Most importantly it accuses Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl and a couple of others from his inner circle of having "engaged in misconduct, nepotism, [and] retaliation". The report also notes that the situation worsened in 2018, following a decision by the United States, UNRWA's largest donor, to cut its funding of the agency. This allowed the senior management to justify "an extreme concentration of decision-making power in members of the 'clique' … increased disregard for agency rules and established procedures, with exceptionalism becoming the norm; and continued excessive travel of the commissioner-general".
Many Palestinians were not particularly surprised by the content of the leaked report. Over the years, we have heard many anecdotes about the highly problematic culture of entitlement and abuse perpetuated by well-paid foreign staff at UNRWA and other UN agencies.
Apart from nepotism and abuse of power, there are major issues with the distribution of limited financial resources assigned to these bodies. In times of austerity, for example, support programmes are usually cut before the salaries of senior and foreign staff.
High-level employees have also been known to engage in a variety of hypocritical actions, including renting houses stolen from Palestinian refugees in 1948 in Jerusalem (particularly in its popular neighbourhood Musrara) and allowing the UN duty free shop to sell products from illegal Israeli settlements, such as Israeli wine produced in the occupied Golan Heights.
This type of misconduct, however, is not unique to UNRWA and has been exposed in other UN agencies and large humanitarian organisations. The revelations of the report are indeed reprehensible and those responsible should not go unpunished. But that does not mean that UNRWA should be defunded or shut down.
UNRWA as a separate agency dedicated to Palestinian refugees has a special status and function. It was established in 1949 in order to provide relief services for Palestinians expelled from their homeland following the unilateral creation of the Israeli state. It now operates in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and provides some 5 million Palestinians with primary and secondary education, health services as well as various camp infrastructure projects. It also employs about 30,000 people, mostly Palestinians.
UNRWA's mandate to provide for the refugees is repeatedly renewed pending the implementation of UN Resolution 194 which affirms the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homelands and to receive just compensation.
For so many the agency is not only an important lifeline, but an official body which safeguards the Palestinian right of return from all the powers that want to do away with it.
Indeed, since Donald Trump took office, efforts to force the Palestinian refugees to give up their right of return have accelerated. The attacks on UNRWA have been incessant and this leaked report has added fuel to the fire.
Former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was quick to comment on the report saying that this was "exactly why we [the US] stopped our funding", while Trump's envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, tweeted the Al Jazeera article, claiming that "UNRWA's model is broken/unsustainable & based on an endless expanding # of beneficiaries."
Neither of these statements is true; the funding was cut to collectively punish the Palestinians and their leadership and the dysfunction of the UNRWA is no worse than any other UN agency.
The US is taking its lead from Israel, who since its establishment has sought to eliminate the Palestinian refugees' right of return. At the beginning of this year, for example, the Israeli government announced that it would be closing downUNRWA-run schools in occupied East Jerusalem which serve over 3,000 Palestinian children in direct violation of the 1946 Refugee Convention. Nir Barkat, then Jerusalem's Israeli mayor, claimed that they were putting "an end to the lie of the Palestinian refugee problem".
Clearly a systematic culture of abuse is at work at the highest echelons of the UNRWA which needs to be confronted and addressed. However, this report cannot and should not lead to more funding cuts. Both the Netherlands and Switzerland have unfairly suspended aid to the agency in light of this report.
The millions of Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian employees, many of whom are struggling to provide for their families, should not be collectively punished for the offences and selfishness of UNRWA's top management, many of whom are foreigners.
Holding accountable those responsible for the mismanagement of the agency is crucial, as many fear that the powerful people exposed in this report will simply be recycled within the UN system, only to continue their misconduct at another agency.
Meanwhile, the focus should be shifted back to the seven million Palestinians who live in perpetual exile from their homeland, many facing secondary displacement. It is their wellbeing and their right to return that should be the top consideration of donors.
Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit native born to a family of Palestinian refugees, is expected to visit the occupied homeland of her ancestors in the coming weeks.
It is pretty common for freshman members of the US Congress - Democratic and Republican - to visit Israel. Usually, the Zionist lobby AIPAC organises and sponsors these visits to make sure US representatives start their tenure with a positive perception of Israel and view the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from an Israeli perspective.
During these luxurious and entertaining trips, US representatives visit the tourist attractions and sacred sites of Jerusalem, meet Israeli leaders, soldiers and settlers, and listen to the Israeli authorities' complaints about the so-called "security threats" posed by the Palestinians. Throughout their time in Israel, these representatives rarely get to hear any Palestinian voices or witness the devastation caused by Israel's unlawful occupation.
Of course, Rashida's visit, which she plans for August together with her fellow "squad" member Ilhan Omar and other US officials, is going to be significantly different from these AIPAC-organised visits. First, they may not even be allowed to travel to the occupied Palestinian territories; this is because as supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, they could be barred by the Israeli government from entering Israel and occupied Palestine.
If they are allowed in, Rashida and Ilhan will likely meet up with Palestinian leaders, civil society activists and human rights defenders and learn about the Palestinian people's ongoing struggles. During these meetings, they will likely hear how most Palestinians view the two-state-solution as a joke and hold no hopes for it to deliver the "viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent' Palestinian state that former President George W Bush promised it would back in 2008. And, as they plan to visit several different destinations within the occupied Palestinian territories, they will experience first-hand the difficulties of living a life governed by the whims of the Israeli security apparatus.
Today, not only is the occupied West Bank totally inaccessible to Palestinians in Gaza and vice versa, but Jerusalem and its holy places are also impossible to get to for most Palestinians, regardless of where they are based.
Travelling within the West Bank is also not a simple affair. Illegal settlements - which are home to more than 600,000 Israelis - and the roads connecting them, which Palestinians are not allowed to travel on, cut through the occupied Palestinian territories, turning them into a maze of inaccessible areas.
If Rashida wants to visit her grandmother during her visit, for example, she will have a difficult time doing so. Her grandmother, who she warmly refers to as her "siti" in many of her talks and tweets, lives in the West Bank village of Beir Ur, three kilometres west of Ramallah and surrounded by illegal Jewish settlements. To get there, visitors who do not hold Israeli passports are forced to go through checkpoints, diversions, tunnels and a complicated, badly maintained road system.
The main highway, known as route 443, which connects Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to the village, is inaccessible to most Palestinians because it can only be used by Israeli citizens, residents and settlers driving vehicles with Israeli licence plates. Palestinians are forced to use heavily monitored and poorly maintained secondary roads that significantly increase the length of their journey.
If Rashida, Ilhan and others do make it to the village, they would witness the stark reality of Israeli occupation.
In the early 1990s, the Oslo Accords divided the occupied Palestinian territories into three types of areas. The highly populated cities in which most of the Palestinian population of the West Bank resides were included in Area A and put under the complete administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Other, smaller, towns and villages were placed in Area B and put under the administrative control of the PA, but security control of the Israeli military. The remaining areas, which constitute over 60 percent of the West Bank, were designated as Area C and put under complete security and administrative control of Israel.
The village of Beit Ur falls within the last two categories (12.1 percent of the village is considered Area B, while the remaining 87.9 percent is designated Area C. Israel also confiscated 213 acres of land from the village to construct the Israeli settlement of Beit Horon and, as a result, Israel has near-complete control over the movements of its residents.
Residents of Beit Ur do not even have direct access to their local school. Beit Ur al-Fuqa High School, which is attended by some 200 Palestinian students, is surrounded by Israel's illegal "security wall" on three sides. The school's fourth and only side not enclosed by the concrete wall is blocked by a road built exclusively for Israeli settlers. As a result, students are forced to use a four-kilometre route that runs alongside the security wall to reach their school. During their 40-minute journey, the students walk through dangerous sewage channels and endure harassment by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers.
Rashida and Ilhan's trip to occupied Palestine will highlight these and other horrendous realities of the Israeli occupation. The two congresswomen alone cannot "fix" the many problems Palestine faces, but they can help raise awareness of the crimes Israel is perpetrating on a daily basis.
Amid the ongoing aggressive efforts to impose on the Palestinians an unfair deal eliminating the right of return for refugees and quashing their hopes for statehood, a visit by the "squad" will indeed be a breath of fresh area and a reassurance that the world has not abandoned the stripped and abused palestinians.
PALESTINA
"Recent events have shone a spotlight not only on how Israel is intensifying its abuse of Palestinians under its rule, but the utterly depraved complicity of western governments in its actions.
The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House two-and-a-half years ago has emboldened Israel as never before, leaving it free to unleash new waves of brutality in the occupied territories.
Western states have not only turned a blind eye to these outrages, but are actively assisting in silencing anyone who dares to speak out.
It is rapidly creating a vicious spiral: the more Israel violates international law, the more the West represses criticism, the more Israel luxuriates in its impunity.
This shameless descent was starkly illustrated last week when hundreds of heavily armed Israeli soldiers, many of them masked, raided a neighbourhood of Sur Baher, on the edges of Jerusalem. Explosives and bulldozers destroyed dozens of homes, leaving many hundreds of Palestinians without a roof over their heads.
During the operation, extreme force was used against residents, as well as international volunteers there in the forlorn hope that their presence would deter violence. Videos showed the soldiers cheering and celebrating as they razed the neighbourhood.
House destructions have long been an ugly staple of Israel’s belligerent occupation, but there were grounds for extra alarm on this occasion.
Traditionally, demolitions occur on the two-thirds of the West Bank placed by the Oslo accords temporarily under Israeli control. That is bad enough: Israel should have handed over what is called “Area C” to the Palestinian Authority 20 years ago. Instead, it has hounded Palestinians off these areas to free them up for illegal Jewish settlement.
But the Sur Baher demolitions took place in “Area A”, land assigned by Oslo to the Palestinians’ government-in-waiting – as a prelude to Palestinian statehood. Israel is supposed to have zero planning or security jurisdiction there.
Palestinians rightly fear that Israel has established a dangerous precedent, further reversing the Oslo Accords, which can one day be used to justify driving many thousands more Palestinians off land under PA control.
Most western governments barely raised their voices. Even the United Nations offered a mealy-mouthed expression of “sadness” at what took place.
A few kilometres north, in Issawiya, another East Jerusalem suburb, Israeli soldiers have been terrorising 20,000 Palestinian residents for weeks. They have set up checkpoints, carried out dozens of random night-time arrests, imposed arbitrary fines and traffic tickets, and shot live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets into residential areas.
Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights group, calls Issawiya’s treatment a “perpetual state of collective punishment” – that is, a war crime.
Over in Gaza, not only are the 2 million inhabitants being slowly starved by Israel’s 12-year blockade, but a weekly shooting spree against Palestinians who protest at the fence imprisoning them has become so routine it barely attracts attention any more.
On Friday, Israeli snipers killed one protester and seriously injured 56, including 22 children.
That followed new revelations that Israeli’s policy of shooting unarmed protesters in the upper leg to injure them – another war crime – continued long after it became clear a significant proportion of Palestinians were dying from their wounds.
Belatedly – after more than 200 deaths and the severe disabling of many thousands of Palestinians – snipers have been advised to “ease up” by shooting protesters in the ankle.
B’Tselem, another Israeli rights organisation, called the army’s open-fire regulation a “criminal policy”, one that “consciously chose not to regard those standing on the other side of the fence as humans”.
Rather than end such criminal practices, Israel prefers to conceal them. It has effectively sealed Palestinian areas off to avoid scrutiny.
Omar Shakir, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, is facing imminent deportation, yet more evidence of Israel’s growing crackdown on the human rights community.
A report by the Palestinian Right to Enter campaign last week warned that Israel is systematically denying foreign nationals permits to live and work in the occupied territories, including areas supposedly under PA control.
That affects both foreign-born Palestinians, often those marrying local Palestinians, and internationals. According to recent reports, Israel is actively forcing out academics teaching at the West Bank’s leading university, Bir Zeit, in a severe blow to Palestinian academic freedom.
Palestinian journalists highlighting Israeli crimes are in Israel’s sights too. Last week, Israel stripped one – Mustafa Al Haruf – of his Jerusalem residency, tearing him from his wife and young child. Because it is illegal to leave someone stateless, Israel is now bullying Jordan to accept him.
Another exclusion policy – denying entry to Israel’s fiercest critics, those who back the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement – is facing its first challenge.
Two US congresswomen who support BDS – Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who has family in the West Bank – have announced plans to visit.
Israeli officials have indicated they will exempt them both, apparently fearful of drawing wider attention to Israel’s draconian entry restrictions, which also cover the occupied territories.
Israel is probably being overly cautious. The BDS movement, which alone argues for the imposition of penalties on Israel until it halts its abuse of Palestinians, is being bludgeoned by western governments.
In the US and Europe, strong criticism of Israel, even from Jews – let alone demands for meaningful action – is being conflated with antisemitism. Much of this furore seems intended to ease the path towards silencing Israel’s critics.
More than two dozen US states, as well as the Senate, have passed laws – drafted by pro-Israel lobby groups – to limit the rights of the American public to support boycotts of Israel.
Anti-BDS legislation has also been passed by the German and French parliaments.
And last week the US House of Representatives joined them, overwhelmingly passing a resolution condemning the BDS movement. Only 17 legislators demurred.
It was a slap in the face to Omar, who has been promoting a bill designed to uphold the First Amendment rights of boycott supporters.
It seems absurd that these curbs on free speech have emerged just as Israel makes clear it has no interest in peace, will never concede Palestinian statehood and is entrenching a permanent system of apartheid in the occupied territories.
But there should be no surprise. The clampdown is further evidence that western support for Israel is indeed based on shared values – those that treat the Palestinians as lesser beings, whose rights can be trampled at will." Jonathan Cook.
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BRASIL
