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Detroit/Seattle Workers’ Voice mailing list
Jan. 25, 2025

Ceasefire deal promises aid
but Israel is set on banning UNRWA

by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers’ Voice

The first phase of a Gaza ceasefire has begun. No one really knows if it will last; the last ceasefire did not. The ceasefire also promises aid to relieve the current hunger and rebuild Gaza. But at the same time, two Israeli laws, passed last October, are set to ban UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and works Agency) in the coming week, UNRWA being the UN agency that has provided the bulk of aid to Gaza. One law labels UNRWA as a “terrorist” group, while the other bans UNRWA from doing anything in the territory of Israel proper and also in East Jerusalem.

The Israeli government has been pummeling the people of Gaza for the past fifteen months, during which time it has waged war against the access of Gazans to food, water and aid of any kind. It has killed over 250 UNRWA workers, and even those of other aid agencies, such as when it attacked a World Central Kitchen convoy, killing seven aid workers.

UNRWA was established in 1949 as a way for leadership of the UN to pretend to take responsibility for the mess it had made of Palestine. It was to provide aid to refugees, originally both Jewish and Palestinians; shield Israel from having to pay for this; and help smooth the consolidation of the Israeli state. Over the decades UNRWA has taken on all kinds of responsibilities such as providing schools, sewage disposal and garbage collection to six million Palestinians living in refugee camps. (1) As the Palestinian refugges aren’t allowed much of an economy, UNRWA grew larger, employing 30,000 people, mainly Palestinians.

As a result of the new Israeli laws and also various countries cutting funds to it, UNRWA has announced it is suspending its activities in Gaza and the West Bank as of February. This will mean cutting off the main source of food, water and medicine to millions of people. To avoid catastrophe, there is talk of setting up a new system of private charities that will take over the responsibilities of UNRWA and that Israeli officials will be willing to coordinate with. As a surrealistic alternative, some Israeli legislators suggest having their military take over all aid operations. (2)

While Biden was in office, his administration discounted the reality of famine and the extent of Israeli blockade of aid. And at the end of his term, he notified Congress of one last sale of $8 billion worth of bombs, missiles and other ammunition to Israel. As one reporter correctly stated, “Biden unblinkingly armed and supported Israel right up to the last day of his administration. No amount of domestic or international criticism or pressure resulted in even a minor divergence from this policy.” (3)

Trump has boasted that he has even more support for Israeli actions than Biden. His support for the ceasefire is simply for the purpose of paving the way for a deal between Israel and various Arab countries that would isolate the Palestinians even more. It would be a continuation of the “Abraham Accords” signed under Trump in 2020. There definitely hasn’t been any protest by him against the banning of UNRWA.

Notes

(1.) Jack Nicas, reporting from Jerusalem and from the Qalandiya refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “Israeli Threat to Banish Aid Agency Looms Over Gaza: The U.N. agency known as UNRWA has been the backbone of aid to Gaza. Now, Israel is moving to ban it over accusations that it shielded Hamas militants.” New York Times, January 2, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/worl ... hreat.html.

(2.) Haaretz staff, with reporting from Linda Dayan, Amir Tibon and Jack Khoury. “Report: UN Preparing to Shutter UNRWA Operations in Gaza, West Bank”. Haaretz, January 3, 2025, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/202 ... 8dffb00000.

(3.) Michael Arria, “Biden administration plans one last 8 billion arms sale to Israel: With less than two weeks left in his administration, the Biden White House has notified Congress of a new8 billion arms deal with Israel. The sale comes as multiple human rights organizations report Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.” Mondoweiss/ January 6, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/01/biden-ad ... to-israel/. <>

Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice mailing list
July 5, 2025
Re: What happens when you go to an aid center in Gaza

Israel uses food as a weapon of war

by Eric T. Gordon, Seattle Workers’ Voice

For over a year, as part of their genocide against the Palestinians, Israel has been using starvation as a tool of their war on Gaza, blockading nearly all food from entering Gaza. And now, in the current arrangement for food distribution, the Israeli military, the IDF, is massacring starving Palestinians at these food distribution sites, almost daily.

The sordid history leading up to this point is instructive: Israel repeatedly deliberately bombed food and other aid distribution convoys, and then they kicked UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) out of Gaza leaving Palestinians with no access to food. Then, in response to international pressure, the Biden Administration put together a poorly thought out plan to build a temporary pier on Gaza's waterfront. This took longer to plan and build than it was operational – only 2 months [1], during which a total of a little less than 650 truckloads of food were brought in – just about the amount of food that the Palestinians needed every day to prevent starvation. And of that pitiful amount of food, there are reports that the vast majority was never distributed [2]. After they gave up on this scheme – better for PR than actual aid distribution – again international pressure forced the US and Israel to come up with another “solution” to the problem of Israel's causing: in February 2025 they created the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an aid agency with no experience distributing aid [3].

But the GHF effort is no benign aid effort. First, it distributes food at only three sites in all of Gaza, furthering Israel's aim of herding the Palestinians where they want them to be. But far worse, massacres by the IDF and its allies at food distribution sites are a near-daily event, most recently as part of multiple massacres in the last couple of days with over 300 Palestinians killed near a GHF site [4]. Now some estimate as many as 650 Gazans have been killed and roughly 4000 wounded by IDF soldiers in GHF food distribution lines between the end of May and the present [5]. At these events, Palestinians have described being shot at from all sides, being targeted by heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, snipers, drones, helicopters and tanks [6], being forced to leave the wounded where they lie due to the heavy gunfire, of being shot at while fleeing, and they've described IDF soldiers dealing with food distribution chaos – due at best to GHF's inexperience in distribution, and perhaps intentionally caused – by firing tear gas at crowds and by closing sites [7]. No wonder these are being called death traps instead of aid sites.

The IDF and GHF, for their part deny any violence at all has happened – although they have also said they had to close down distribution sites because of “chaos”, they investigate themselves, they release unverifiable videos of people calmly standing around boxes to “prove” nothing happened, they claim all reports are Hamas rumors, they claim they only fired “warning shots” at approaching “suspects” in a “combat zone”, and on and on. But now, soldiers and officers have been coming forward confirming what has been happening, and saying they were ordered to fire on these unarmed people lining up for food [8].

Notes

[1] With closures due to weather and damage the pier was in actual operation for 20 days over that 2 months.

[2] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/human ... pier-gaza/.

[3] Israel gave the excuse that they needed to control aid distribution to combat the diversion of aid by Hamas, though no one has ever given evidence of substantial aid being diverted.

[4] An account of multiple massacres over the recent 48 hours, with one being at a GHF distribution site: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/3 ... in-balance.

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Gaz ... n_killings and their footnotes for one compiled list of the killings, and for the most recent major massacre see https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog ... re-wounded. This article is also the source of one summation of the number. Different sources give somewhat different numbers, but they are all in this range.

[6] https://www.jta.org/2025/06/27/israel/r ... eeking-aid and https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c753e0p29z0o.

[7] It is certainly possible to distribute food to starving people without chaos; for example under UNWRA distribution, there very few no reports of deaths or disorder at the distribution sites.

[8] Multiple sources are reporting this, e.g. https://www.jta.org/2025/06/27/israel/r ... eeking-aid. <>

Picture: The Jewish Telegraphy Agency on the report in the daily Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which is printed in Hebrew and English, that Israeli soldiers say they are ordered to shoot at unarmed Gazans seeking aid. https://www.jta.org/2025/06/27/israel/r ... eeking-aid .

Over one thousand people now killed by the IDF as they seek aid: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/2 ... 510vd2LbsA