Trump’s return and the humanitarian paradigm

Throughout his first tenure, US President Donald Trump mounted a campaign against the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) which included slander and defunding – the aim being to ultimately alter the definition of who can be classified as a Palestinian refugee and render the agency defunct.

Israel’s bill to ban UNRWA can soon be implemented, at a time when, as a result of Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza and the international community’s ongoing complicity, Palestinians require access to the most basic of services more than ever. Of course, such is the humanitarian paradigm invented and sustained by the West, which gives no autonomy to the provider to make sure Palestinians find it increasingly harder to shift from necessity to liberation.

Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the UN, is committed to the US-Israeli narrative on UNRWA. Describing the agency as “a program that is not meeting the mission of the UN,” Stefanik repeated the unworkable alternative – to have other UN organisations cater for the humanitarian needs of Palestinians. “We should never tolerate any US taxpayer funds going towards terrorism. I was one of the members that voted to defund UNRWA,” she declared during a meeting of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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Taxpayer funds are not supporting terrorism. They are funding a system that was made to collapse on itself financially due to the discrepancy between humanitarian aid and human rights violations, but which at the same time needs to be kept afloat precisely because of the international community’s support for Israel. Blaming Palestinians does not work, and neither does inventing a terror narrative. No matter how many billboards the Israeli government finances to spread its propaganda against UNRWA. UNRWA has no autonomy – it is sustained by various forms of dependency – not least the fact that it is funded by many of Israel’s allies – which Israel keeps exacerbating through colonial violence, settlement expansion and the genocide in Gaza. By committing genocide, Israel shone the spotlight on why UNRWA needs to exist. As long as colonialism in Palestine exists, UNRWA will be necessary although unviable.

On the one hand, therefore, should Trump decide to extend his previous targeting of UNRWA, Israel is contributing to speeding up the process. If the ban comes into effect and UNRWA is prevented from operating, the agency’s role will be considerably diminished in practice. There is already enough groundwork laid out, and the international community’s consideration of Israeli interests, as well as its own with regard to Israel, will likely not elicit robust support for the agency.

However, the ban itself, and the US support of it, which is likely as seen from Stefanik’s comments, will only highlight how Israel cannot disappear refugees by merely destroying the agency that caters for their basic needs. Gaza is destroyed, Palestinians have been forcibly internally displaced, and since the international community’s only response is the humanitarian paradigm, anything the US and Israel say will now ricochet back to why UNRWA is needed – genocide and decades of settler-colonial expansion, violence and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from Palestine.

The present situation requires that the defunct humanitarian paradigm is protected, even though Palestinians are only reaping meagre benefits. Maybe it is time for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to let Palestinians activate their Plan B – decolonisation? The entire world owes Palestinians that much, and more.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.