The EU’s complicity with Israel renders support for UNRWA negligible

The EU, as well as individual European countries, have criticised Israel’s forced entry at the Qalandia Vocational Training Centre and the seizure of UNRWA’s installations in East Jerusalem. In a statement that reads as futile as any other, Israel was urged to “honour its obligations and to halt all disruptions to UNRWA’s activities and operations without delay.”

Israel’s response was typical – according to its Foreign Ministry, the EU and individual European countries are supporting “an organisation that is a breeding ground for terrorism.” Terrorism, according to Israel, was the reason UNRWA was banned from operating in the occupied Palestinian territories. It referenced a recent US Agency for International Development report which stated that over 100 current or former UNRWA staff members participated in the October 7 incursion into Israel. 

The bottom line is that Israel has made no secret out of wanting to eradicate UNRWA, while the EU, like the rest of the international community wants to maintain the humanitarian paradigm as it serves the purpose of not addressing the Palestinian people’s political rights.

Yet, while serving a diplomatic purpose by speaking on UNRWA’s behalf, the support does not extend to the Palestinian people. A temporary organisation cannot serve a permanent purpose. The EU and the international community know the limitations UNRWA faces; both know that even financially, UNRWA can never deliver the standard required for the Palestinian people’s autonomy and independence. Politically, UNRWA has become embroiled in the politics of maintaining the Palestinian people’s refugee status, because the international community has completely rejected decolonisation. 

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The EU, like the international community, plays a duplicitous role when it comes to UNRWA and the Palestinian people. Israel was asked to ‘honour its obligations’. Yet taking into account recent history, where was the EU when Palestinians were being massacred in Israel’s genocide in Gaza?

Was the EU not obliged to honour its obligations and work towards ending the genocide, instead of working to create more cycles of forced displacement by giving Israel absolute impunity?

Since the EU, alongside the international community, allowed Israel to continue its genocide, which aspect of UNRWA is it really supporting? The existence of the organisation, or the limited work UNRWA was accomplishing for Palestinian refugees due to the international community’s refusal to acknowledge the colonial politics of forced displacement? 

If UNRWA and its work were truly considered a priority, the EU would not work against the institution and pretend to support it only when Israel commits a violation that cannot be diplomatically ignored. The EU’s support for UNRWA would have included the bloc taking a stance against genocide and forced displacement, rather than approving of the massacres by upholding Israel’s security narrative. Eliminating UNRWA, or shutting down its operations, will not make the refugees disappear. If, however, the EU tackled genocide and forced displacement both from the human and the political aspect, UNRWA could have been slightly helped, while more Palestinians would have been saved. 

Israel will not honour its obligations, of course. But neither does the EU. If saving UNRWA and Palestinians refugees were truly a priority, the EU would have avoided complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Obligations, therefore, need to be defined, as they sit in blurred parameters when the EU asks Israel to abide by international law while collaborating in maintaining the perpetual displacement of Palestinian refugees.

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