As Israel prepares to outlaw the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday, there are warnings that it could undermine vital aid delivery and long-term chances of peace.
Israeli officials have not spelt out how they will enforce the legislation passed last year by Israel’s parliament, which accused Unrwa of being complicit with Hamas – an allegation the agency denied.
“It will be a catastrophe if this ban takes place,” says Juliette Touma, communications director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa).
“It will deepen and further the suffering of the Palestinian people who rely on the agency for their survival, for their education and healthcare.”
Even before 15 months of brutal war left the vast majority of the two million people in Gaza displaced and homeless, most were registered refugees.
Unrwa camps were first set up in Gaza to house Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their land in fighting before and after the state of Israel was created in 1948.
For seven decades, those original refugees and their descendants – as well as a new wave of refugees created by the 1967 Middle East War – have been cared for by Unrwa.
Across the Middle East – in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon as well as the occupied Palestinian territories – there are some six million Palestinian refugees.
