TheAltWorld Saving the humanitarian paradigm does not save Palestinians from Israeli colonialism
Earlier this month, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres outlined four options that the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) currently faces. A potential collapse of the agency, reducing services and transferring some functions to other actors, creating an executive board to secure accountability, funding and services, and lastly, the possibility of UNRWA maintaining its functions “while progressively shifting service provision to host governments and the Palestinian Authority, with strong international commitment to funding.”
As Palestinians face Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the right of return remains as prominent and vital as ever. The international community, however, prioritised UNRWA over the Palestinian right of return, creating an agency that struggles to fulfil its mandate for several reasons – one of which is donor funding from countries too heavily invested in Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. Some countries are also now complicit and invested in genocide.
However, the fact remains that the UN created problems for the agency that shoulders the burden of the humanitarian paradigm. From having a temporary mandate, UNRWA is soon due for a mandate renewal and prevented from fulfilling its mandate by Israel. The UN is now trying to save an agency that was not meant for permanent existence, because the so-called human rights body failed to realise that a permanent refugee status would require a permanent humanitarian aid agency. Or perhaps, the UN planned the deficiencies so that Palestinians would never transition from having the right to return to actually implementing that right.
UNRWA faces its own predicaments with funding, prohibited access and services stretched to breaking point. The UN is trying to save the agency’s existence but this gives no guarantee as to enable optimal functioning. On the other end of the humanitarian spectrum, Palestinians are facing a genocide, not to mention decades of colonial violence and forced displacement. A middle ground should exist where UNRWA and Palestinian refugees are equally considered with an end in sight – the return of Palestinians to their land. Instead, UNRWA became embroiled in the politics of preventing the Palestinian right of return, because the UN sided with Zionist colonialism, despite its claims of wanting to eradicate colonialism.
What is next for UNRWA in the current context, when the international community has failed to stop the genocide in Gaza and Israel exploited the gaps in the humanitarian paradigm? When the UN speaks of saving UNRWA, is it merely thinking of the agency’s existence and limited functioning, or does it have a plan for the Palestinian people’s return to Palestine?
UNRWA’s mandate was supposed to last until a solution is found. UN Resolution 194 gave no solution – colonisers are not neighbours and the burden of return should have never been placed on Palestinians, or on UNRWA to bear the burden of the UN’s duplicitous stance when it comes to colonialism and the colonised. While the practical part of funding and management needs to be addressed, the fact remains that the UN created an agency to cater for Palestinian refugees who face both forced displacement and a flawed resolution. Can the UN return to the basics and assess its role in creating the Partition Plan, UN Resolution 194 and upholding a colonial security narrative? Only then, maybe, UNRWA can be saved to fulfil its mandate – provide for Palestinians until they return home.
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