Rethinking International Law After Gaza Symposium: The Double-Edged Sword of Humanitarianism – UNRWA and Struggle for Palestinian Agency in the Colonial Context

[Hasan Basri Bülbül works as an Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Boğaziçi University Faculty of Law in Istanbul, Türkiye.

Hüseyin Dişli is a PhD candidate at the University of Kent and convening Legal History and Legal Philosophy modules at Boğaziçi University Faculty of Law. He serves as a legal counsel to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC).]

Since its establishment, the United Nations has played a pivotal role in enabling Palestinian suffering. As an extension of the British colonial project aimed at creating a homeland for the Jewish people on the homes and lands of others, the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 adopted the partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews in an unjust manner, which starkly contradicted the realities on the ground, particularly regarding the population distribution and land ownership of the respective communities. This was the first-ever UN resolution on the question of Palestine, the original sin that created a built-in injustice within the entire framework. It was the start of a chain of mistakes that have yet to be undone. Subsequent efforts to alleviate Palestinian suffering have been doomed to be merely palliative within the UN’s overtly colonial framework.

The Colonial Genesis of UNRWA

Predictably, the resolution for partition only increased tension in the region in 1947, bolstering Zionist ambitions for more land and escalating the conflict between communities, ultimately creating conditions for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Between 750,000 and 900,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced by Zionist militias, later reincarnated as the Israeli army. Rather than stopping the violence and ethnic cleansing, the UN chose to recognise Israel by admitting it as a member, while creating the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for the displaced Palestinians. The UN effectively endorsed sovereignty for Israelis, and a “humanitarian administration” for Palestinians. One was deemed worthy of being an agent entitled to exercise all rights and obligations in the international realm, the other was to be a subject, a perpetual victim dependent on humanitarian enterprise for survival. 

As Ghassan Kanafani explains in ‘On Zionist Literature’, the Zionist entity mastered the art of distorting realities effectively by deploying the language of democracy and international law. This process of distortion indeed started much earlier, notably with the motto of the “land without people for the people without land”, reminiscent of the concept of terra nullius which justified European colonial expansion. The violence it spread gained an automatic presumption of legality under the guise of self-defence, while Palestinian resistance was demonised through the prism of counter-terrorism laws. The right to return became the right of Jewish people who have no connection to Palestinian land to return to Palestine while Palestinians who were recently displaced had no right to return as they “voluntarily” left their homes. Distortion of realities to justify stripping Palestinians of their rights has become the everyday practice of the Zionist state. Recently, the made-up story of “forty beheaded babies” enabled Israel to kill more than fourteen thousand children in Gaza. 

Evolving Role of UNRWA

“I often think of the Palestine-Israeli conflict as the fault line of world’s conflicts and the Palestinian refugee situation as the fault line of Palestinian-Israeli conflict”, Susan Akram contends. In many contexts, forced displacement is often regarded as one of the unintended consequences of armed conflicts. In Palestine, however, it is the ultimate aim of the settler-colonial state of Israel. ‘The return of Palestinian refugees’ is indeed the fault line of the conflict as these five words pose an existential threat to Zionist agenda of ethnic cleansing. Nevertheless, this fact was effectively ignored during the establishment of UNRWA. UNRWA was established temporarily to provide humanitarian assistance and services to Palestinian refugees. In most refugee cases, the moment when people are exiled from their homes, the international community is eager to regard those people as passive victims with no political agency. This was what happened with the establishment of UNRWA and the collapse of UNCCP which was originally mandated for the protection and return of Palestinian refugees. 

This indicated that UNRWA would emerge as the only actor in the field for the assistance of Palestinian refugees but with no mandate for protection or advocacy. Accordingly, UNRWA has been providing fundamental services such as education, health, work, development, and others to Palestinians. Over time, UNRWA has turned into an organisation which provides almost all social services traditionally offered by a state—reflecting an unintended transformation that speaks to both its strengths and inherent constraints. As Bocco puts it, the agency functions as a quasi-state in “a non-territorial administration without coercive power.” This means that UNRWA has become essential in the public life of Palestinians. 

Among others, two things appear to be particularly noteworthy in terms of the roles that UNRWA plays. First, UNRWA is fundamental to the self-determination of the Palestinian people by supporting the preservation of Palestinian national identity through widespread education programs. It also serves as a unifying entity for all Palestinian refugees regardless of whether they live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, or Gaza. It creates a sense of unity among forcibly fragmented Palestinian communities. Second, registration with UNRWA ensures that refugee status is passed on to future generations, preventing Israel from claiming that the Palestinian refugee issue is no longer relevant. This function of UNRWA acts as a form of resistance, ensuring continuity of the struggle for recognition and the right of return, despite international attempts to marginalise Palestinian claims. Maintaining the connection of the people with their land, UNRWA is a significant actor in terms of achieving Palestinian self-determination.

We add a caveat before we proceed: this essay in no way seeks to condemn UNRWA. As we recognised above, it is vital to the survival of the Palestinian population and has had to operate under dire conditions, with Israel, the US, and, recently, much of the West seeking to decapitate it. It may even need to expand its mandate to other places, including Egypt, where approximately 150,000 Gazans have been forcibly displaced and are living under extremely perilous conditions, deprived of all of their basic rights.  Rather than having an issue with UNRWA’s preservation at the time, our essay seeks to illuminate how UNRWA’s activities and potential are constrained by colonial frameworks and external pressures by the Zionist state and its Western collaborators. 

Colonial Structures and the Humanitarian Trap

Considering the overall colonial legal framework within the UN, UNRWA was intended to ensure that Palestinians remain passive victims—recipients of international humanitarian aid and obedient to donor requirements to continue benefiting from UNRWA’s assistance. In exchange for food, they were expected to surrender any political agency for their liberation from colonisation. The “humanitarian administration” was designed as part of the benevolent colonial legal framework that prevented Palestinian self-determination. As Palestinians often say, “the UN gave Palestine to Israel and UNRWA to Palestinians”. Nevertheless, UNRWA has transformed from this original design into a platform where Palestinians can assert some political agency for return and self-determination, albeit still constrained by colonial structures.

Yet, Zionism cannot tolerate even the slightest form of Palestinian self-awareness and expression. While resistance to colonialism, in the context of the right to self-determination, is recognised [even as a jus cogens norm] by UN bodies—including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the General Assembly, which created UNRWA—when Palestinians dare to exercise this right, they immediately lose the assistance or protection of the UN agency. As Linda Tabar puts it, “the minute the colonised step outside this [passive victim] role and exercise their right to resist colonialism they are “disqualified,” indeed penalised”. In those moments, Israel targets the agency with endless creative distortions to ensure Western donors cut their funding to UNRWA. It labels UNRWA as an obstacle to progress for the resolution of the conflict or as the “UN branch of Hamas.”

To satisfy Israel’s demands, Western donors quickly fall in line, threatening to defund UNRWA, which has always depended on voluntary contributions, constantly hovering near financial collapse. They threaten to cut funding to the agency, which is dependent on voluntary contributions and is constantly facing financial instability, and impose conditions that define the recipients of assistance as either “good” or “bad” Palestinians. There is compassion for good Palestinians as long as they choose to present themselves as victims, neutral, dependent, obedient, and apolitical. As Ilana Feldman underscores, “humanitarian compassion seems increasingly reserved for those who only suffer but do not act.” Compassion is immediately lost when Palestinians begin resisting colonial structures. This was the case, as Feldman observes, in the election of Hamas in 2006.

Further, in 2018, the US pressured UNRWA to amend its definition of a Palestinian refugee to limit the Palestinian right of return: “an alien who was firmly resettled in any country is not eligible to retain refugee status.” In August 2018, the US government decided to completely defund UNRWA, which coincided with the time when Palestinians in Gaza began peaceful demonstrations called the “Great March of Return”. Later in 2020, as part of Trump’s “Deal of the Century”, the US demanded: “Palestinian refugee status will cease to exist, and UNRWA will be terminated, with its responsibilities transitioned to the relevant governments.” 

In 2021, the USA-UNRWA Framework Agreement was concluded. In order to proceed with funding, the US made the following condition: “[n]o contributions by the United States shall be made to UNRWA except on the condition that UNRWA take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation army or any other guerilla-type organised or who has engaged in any act of terrorism.” It is remarkable that the condition is not only about the organisations that the US has designated as terrorist organisations but any other Palestinian resistance movement, “which contradicts the right of Palestinian people to struggle for self-determination.” Conditioning aid on the exclusion of any resistance-affiliated Palestinians from support—contradicts the jus cogens right of a Palestinian people to resist colonial domination and alien subjugation.

This pattern of disciplining Palestinians through humanitarian assistance reemerged in February 2024, when Western powers decided to defund UNRWA amidst an ongoing genocide, following allegations by the Israeli intelligence service that some UNRWA personnel were involved in the assault on 7 October 2023. The allegations emerged as yet another distortion and manipulation tactic by Israel immediately after the ICJ ruling on provisional measures, finding that there is a plausible risk of genocide being created in Gaza due to Israeli actions. The Court ordered Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” The Israeli response was to ask its Western friends to cut funds to UNRWA.

The desire to discipline the colonised was never alleviated even when they were actively experiencing genocidal conditions. Major Western powers almost unconditionally proceeded with the Israeli demands. While one of the key ways to prevent genocide in Gaza was to ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance for basic needs, Western powers instead targeted UNRWA—the linchpin humanitarian organisation and the backbone of the humanitarian system in Gaza. While 2 million Gazans were under an ongoing risk of genocide, Western powers were more concerned with the “alleged” involvement of 12 UNRWA personnel out of 13,000 staff in Gaza, which posed no imminent security threat for Israel at the time of the decision for funding cuts. 

Indeed, this event simply demonstrates the racial hierarchy that Western powers impose on Palestinian and Israeli lives: Israelis deserve life, even when there was no risk posed to their lives by UNRWA personnel. At the same time, Palestinians deserve to starve merely based on “allegations” that a few individuals might have engaged in legitimate armed resistance. Collective punishment is alive and well in the Western psyche, even after the World Court cautioned against a plausible risk of genocide for the Palestinian people. 

Immediate Legal Consequences of the Potential Collapse of UNRWA for Refugees

Israeli attacks on UNRWA, together with its Western allies’ threats, have brought the agency to the brink of collapse in Gaza. Phillip Lazzarini, the President of UNRWA, sent a letter to the UN, stating that: “In my 35 years of work in complex emergencies, I would never have expected to write such a letter, predicting the killing of my staff and the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfil.” The collapse of UNRWA has consequences from an international refugee law perspective as well. 

Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention excludes Palestinian refugees from its scope, as they receive assistance or protection from UNRWA. However, the second paragraph of the same article states that under certain conditions, Palestinians will once again fall within the scope of the Convention. Accordingly, if UNRWA’s assistance or protection ends, Palestinian refugees automatically become entitled to the protection provided by the Convention. In other words, if a Palestinian refugee seeks asylum outside of the UNRWA region, and this request arises due to circumstances beyond their control, the asylum claim must be automatically accepted. This also applies to Western states that cut their funding to UNRWA.

Western states, blindly following Israeli demands, seem unconcerned that Israel aims to shift the Palestinian refugee issue from an Israeli problem into an international one. Perhaps they are not concerned because Palestinians are currently unable to leave Gaza to make their way to Europe and the US. If there were even the slightest possibility that Gazans could reach European borders, those European states would surely pour huge funds into organisations solely to prevent their arrival. Since Palestinians cannot make it to Europe, they are once again denied agency and left to endure genocidal conditions as passive victims with no sympathy this time, a situation facilitated by defunding.

Conclusion

In reconsidering UNRWA, we must recognise that it is a product of the colonial framework established by the UN—a framework that perpetuates Palestinian dependency. The agency, in its current form, exists as both a lifeline and a limitation; it provides vital services that sustain the Palestinian population but is structurally constrained by colonial biases that deny true political agency. Moving forward, it is crucial to recalibrate UNRWA, transforming it from an instrument of humanitarian pacification to one that actively empowers Palestinian self-determination. This recalibration must reject the perpetual passive victimhood imposed by international donors and foster a proactive stance towards Palestinian liberation—advocating for rights, unity, and political agency. 

Ultimately, the need for UNRWA must be viewed as temporary. When full Palestinian liberation has been achieved—including the right to return, land/property reclamation, reparations, and accountability—UNRWA will no longer be necessary since its preservation should be contingent upon supporting the broader struggle for Palestinian self-determination. Until then, it must be transformed into an entity that not only sustains life but also actively contributes to the dismantling of the colonial structures that perpetuate Palestinian suffering. This is the essence of what we must rethink: the transition of UNRWA from a humanitarian agency rooted in colonial management to a pillar of empowerment, ultimately serving the broader aspiration for decolonisation and self-determination in Palestine.

This transformation will not truly happen as long as UNRWA remains financially dependent on Western powers. Therefore, UNRWA must diversify its donor base, possibly through an international coalition of the Global South, comprising both states and civil society, investing in UNRWA to leverage its potential for empowerment.

Photo attribution: Photo by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid is licenced under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0