By banning UNRWA, the Israeli government has unwittingly elevated Palestinians and their right of return to a higher level of global protection.
It has been almost a month since the Israeli Knesset voted to bar UNRWA from operating in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli authorities have moved forward with its implementation, despite widespread condemnation from the international community and some of Israel’s allies.
The United Nations itself has denounced the move saying it will have “devastating consequences” as it is the main agency delivering aid to Gaza. While the UNRWA ban will undoubtedly amplify the suffering of Palestinians, it is also a spectacular own goal for Israel.
That is because it will elevate the two and a half million Palestine refugees in Gaza and the West Bank to a new level of international protection under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) whose preferred solution for protracted refugee situations is voluntary repatriation: the right of return.
This is precisely the opposite of what the Knesset in general, and Israel’s far-right cabinet, in particular, were hoping to achieve when they set out to destroy UNRWA. Intoxicated with their own power and high on their perceived military victory in Gaza, they were labouring under the misinformed delusion that if they stopped UNRWA from operating, the refugees it serves could be removed from the peace process; their history, identity, rights and historical claims air-brushed out of the discourse.
But Israel is about to learn that 6.8 million people – the number registered with UNRWA – cannot be vapourised so easily, despite political support in Washington and Israeli military might.
Under Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention, once these refugees stop receiving services from UNRWA, they become legally entitled to protection under the Convention, as well as the protection extended by UNHCR. The second sentence of the article makes this explicit. “When such protection or assistance has ceased for any reason, without the position of such persons being definitively settled in accordance with the relevant resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, these persons shall ipso facto be entitled to the benefits of this Convention.”
In other words, if the Knesset legislation is implemented and UNRWA is prevented from delivering services, Palestinian refugees – in the absence of a just and lasting solution, which is further away than ever – will then fall under the Refugee Convention and the mandate of UNHCR.
This is confirmed in guidelines issued by UNHCR in 2017, paragraph 29 of which emphasises that “when it is established that UNRWA’s protection or assistance has ceased […] the Palestinian refugee is automatically or “ipso facto” entitled to the benefits of the 1951 Convention”.
Not only is this the case for Palestinian refugees today, future generations who register with UNRWA in the absence of a resolution of their refugee status, will also fall under the higher global protection mandate offered by the Refugee Convention. Crucially, under UNHCR guidelines, refugees are registered through the male and female lines. UNRWA restricts this to the male line only, so under UNHCR, the number of Palestine refugees will likely grow more rapidly than it does under UNRWA.
In the meantime, UNRWA, to the best of its abilities, will continue to update its refugee registration records. Heroically, the agency removed thousands of hard copies of key registration documents dating back to 1948 from its Gaza headquarters during the current fighting, and also from the West Bank to Amman. Thanks to the dedication of UNRWA staff, the agency’s registration database is now fully digitised and stored in safe cyberspaces around the world.
The preservation of this backbone of refugee culture and identity will be a source of collective comfort to a scattered people, facing what the UN rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, describes as “colonial erasure”. Not least because it is now impossible for Israel to destroy this precious database, which will assume a pivotal significance if refugees decide to claim their right of return, restitution and compensation from Israel, to which they are entitled under international law as affirmed by UN General Assembly resolution 194.
Even if this isn’t feasible immediately, UNRWA’s now fully digitised database is keeping an ongoing account.
Looking to the future, it is an abrogation of humanitarian leadership to say, as the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has done, that absent UNRWA, it falls exclusively to the occupying power, Israel, to deliver services to Palestinian refugees.
This is particularly egregious at a time when that power is engaged in what the International Court of Justice views as a plausible genocide and its prime minister and defence minister face arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including using starvation as a weapon of war, persecution and other inhumane acts.
It is particularly sad to see Mr Guterres invoking the responsibilities of the occupying power given that before he became secretary-general, he served for 10 years as the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees and would be fully aware of the protections enshrined under Article 1D of the 1951 Convention.
Moreover, it would be helpful to see some robust public advocacy on this issue from the UN’s current High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, who prior to this post served as UNRWA’s deputy commissioner-general and then commissioner-general. Mr Grandi’s stalwart commitment to the cause of Palestine refugees is a matter of public record.
At this crucial moment, the senior UN leadership must robustly reassure Palestinians, for whom the UN holds historic responsibility, that their rights will be protected and that they will have equal status in terms of their right of return, along with tens of millions across the world, many of whom are also intergenerational refugees.
With UNRWA under existential threat and the refugees it serves facing “colonial erasure”, I call on the UN General Assembly, which is responsible for UNRWA’s mandate, to refer the issue to the Security Council as a matter of urgency.
I also exhort Mr Guterres to exercise his powers under Article 99 of the UN Charter and demand that the Security Council acts to protect UNRWA and stand by its mandated responsibility to maintain international peace and security.
If Israel succeeds in doing away with UNRWA, this would undoubtedly be a painful loss for the Palestinians. But it will not erase the Palestinian refugee issue. The end of UNRWA will actually open an even stronger chapter for the Palestinian right of return, as their protection moves from a relatively small regional UN entity to a global organisation that has long championed the right of return in “protracted refugee situations”.