Islamic movement aims to get UN organization’s budget restores
Hamas, the Islamic movement governing the Gaza Strip, is using street protests in a behind-the-scenes campaign to force international donors to increase their funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), observers say.
In the latest eruption of tensions, refugees on Thursday blocked the entrance to the UNRWA offices in Gaza with large vehicles after UNRWA removed tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees from its food distribution list. In early July, protests erupted when UNRWA suddenly removed the words "relief" and "works" from the logo on its official website, sparking fears it was abandoning its mission of feeding and employing Gaza’s most needy.
Meanwhile, angry protesters have shut the offices of UNRWA’s summer camps in the cities of Rafah and Khan Younis in a protest against the delay in building projects overseen by the UN organization.
While the protests have appeared to be spontaneous moves by the recipients of UNWRA aid, Samir Zaqout, a field work coordinator at the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza, said he saw signs that they were orchestrated by Hamas, which is not only concerned about the budget shortfall but the UN group’s educational policies that often run counter to Hamas’ philosophy.
"If UNRWA backs out of Gaza, the [Hamas] government will find itself in trouble. It’s already struggling without having to deal with the refugees," Zaqout told The Media Line. "People in Gaza are also upset with UNRWA for straying from its original mandate of relief and employment, while funding other projects such as human rights education."
While Gaza’s economy has revived in the year since Israel eased its embargo, the tiny enclave of 1.5 million people remains highly dependent on international aid funnelled through UNWRA and other organizations. Hamas itself collects taxes in cigarettes and other imports and receives aid from Iran, but most of the funds go towards paying for civil servants and the security forces, according to a paper published y the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Since the beginning of July, however, UNRWA has been forced to cut its employment program to 6,500 contracts per month from 10,000, and end its "back to school” stipend of $30 a pupil that it provided to over 200,000 children studying in UNRWA schools.
Employment and cash bursaries aren’t the only services cut by UNRWA. According to spokesman Chris Gunness, some 100,000 Gazans have been removed from the organization’s food distribution lists, after what he called a more accurate poverty-assessment system was put into place. UNRWA was providing food assistance to 600,000 Gaza residents.
The reason, Gunness told the Ma’an news agency, is a shortfall of $35 million in its emergency budget due to the failure of donor states to provide funds.
UNRWA, a UN agency set up uniquely for Palestinian refugees, was established in 1949 and currently services five million people in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as well as in Gaza and the West Bank.
Khaled Abu Toameh, a Palestinian journalist, said the protests are aimed at ensuring a continued flow of foreign aid money to Gaza, thereby enabling Hamas to focus its limited financial resources on other items.
“The anti-UNRWA protests are aimed at extorting the agency and the international community into continuing to provide services and jobs to tens of thousands of Palestinians, exempting Hamas, the PLO and the Arab world from any responsibility,” he wrote in a commentary last week on the website of the U.S. think-tank The Hudson Institute.
Jordan, which hosts two million registered Palestinian refugees and has been shaken by political unrest, urged donor states on July 12 to honour their financial obligations towards UNRWA, Petra News Agency reported.
But Gunness said Israel was to blame for the donors’ unwillingness to give money for Gaza. UNWRA also blames Israel, which controls the movement of concrete and other building materials into Gaza, for the delay in moving forward with construction projects.
"The real problem is that we are asking our donors to fund emergency programs, which aim to mitigate the effects of Israel’s illegal collective punishment of 1.5 million people," he told Ma’an. "It would be better for those states and organizations with the power to bring the necessary pressures to bear to end the collective punishment rather than pay UNRWA to deal with its disastrous impact."
The controversy over the logo change, which UNRWA said was done to mark its anniversary, reflects more than Hamas politics but a real concern among UNRWA beneficiaries that the organization plans to abandon them. UNRWA gave up a campaign to explain the changes to its logo and announced on Sunday it was restoring the old one.
Nevertheless, Hamas lawmaker Mushir Al-Masri said the move was merely an attempt "to mislead public opinion."
Over the weekend, the Refugee Department in the Hamas government called on faction leaders and civil society leaders in Gaza to assemble a "popular committee for monitoring UNRWA’s performance." Hamas’ Palestinian Information Center said UNRWA’s services have never been monitored since its establishment 63 years ago.
But Walid Awad, a member of the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), a small left-wing faction in Gaza, said political pressure should be exerted on donor states rather than on UNRWA itself. He said UNRWA bore witness to the distress of Gaza refugees, who at 1.1 million comprise more than two thirds of the Strip’s population.
"People don’t understand that UNRWA is like a bank. If it has no credit, it can’t give money," Awad told The Media Line. "Fighting UNRWA is a political mistake on the part of the people and the government. We have no interest in starting a battle with UNRWA; on the contrary – we should cooperate with it."