Guterres has repeatedly condemned the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza and called for a ceasefire. Several resolutions were passed but to no avail as the US vetoed most of them saying 'the resolution fails to condemn Hamas.' Furthermore, Guterres also highlighted how the flow of aid to Gaza cannot be guaranteed even for a month without assistance from the US and its allies. Former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunnes criticized Arab countries for not investing more funds on the organization to facilitate aid transfers to Gaza, which would ultimately help reduce dependence on Western powers.
Gaines argued that Arab countries earn billions from oil revenues and that a small portion of this income is enough to alleviate UNRWA's financial problems. As it stands, Saudi Arabia is the seventh largest donor to UNRWA while Turkey is two places below it. With the West's withdrawal, the reins of this effort to help the besieged Palestinian people may now rest on Norway as well as Saudi and Turkey. Arab countries Egypt and Jordan have refused to take in any Palestinian refugees, nor do they provide any significant funding to UNRWA.
Gunness referred to a certain comment by Israeli officials in a recent interview with Al Jazeera that Israel would be unable to win the war in Gaza unless UNRWA was dissolved. So are these allegations made by Israel against UNRWA part of a larger plan to impose sanctions on UNRWA? Is this to reduce some of the pressure we are facing from the ICJ and much of the international community on the genocide charges? Or does it further reinforce the fears that many have expressed about Israel using starvation as a tool to subjugate the population in Gaza? Either way, one thing is certain, if major donors to UNRWA were to freeze their funding indefinitely it would only worsen the suffering of the Palestinian people in this tragedy.
* Chaudhry Taoheed Al-Rabbi is a writer and student of BUP