The UN’s misplaced urgency and loyalties

The UN breeds impunity for international law violations. Never has this been more evident than in its attitude towards Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, defended at an international level through Israel’s own security narrative. It was not diplomats and UN officials who raised awareness of genocide, but the Palestinians themselves and the masses around the world, who awakened to the link between Israel, the UN, and political violence.

However, once Israeli violence threatened the UN’s structure, as well as that of its agencies, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres felt compelled to issue a rhetorical warning that reeked of hypocrisy. In December 2025, Israel prohibited the provision of basic services such as electricity, water, banking and telecommunications to UNRWA, leading Guterres to write to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The letter partly stated that there can be no UN indifference to  “actions taken by Israel, which are in direct contravention of the obligations of Israel under international law. They must be reversed without delay.”

Meanwhile, the UN’s response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza was to debate a humanitarian pause. The term itself signals no urgency to end genocide.

Once Israel’s violence threatens UNRWA, however, Guterres seems to find more adequate vocabulary to express urgency. UNRWA is the face of the UN’s humanitarian paradigm; of course there can be no indifference as far as the UN is concerned. UNRWA’s collapse would leave the UN with no leverage over humanitarian aid. However, one would be mistaken to assume that for the UN, UNRWA’s existence is linked to Palestinian dignity and autonomy. On the contrary, the conditions in which UNRWA operates, as mandated by the UN and dictated by Israel’s colonial violence, keep Palestinians tethered to an agency that is shackled first and foremost by the UN’s acceptance of Israel’s colonial existence.

Is Guterres conscious of the fact that the UN was supposed to eradicate colonialism, for example? How about all of Israel’s normalised violations of international law that the UN sees no reason to ‘reverse without delay’? While Israel has not upheld its obligations as regards UNRWA, the UN has aided Israel in not upholding even the most basic of obligations towards Palestinians. Palestinians, especially in Gaza since the genocide, are burdened more than ever with survival. As the UN protects Israel instead of Palestinians, UNRWA has been rendered vulnerable by both Israel and the UN.

The UN’s colonial complicity with Israel weakened UNRWA’s mandate. As Israel turns its attention towards humanitarian organisations, including the UN’s own structure, the UN should have realised that the attacks on UNRWA are happening because the humanitarian paradigm has nothing to sustain it. Had the UN truly supported Palestinian liberation and political independence, UNRWA could have fulfilled its mandate. Instead, Palestinians have endured colonial dispossession and genocide which the UN glossed over and which in turn also weakened the humanitarian paradigm.

Guterres’s rhetorical urgency against Israel targeting UNRWA needs to be directed also at the UN itself, for forcing Palestinians to fit into the humanitarian paradigm which is now collapsing as a direct result of Israel’s colonial violence and the UN’s exploitation of Palestinians and humanitarian aid.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260115-the-uns-misplaced-urgency-and-loyalties/