Since its establishment in 1949, the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) has undertaken an indispensable role in providing humanitarian relief, work programs, and essential services to the estimated 750,000 Palestinian refugees displaced as the result of the first Arab-Israeli War. Today, UNRWA continues to serve as a critical lifeline for the survival and well-being of roughly 6 million Palestinian refugees dispersed between the Palestinian territories—the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem—and the sprawling refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. 

Throughout its 75 years, UNRWA has become inextricably intertwined with the history, symbolism, and politics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For most of the world, UNRWA constitutes an essential element of the international framework with respect to the Palestinian question, and especially the issue of Palestinian refugees, pending a final settlement of the conflict. This is reflected in the consistent support for UNRWA from key states—namely, the United States as the largest contributor, Germany and other EU countries, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye —who have provided the bulk of the agency’s funding.

For Israel, UNRWA has long been a target of often vehement criticism related to its operational inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and as an enabler of Palestinian extremism through its educational programs that allegedly condone violence and rejectionism against Israel. More importantly, for critics of UNRWA, the agency has stood as a pillar upholding the right of return for Palestinian refugees, a reality reflected in the linkage between UNRWA’s founding document, UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 302 (1949), and UNGA Resolution 194 adopted in 1948 which stipulates that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date…” 

To Israel and its supporters, the Palestinian “right of return” is an existential threat that, if realized, will undermine its existence as a Jewish state. The fact that UNRWA continues to sustain this right by enabling the transfer of refugee status to the descendants of the original Palestinians refugees of 1948 is a root cause behind much of the antagonism toward the agency and explains why Israel and its allies have repeatedly called for its replacement and its functions to be transferred to other UN agencies. 

Despite these criticisms, successive Israeli governments had largely acquiesced to UNRWA’s continued functioning, acknowledging its critical role in supporting Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Territories, thereby relieving Israel itself of these burdens and responsibilities under international law.

However, with the advent of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, this relatively tolerant attitude drastically changed. The dissolution of UNRWA became part of a broader radical vision for Israel and the Palestinian territories, involving annexation of the West Bank, precipitating the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and instituting a legal and institutional basis for Jewish right-wing supremacy in Israel itself. 

For the right-wing parties in the Israeli governing coalition, the war on Gaza provided an opportune moment to bring about the fulfilment of this vision. Abolishing UNRWA became an explicit Israeli war objective. The Agency now faces its most existential crisis to date on multiple levels: mobilizing to confront the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza resulting from the war; having its facilities and personnel being the target of Israel’s war machine on the ground in Gaza; and confronting a full-fledged diplomatic and political onslaught by Israel and its supporters accusing it of complicity in the October 7th attack by Hamas. The latter, for which Israel has not yet provided proof, prompted several major donor countries to suspend their contributions to the Agency. The Israeli government, meanwhile, introduced a bill in the Knesset to designate UNRWA a terrorist organization. 

To explore the many ramifications of the complex crises UNRWA faces, this issue brings together a number of essays that shed light on its legal, operational, financial, and institutional aspects. We are especially grateful to UNRWA Deputy Commissioner-General for Operational Support Antonia de Meo for writing the foreword to this special issue, highlighting the urgency of the crisis and underscoring the importance of the Agency’s role as a “Lifeline of Hope”. 

Lex Takkenberg, senior advisor with the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), explains how the campaign against UNRWA should be seen in the context of a broader assault on the global refugee regime and the general international humanitarian system as it evolved after WWII. Even though UNRWA’s statute states that the cessation of its ability to assist and protect Palestinian refugees triggers the responsibility of the global refugee regime to extend protections to them, to date no such efforts have been undertaken. 

Anne Irfan, a leading expert on Palestinian refugee rights and colonial displacement, looks at the politics of aid as it relates to UNRWA. While aid is posited as a politically neutral form of support, it is hardly free from political dynamics and machinations. For UNRWA in particular, especially with respect to its critical role in Gaza, such machinations can have fatal consequences for Palestinian refugees rendered highly vulnerable due to the impact of the war.

In the same vein, Palestinian researcher and policy analyst Shatha Abdulsamad argues that the decision of several donor countries, especially the United States, to suspend aid to UNRWA was done on highly dubious allegations of involvement of Agency employees in the October 7 attack. Instead of pushing for accountability, U.S. officials are time and again affirming their unconditional support for Israel at the expense of Palestinian lives. She adds that the broader international efforts at humanitarian assistance for Gaza have been similarly politicized. The international “humanitarian” response, including aid airdrops and efforts to set up a maritime corridor to Gaza, obscure the political underpinnings of the unfolding crisis instead of lifting the blockade on the Strip and ending military occupation, thus reflecting the juxtaposition of politics and humanitarian aid.  

Maysa Ayoub, the associate director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo, sheds light on UNRWA’s Egypt office, whose role is mostly diplomatic and does not provide direct support to Palestinians residing in Egypt. However, the suspension of funding has negatively impacted the ability of the UNRWA office in Egypt to facilitate the mobilization of funds from its other offices to the international and local organizations in Egypt who can directly provide aid to Palestinians. Without sustainable funding through an organized mechanism of aid delivery, Palestinians in Egypt will continue to suffer in the absence of UNHCR’s and UNRWA’s operational activities.

The implications of the current crises facing UNRWA will reverberate far beyond the humanitarian situation related to the ongoing war. They will have dire consequences on the stability of vulnerable Palestinian refugee populations far beyond the territory of Gaza, undermine the basis for a just settlement to the Palestinian refugee question, and further erode the prospect for a negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This is the precise intent behind Israel’s diplomatic, military, and financial assault against the Agency. This is the grim reality that is aptly captured by the title of our special issue “Destroying Hope”, which also features essays on Israel’s attacks on journalism, the right to play for Gaza’s children, the gendered conflict in Sudan, the plight of women in Afghanistan, and others.

Cairo Review Co-Managing Editors,

Karim Haggag

Firas Al-Atraqchi