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October 29- Americans for Peace Now strongly condemns the passage of two bills in the Knesset yesterday to bar the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating within Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
In the months following the horrific attacks on October 7, troubling allegations about the involvement of a handful of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) employees came to light. UNRWA and the UN responded swiftly to the accusations by immediately terminating the employees allegedly involved, ordering an independent outside review of the agency’s neutrality practices, and directing a review of the allegations by the UN’s highest investigative body, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).
We remain deeply troubled by the affiliation of individual UNRWA employees with Hamas, but we cannot allow the actions of a handful of people, however heinous, to overshadow the critical role UNRWA plays in Gaza’s survival. UNRWA is the primary aid organization in Gaza, and its work there is crucial.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached catastrophic levels, with two million Palestinian civilians in dire need of aid. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has warned of imminent famine in northern Gaza if humanitarian assistance, including food, water, and medicine, are not immediately provided to Palestinian civilians. Hostilities hindering the delivery of aid in southern Gaza threaten to create a similar situation.
Attacks on UNRWA are not new. Dismantling the agency has been a longstanding goal of the Israeli right as a means to undermine Palestinian refugees’ claims of right of return, a complex and sensitive issue that cannot be resolved outside of a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Just last week Benny Gantz alluded to such an effort when he claimed that UNRWA “perpetuates their victimization.”
Hadar Susskind, President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now, emphasized, “We must be clear, only a negotiated peace process will resolve final status issues such as the rights of Palestinian refugees. These bills do nothing but worsen an existing humanitarian crisis. In this critical moment, it’s essential to surge, not curtail, humanitarian support to Gaza. Undermining UNRWA—the largest entity capable of providing such aid—will only deepen the crisis for Palestinians and risk further instability in the region. Now, more than ever, we must support every avenue that brings relief to those in need.”
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