Commentary:Donor Aid, UNRWA, and the End of a Two-State Solution?

Commentary:Donor Aid, UNRWA, and the End of a Two-State Solution?

Humanitarianism has often been a surrogate for effective international action to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.(1) Political intervention to ensure the voluntary return of Palestinian refugees after the 1948 war, for example, eventually gave way to a program of long term assistance. More recently, emergency relief programs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have all but superseded efforts to end Israel’s protracted military occupation.

 With the political and economic isolation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) following the January 2006 elections in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories (OPTs), however, humanitarianism has been transformed into the primary manifestation of international political will as donor states condition additional aid (beyond that required to keep Palestinians alive) on Palestinian acquiescence to conditions that Israel itself has yet to fully accept.

  "It's like an appointment with a dietitian," says Dov Weissglass, an adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die."(2) "The most important point," writes David Makovsky from the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “is to show Palestinians that their economy will suffer as a result of choosing a leadership that rejects the very premises of peacemaking.”(3)

  This article briefly explores potential implications for Palestinian refugees and a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 Humanitarianism has been transformed into the primary manifestation of international political will as donor states condition additional aid (beyond that required to keep Palestinians alive) on Palestinian acquiescence to conditions that Israel itself has yet to fully accept.

 A temporary reprieve for UNRWA

 The decision by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and Norway to sever political and financialrelations with the Palestinian Authority first appeared to offer a temporary reprieve in the campaign to dissolve UNRWA and transfer responsibility for Palestinian refugees to the PA. "We were aiming at diminishing UNRWA's infrastructure," says Ronni Leshno-Yaar of Israel's Foreign Ministry "but what happened with Hamas has now disrupted our plans and has created a dilemma with which we are trying to cope."(4)

 Recent efforts to shut down UNRWA ignited during the second Palestinian intifada. (See “UNRWA – Under Attack and Underfunded,” Majdal, Issue 19). Campaigners have denounced the Agency for aiding and abetting Palestinian refugee demands to return home. “Were it not for the unrelenting message delivered by UNRWA to the refugees that their rightful place is back in Israel,” writes one critic, “the refugees might have been predisposed to settling where they were, or in a third locale, and to getting on with their lives.”(5)

 The premise of this campaign, which has been supported by a number of well-placed members of the US Congress (many of whom, incidentally, were some of the top financial beneficiaries of the pro-Israel lobby in the last congressional election cycle)(6) and conservative American think-tanks like the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Heritage Foundation (7) can be neatly summed up by a slogan coined by senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials in the 1950s: “If you can't solve it, dissolve it.”(8)

 One of the most potent tactics has been to implicate UNRWA in the US-led war on terrorism. Critics accuse the Agency of turning a blind eye to the presence of armed combatants in refugee camps and the use of UNRWA facilities by terrorists, retaining members of organizations on the US terrorist list, including Hamas, on its payroll, registration of refugees with terrorist links, and, accepting funds from organizations with terrorist links.

 This led to a 2003 investigation by the US General Accounting Office (GAO). The GAO report identified a number of gaps and recommended several changes in Agency policies and practices, but failed to turn up evidence of wrongdoing.(9) Campaigners nevertheless used the GAO report to back up their claims against UNRWA. In addition to allegations of links to terrorism, attacks on UNRWA have been characterized by factual errors, distortions, and sloppy research.(10)

 The initial reprieve in attacks following the January PA election underlines the political rather than principled nature of the campaign. While the government of Israel and its supporters have not retracted allegations against UNRWA – among others, links to terrorism - “one of [the alternatives to funding the PA] that's now being discussed,” according to Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, “is UNRWA, which has an infrastructure in place to deliver aid.”(11)

 But warnings of a humanitarian crisis

 Despite donor pledges of increased financial support for international agencies like UNRWA (as well as NGOs) in lieu of aid to the PA, international agencies warn that cutting aid to the Palestinian government will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the 1967 OPTs. “We are already in a bad situation,” says UNRWA head Karen Koning Abu Zayd, “if the situation is made worse whatever assurances they are giving for refugees that is not enough, we have to have assurances for other things, for non-refugees.”(12)

 

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned of ahumanitarian crisis in Gaza on the scale of Kosovo if there is no significant change.(13) According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the public health system “faces a rapid decline towards possible collapse.”(14) The World Bank estimates that the cut in tax transfers and donor aid could result in nearly half the working age population being unemployed and nearly three-quarters of Palestinians below the poverty line by 2008.(15)

 International agencies agree on two other basic points. First, the primary party responsible for the civilian population in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip under international humanitarian law is the occupying power – Israel. Second, while donors are looking towards agencies like UNRWA, OCHA and WHO to deliver aid cut from the PA, the latter emphasize that they cannot be, in the words of Médecins sans Frontières, a “social palliative” of retaliatory donor measures or stand in the shoes of the PA and its 150,000 plus employees.(16)

 "Humanitarian organizations simply cannot replace the range of services that a public administration has to deal with," says ICRC director of operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl.(17) OCHA head David Shearer concurs. “We can do food aid. We can do job creation, but taking over a health ministry is not something that we're equipped to do."(18) As the largest UN agency in the occupied territories, UNRWA says it will have a hard time coping with even the most basic needs of refugees if PA workers stop receiving their salaries.(19)
While international agencies may receive a large part of redirected donor aid, local NGOs may also receive a greater share of international assistance to Palestinians. This introduces a number of additional problems, including oversight over an expanded number of delivery portals (NGOs have not been immune to allegations of corruption) and refusal by a considerable number of international and local NGOs to accept US government assistance due to conditions attached to such aid.(20)

 Nor do donor promises of increased assistance necessarily elicit confidence that the international community will meet its financial pledges. UNRWA already lacks nearly US$ 120 million of the $457.9 million it needs to fund basic needs.(21) To date international agencies have only received 8 per cent of funds for the 2006 Consolidated Appeal to meet emergency needs in the 1967 OPTs.(22) States that have promised to continue funding the new Palestinian government, meanwhile, are facing difficulties in getting the money to the PA.

 Dissolving UNRWA or dissolving Palestine?

 While UNRWA's opponents face an uphill battle, members of Congress continue to press for more stringent control over the Agency.(22) For most donors, however, UNRWA will continue to be an effective surrogate for international action to find solutions for Palestinian refugees as long as donors shy away from putting the same kind of economic pressure on Israel as has been placed on the PA. The Agency enjoys strong support in the UN General Assembly and if the warnings of a humanitarian crisis in the 1967 OPTs come to pass even UNRWA's opponents will be hard pressed to ignore the important role played by the Agency.

 But UNRWA's opponents appear to have a wider objective. Members of the US Congress who support the dissolution of UNRWA are also behind a bill (UN Reform Act) that includes a call to purge all UN resolutions and bodies pertaining to the question of Palestine.(23) While the United States has been unable to enlist political support for implementing such reforms in the UN General Assembly it has attempted to pressure the UN to defund bodies like the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, a measure which Naseer Aruri, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, says is part of a campaign to dismantle international jurisprudence on the question of Palestine.(24)

 What's really on the table is the dissolution of the question of Palestine. Economic sanctions against the PA may well contribute to this campaign to the extent that they put peacemaking efforts on hold. Israeli settlements, land confiscation and the Wall have already dealt a severe blow to the territorial aspirations of Palestinians for a state. Starving the PA could well finishoff the nascent institutions of a Palestinian state.(25) The demands raised by the Quartet – an end to violence, respect for self-determination of states, and recognition of existing agreements (26) – are not unreasonable. The problem, however, is that these demands are only being asked of one party to the conflict.

 Since the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, donor assistance has helped to feed, clothe and shelter Palestinians. Through donor-assisted programs, Palestinians have become one of the most highly educated peoples in the Arab world. And donor funds have financed the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state to the tune of more than USD 7 billion. Palestinians would likely be materially far worse off without any donor assistance. Humanitarianism alone, as the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld keenly observed in 1959, however, will not bring about a solution for refugees or to the conflict itself.

 POSTSCRIPT: In early May the World Bank released an update (The Impending Palestinian Fiscal Crisis, 7 May 2006) on the economic situation in the 1967 OPTs warning that earlier assessments had been “too rosy”. Based on the government of Israel and donor policies, the Bank again warned of an impending humanitarian crisis, rising insecurity and the possible dissolution of PA institutions. On the 9 May the Quartet agreed to set up a temporary international mechanism to deliver humanitarian assistance directly to Palestinians, however, the establishment of such an institution could take several weeks to several months. This will likely mean a further delay in the payment of salaries to public sector employees. Meanwhile, hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are experiencing shortages of medicine leading to cutbacks in elective surgery, dialysis and cancer treatments. Physicians for Human Rights – Israel reports that at least four patients have died to the lack of funding.

 The decision by donors, including the US, the EU, Canada, and Norway, to cut all political and economic ties to the Palestinian Authority raises several important questions about the efficacy of international peacemaking efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

 First, while donors repeatedly emphasize the fact that economic sanctions are not meant to harm the Palestinian people, information available to American, European, Canadian and Norwegian policy makers prior to their decision to use economic leverage against the PA clearly laid out the humanitarian consequences of such measures. The decision to cut foreign aid thus reflects at best a knee-jerk political reaction to the January legislative elections with little attention given to the short and long-term humanitarian and political consequences or at worst a cynical attempt to use the 'calibrated' suffering of the Palestinian people as a political wedge against the democratically elected Palestinian government.

 Efforts by the Palestinian government to address the three conditions set by the Quartet for the resumption of political and economic relations, and the Bush administration's resistance to European and UN proposals to fund PA salaries gives credence to both explanations. While the Palestinian government is unable or unwilling to issue a public statement unilaterally endorsing the Quartet demands, it has, in varying degrees, offered to meet those conditions in practice over time, including, for example, a unilateral cessation of violence. The Quartet's position is not unlike the unilateral conditions once placed upon the PLO, which, in hindsight, arguably set back the search for a two state solution, first accepted by Palestinians in 1974, by decades.

 Second, the decision to cut political and financial ties belies any claim by the Quartet that it is an honest broker in the search for peace. All parties, not just the PA, should be required to end violence, recognize the right to self-determination, and respect the rule of law, including existing agreements. While the US, EU, Canada and Norway attempt to ensure that the new Palestinian government respects certain principles, they have decided to abstain from using similar economic measures to ensure that the government of Israel ends the occupation and its related practices, including settlement expansion, land confiscation, house demolition and the construction of the Wall. Nevertheless, despite the inherent imbalance of this approach (not to mention ethical questions raised by the humanitarian consequences in the OPTs), the international community has, in effect, endorsed the principle that economic leverage is a legitimate tool in the search for a durable solution to the conflict.

 * Terry Rempel is a PhD Candidate and Research Fellow at the School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies, University of Exeter (UK). He is a former Senior Researcher and Coordinator of Research and Information at BADIL.

 Endnotes

(1) The term 'humanitarianism' has not been defined in international law. “It’s extendibility,” observes international law professor B.S. Chimni, “[thus] facilitates ambiguous and manipulative uses and allows the practices thus justified to escape critique through shifting the ground of justification from legal rules to the logic of situations.” B.S. Chimni, “Globalization, Humanitarianism, and the Erosion of Refugee Protection,” 13 Journal of Refugee Studies 3 (September 2000), p. 244.

(2) Quoted in Gideon Levy, “As the Hamas Team Laughs,” Ha’Aretz, 19 February 2006. Also see Israeli journalist and military analyst Ze'ev Schiff stating that “Israel must exhibit unflinching determination when it comes to existential affairs even if the harm done to Palestinians runs deep.” Ze’ev Schiff, “Does Israel Have a Strategy?” Ha’Aretz, 10 February 2006.

(3) David Makovsky, Michael Herzog and Elizabeth Young, “Where to draw the lines on international assistance to Palestinians?”, PolicyWatch No. 1083, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1 March 2006.

(4) Ori Nir, “Israel Drops Bid to Curb Palestinian Refugee Body,” The Forward, 24 March 2006.

(5) Arlene Kushner, UNRWA, A Hard Look at an Agency in Trouble. Brookline, MA: Center for Near East Policy Research, September 2005, p. 20. For similar views see reports cited infra note 11.

(6) This includes Eric Cantor (Chair of the Congressional Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare), Tom Lantos (House Committee on International Relations), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia), Joe Knollenberg (House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations), and Eliot Engel (House Committee on International Relations). Ros-Lehtinen, Lantos and Cantor were among the top ten recipients of pro-Israel PAC money in the 2004 congressional election cycle. Engel and Lantos are among the top ten career recipients. See, http://www.washington-report.org/archives/July_Aug_2004/0407027.html.

(7) See, Nile Gardiner and James Phillips, Congress Should Withhold Funds from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA), WebMemo #097, Heritage Foundation, 6 February 2006; and, David Frum, “Why are we subsidizing Palestinian extremism?” National Post, 14 March 2006. Frum is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

(8) Cited in Nur Masalha, The Politics of Denial, Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. London: Pluto Press, 2003, p. 69.

(9) General Accounting Office, Department of State and United Nations Relief and Works Agency Actions to Implement Article 301(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. GAO-04-276R, 6 November 2003.

(10) This includes, among many others, factual errors in comparing UNRWA to UNHCR, misinterpretation of international refugee law concerning the status of Palestinian refugees under the 1951 Convention relating the Status of Refugees, selective use of UNHCR statistics to suggest that the primary solution in principle and practice is resettlement, using unrelated evidence about the lack of durable solutions for Palestinian refugees to substantiate claims that UNRWA has failed in its mandate (i.e. the Agency does not have a mandate to seek durable solutions for Palestinian refugees), and, using unrelated evidence about refugee registration for assistance (e.g., registration by village of origin) to claim that UNRWA promotes the right of return. See the following reports: Avi Beker, UNRWA, Terror and the Refugee Conundrum – Perpetuating the Misery. Jerusalem: Institute of the World Jewish Congres, 2003; Arlene Kushner, Inside UNRWA: Special Investigative Report, March 2003, Supplemental Report: A Rigorous Review of UNRWA Practices, June 2004, UNRWA: Links to Terror, October 2004, and UNRWA: A Hard Look at an Agency in Trouble, September 2005, all published by the Center for Near East Policy Research; Emmanuel Marx and Nitza Nachmias, “Dilemmas of Prolonged Humanitarian Aid Operations: The Case of UNRWA (The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees),” Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, June 2004; and, Maxine Kaye and Zev Nagel, A Diminished World Body, An Overview of the UN and Israel. New York: American Jewish Committee, February 2006.

(11) Quoted in a Reuters report reprinted in Ha'aretz, “Israel asks UNRWA to expand its humanitarian program,” 1 April 2006. International consensus holds Israel responsible for the welfare of the civilian population in the 1967 OPTs. UNRWA provides a convenient venue to redirect donor aid and allows Israel to avoid assuming fiscal responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

(12) Nidal al-Mughrabi, “UN agency says won't scale back Hamas gov't contacts,” Reuters, 12 April 2006. For a detailed assessment see, United Nations, Assessment of the future humanitarian risks in the occupied Palestinian territories, 11 April 2006.

(13) Akiva Eldar, “UN aid workers: Gaza on verge of disaster,” Ha'aretz, 4 April 2006.

(14) United Nations News Service, “UN agency paints grim health scenario of possible cut-off of funds to Palestinians,” 7 April 2006.

(15) The World Bank Group, West Bank and Gaza Update, April 2006, p. 6.

(16) Medicins Sans Frontieres, “MSF refuses to be 'social palliative' of EU & US policies,” 13 April 2006.

(17) “ICRC concerned over deteriorating situation,” International Committee of the Red Cross, 10 April 2006.

(18) Adam Entous, “Israel warms to UN body it long scorned,” Reuters, 31 March 2006.

(19) Supra note 13. Also see Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace Alvaro de Soto stating to the UN Security Council that “More activity by the Organization [UN] and by non-governmental organizations could not, however, replace the services now provided by the Palestinian Authority, to which many major donors would no longer transfer financial assistance, and which provided the bulk of irreplaceable funding.” UN Doc. SC/8697, 24 April 2006.

(20) This includes a requirement that USAID recipients sign an “Anti-terrorism Certification.” For a discussion of NGO concerns and USAID responses see, e.g., “Minutes, Joint NGO/Donor Workshop and Discussion Session,” Ramallah, 22 September 2004, available at, http://www.pngo.net/activities/Minutes_donors_meeting_22_09_04_final.pdf.

(21) Supra note 13. The Agency has received barely 10 per cent of the $150 million needed for projects, such as building schools to address longstanding problems such as overcrowding.

(22) As this article was going to print the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Rep. Tom Lantos, ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee, and Rep. Mark Kirk, a member of the House appropriations subcommittee, had submitted a bill that would require the American president to subject UNRWA to comprehensive, independent audits and certify that the Agency "does not knowingly provide employment, refuge, assistance or support of any kind to members of foreign terrorist organizations." The press report also quotes UNRWA stating that the Agency is already undergoing an independent audit by the Government of South Africa. “UNRWA Bill Introduced in House,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 4 May 2006.

(23) This includes: the Division for Palestinian Rights, the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the Special Committee Investigating Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People, the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories since 1967, and the NGO Network on Palestine. What is really on the table is a dissolution of the question of Palestine. The UN Reform Act was adopted by the House of Representatives in 2005. Other reforms include greater financial transparency, in dependent oversight and the creation of a new human rights body. President Bush and the Senate, however, opposed measures stipulating an automatic cutoff in US dues in 2008 if the UN failed to implement reforms set out in the bill. Under a revised bill the final decision to cut funding lies with the US Secretary of State.

(24) See, Thalif Deen, “Moves to shrink Palestinian programmes spurs protest,” Inter Press News Service Agency, 30 November 2005.

(25) Supra note 12, p. 1.

(26) Despite repeated affirmation of a commitment to a two-state solution donors are cutting assistance programs that are part and parcel of building a Palestinian state. These include infrastructure projects; private enterprise development, financial market reform, and trade programs; electoral, political party, local government and legislative support programs; and rule of law and judicial programs. United States Department of State, “Factsheet: Palestinian assistance – Humanitarian assistance and democracy building,” 7 April 2006.