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The Knesset on Sunday discussed the humanitarian aid that UNRWA provides to the Gaza Strip and viable options to replace the organization.
“We need to tell the truth because the international community is absolutely lying that UNRWA is the only option for humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. We had a number of experts and professors on humanitarian aid who have served throughout the years in organizations advising the United Nations, in different conflicts and they all said one thing: ‘There are other options,'” MK Sharren Haskel (National Unity) tells Arutz Sheva-Israel National News.
“More so,” she adds, “UNRWA right now is not really providing the humanitarian aid needed to Palestinians. It means that they are pocketing the money of the contributing donors. That money is being pocketed by Hamas, a terrorist organization.”
MK Haskel explains that “there are other options, but as the United Nations said, ‘they don’t want it.’ They told other contributing countries not to divert the funds to other organizations. They want to solely give it to UNRWA because they are profiting from UNRWA. They do not want the World Food Organization to take charge. They do not want UNICEF to be in the picture. So, at this meeting, we actually dispelled some of the biggest lies that the international community and humanitarian community are trying to spread. There is a replacement for UNRWA and there is a better solution for humanitarian aid for Palestinians.
David Bedein, Director of The Center for Near East Policy Research “As a journalist who has covered UNRWA since 1987, I’ve seen good things and bad things in what’s happened. One of the best things that happened was not only when Trump cut it completely, but even under Biden when the US government made a decision to condition aid to UNRWA on the ending of the curriculum, which is the curriculum of murder; not just hatred, but murder. Well, that sanction against UNRWA continued for 2 years until the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs interfered and said ‘You have to continue funding UNRWA and that’s the issue right now, which is not the US, but Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the 400 corporations who are right now invested in industries that serve UNRWA.”
Alternative scenarios for humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza were presented today at the Knesset by international experts during a special session of the caucus “The Day After UNRWA” chaired by MK Sharren Haskel. The experts included a former general counsel of UNRWA, a Europe-based former UN chief of mission for a UN Migration Agency, a crisis aid worker, a British academic who studies and advises the United Nations, and the head of a consultancy who has advised the UN and 80 NGOs.
Among the scenarios discussed were shifting from UNRWA to the UN cluster model used in crises all around the world; using the Sudan model where donor countries and their aid agencies (in the case of Sudan the United States via USAID) oversee aid distribution; turning UNRWA into an UN Middle East hub which services all refugees in the Middle East.
“The point of the session was to demonstrate that there are alternatives to the current situation in Gaza with UNRWA. Experts today have come up with a variety of possibilities in answer to the question “If not UNRWA then what?” Now we — the government of Israel and the international community– need to have the courage to implement change for a better future for Israelis and Gazans.”
