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In September 2015, a photo of a drowned Syrian toddler washed ashore on a Turkish beach transfixed the West in horror — prompting outrage and grief, and putting migration at the top of the European policy agenda.
UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees, said the world is yet to reach such a watershed moment for Gaza — despite a full year of “horror stories.”
“Everyone’s attention is on it, but it doesn’t make a difference,” Sam Rose, senior deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, told POLITICO in an interview.
“In the past there was this feeling that at some point this would reach a level in which the world would just say ‘this is enough,’” he said. “But they’ve not been. They’ve not been enough for the world.”
On Monday, Israel’s parliament approved two bills banning UNRWA from operating within its borders and designating it as a terrorist organization. Several governments and leaders around the world condemned the move, calling it “illegal” and reiterating their support for the organization.
The new legislation prohibits the agency’s services in Israel, which will severely impact its activities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, though it is still able to operate in the Palestinian territories. Once implemented, the law will block humanitarian aid routes, shut down the East Jerusalem office and restrict entry and work permits for UNRWA staff.
Since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023, civilian life in Gaza has been almost totally destroyed, researchers at Forensic Architecture found. Famine persists across the enclave, with 90 percent of the population facing critical hunger levels. The death toll has now reached over 43,000, Gaza’s health ministry reported Monday.
UNRWA is the largest U.N. organization in the Gaza Strip, with over 13,000 employees tasked with delivering education, health and mental health care, relief and social services, and emergency assistance to displaced Palestinians. Over 1 million Palestine refugees out of a total population of 1.4 million are reliant on its food assistance, the agency says.
“Maybe it’s just too complicated, too much of a nightmare,” said Rose, who is based in Gaza, speaking to POLITICO before the ban took place. “It just kind of amazes me … that there’s nothing anyone can do,” he said, in reference to the dire humanitarian situation across the enclave.
“There’s a sense of double standards, which is pervasive across the whole conflict, that if this were to have happened to another people and not to Palestinians, the public reaction would have been very different.”
UNRWA in the spotlight
Monday’s ban follows months of allegations by Israel that UNRWA employees were complicit in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, in which Palestinian militants killed 1,200 Israelis.
Suspicions of staff involvement in the attack had led in late January several European Union countries, such as France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and Australia to withdraw their financial support to the organization.
The EU countries and the U.S. accounted for about 75 percent of the agency’s budget in 2023. All countries later reinstated their funding.
Following the accusations, the U.N. launched an internal investigation and in August fired nine UNRWA employees on suspicion of having been involved in the Oct. 7 attacks. Late in September, UNRWA said it was unaware one of its employees was a Hamas commander in Lebanon.
“For us, any participation in the attacks is a tremendous betrayal of the sort of work that we are supposed to be doing on behalf of the Palestinian people,” Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said.
“UNRWA has long faced misinformation and disinformation, including about its staff and operations. This has intensified since the war in Gaza began on 7 October,” UNRWA’s website states, on a page outlining “Claims versus Facts” about the organization’s work.
“People from our staff were massively aggrieved and angry at the way that colleagues have been portrayed in the media as terrorists, without a shred of evidence being provided to back it up,” Rose said, explaining that UNRWA has always been transparent with the Israeli government about who works for the organization.
The international community reacted strongly to Israel’s attempt to ban the agency’s activities and in designating it as a terrorist organization.
In May, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell condemned Israel’s attempts to label the U.N. agency as a terrorist organization and stressed the EU’s support, reiterating these concerns again in October.
The European Council in June also condemned any attempts to designate UNRWA as a terrorist organization and stressed that its services in Gaza and across the region are essential.
“We can really appreciate that there was consensus about this one thing and rejecting any attempt of labeling UNRWA as a terrorist organization,” Marta Lorenzo Rodriguez, director at the UNRWA Representative Office in Brussels, added.
On Sept. 11, six UNRWA staff members — including a shelter manager and team members providing assistance to displaced people — were killed after two airstrikes hit a school in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, the agency said.
Since the incident, Rose explained, staff members haven’t wanted to wear the jacket with the U.N. logo as they fear that this would make them a target.
“I’ve got staff saying their kids try to stop them coming to work in the morning because they’re worried they’ll get blown up in another school,” he said.
Over 260 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza so far, Rodriguez added.
“They were aggrieved at the United Nations for not being able to protect them,” Rose said.
The lack of media access has also put UNRWA in a difficult position, he said. “We’re the only organization, I think, with permanent spokespeople on the ground,” he said, adding that the U.N. agency has been “thrust into the middle.”
“The daily grind and the humanity in daily life doesn’t come through,” he added.
“The one thing you can say for certain in Gaza is that people are worse off today than they were yesterday, and people will be worse off tomorrow than they were today, just because it’s the nature of what they’re going through.”
According to Rodriguez, however, the ultimate goal is not about protecting UNRWA: “It’s about the parties agreeing on a political solution … and protecting the very little that is left in Gaza.”
Armed with a Laptop and a cup of coffee, Rothschild is on a mission to conquer the news world, one headline at a time.
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