What would Israel do without UNRWA?

by Amira Hass, Haaretz.

Quote:

...UNRWA is one of the most important safety nets the international community has spread out under Israel, which, as an occupying power, has been unwilling to recognize its responsibility for the occupied civilian population. For the past three years, the UN has been regularly providing food aid to about half the Palestinian population, which is in a state of "food insecurity." UNRWA alone provides regular food aid to about 1.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. ...The UN food aid is preventing outbreaks of disease and the spread of malnutrition. How would Israel's UN ambassador, who is calling for Hansen's removal, respond to reports of malnutrition of an African-type scale, if not outright hunger, in the territories that Israel controls?

UNRWA is currently the body most concerned with finding new housing for thousands of refugees made homeless by Israel's home demolitions in the Gaza Strip. In these very days, when Israel Defense Forces bulldozers are causing people to flee their homes in the Jabalya refugee camp, UNRWA - along with the relatives of those affected - is mobilizing to provide initial aid in the form of food, textbooks, kitchen appliances and medicines - everything that was lost to the teeth of the Israeli machinery. After that, it will also supervise and coordinate the rebuilding of the houses. Just as it is doing in Jenin, Rafah and Khan Yunis, and thereby preventing a deepening of the Palestinian social crisis, as well as sparing Israel from having to give an accounting under international law for the harm done to the civilian population under its occupation.