Osama Al-Sharif

Having failed to dismantle UNRWA, the UN organization responsible for the welfare of millions of Palestine refugees, Israel is now resorting to blackmailing the Palestinian Authority to replace the organization in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Last week, as Arab and some Western countries ratcheted up diplomatic pressure on the Trump administration to secure a role for the PA in governing postwar Gaza, Israel suggested that Ramallah could have a role in Gaza if the Palestinian body shuttered all UNRWA offices across its territories, with particular emphasis on Gaza, while transferring complete responsibility for civilian needs to the PA. Israel further insisted on transforming refugee camps into standard neighborhoods or towns and abolishing the refugee designation throughout PA areas.

Israel’s onslaught on UNRWA, which was established by a UN General Assembly resolution in 1949, has been going on for years. It picked up in 2017, particularly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called for the dismantling of the organization and the folding of its responsibilities into other UN agencies. The logic behind this extreme policy was to end the status of Palestine refugees, which is passed on to offspring and which remains one of the most complex final-status issues under the Oslo Accords.

UNRWA is responsible for Palestinian refugees not only in the Occupied Territories, but also in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The number of refugees registered with the organization in the Occupied Territories is 1.2 million in Gaza and more than 900,000 in the West Bank. But there are also more than 2.1 million in Jordan, 528,000 in Syria and 452,000 in Lebanon. UNRWA........

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