA: to do everything possible, finally, so that a political perspective replaces the horizon now obscured by the war.