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UNRWA

UNRWA Vows To Help Palestinians Despite Israeli Ban, Deadly Attacks

February 22, 2025 Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. , , , ,
Palestinian Territories — Israel has banned the United Nations agency mandated to support Palestinian refugees and designated it a terrorist organization. The United Nations UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has vowed to continue its humanitarian work until unable to do so, despite the ban and having at least 258 staff members killed by Israel and over 650 attacks on their buildings. In October 2024, Israel passed legislation banning UNRWA. The new law went into effect on January 30, 2025, and prohibits UNRWA from operating in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

UNRWA ‘Preparing To Close Its Doors’ In Gaza, West Bank

January 3, 2025 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , , ,
UN officials who spoke with the New York Times (NYT) say that the leading agency providing humanitarian aid for Palestinians is “preparing” to end its operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. “It would be a massive impact on an already catastrophic situation. If that is what the Israeli intention is – to remove any ability for us to save lives – you have to question what is the thinking and what is the end goal?” UN resident and humanitarian coordinator Jamie McGoldrick told the NYT on 2 January. UNRWA is a critical provider of staple necessities and essential services, relied on by thousands of Palestinians for their livelihood and basic needs.

US-Funded Group Removes Report Warning Of Famine In North Gaza

December 28, 2024 Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com. , , , , , ,
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has removed a report from its website that warned it was “highly likely” famine is occurring in northern Gaza after a complaint by the US ambassador to Israel. The report noted that Israel has imposed a “near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies” on the North Gaza Governorate, which includes the cities of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia. The report said 65,000 to 75,000 civilians remained in the area, “including civilians who have been unable to or prevented from evacuating.”

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 220: Resistance Returns To The North

May 14, 2024 Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry announced that the remaining hospitals in the Gaza Strip received 130 Palestinians who were killed in Israeli strikes since Thursday, May 9, while 241 others arrived wounded. Meanwhile, local media sources reported that in the past 24 hours, Israeli forces continued a renewed offensive on the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City’s south for the fifth day in a row. Israeli incursions were accompanied by intense airstrikes on the Zeitoun, Sabra, and Shuja’iyya neighborhoods, as well as on the Jabalia refugee camp, where Israeli forces have also entered by ground.

War On Gaza: ICJ Allows Nicaragua Case Against Germany To Proceed

April 30, 2024 Middle East Eye. , , , , , , ,
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has rejected a German request to throw out the Nicaraguan case accusing it of facilitating Israel's genocide in Gaza, allowing the case to proceed. Presiding Judge Nawaf Salam, who delivered the world court’s decision on Tuesday, said that the ICJ remains “deeply concerned about the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”. However, the court ruled by 15 to one against issuing any emergency measures against Germany over its arms exports to Israel, arguing that the current circumstances did not require them.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 171: ‘Horrific’ Eyewitness Accounts

March 25, 2024 Leila Warah, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , ,
The Israeli military has imposed ongoing sieges on at least three medical facilities in the besieged enclave, terrorizing, injuring, and killing thousands of civilians in the process.  Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza has entered its seventh day under siege, and the civilians able to flee are reporting ruthless massacres in and around the medical complex.  A teenage Palestinian boy, Farouk Mohammed Hamd, told Al Jazeera he witnessed Israeli soldiers executing a group of eight people, including his father and brother, inside al-Shifa Hospital.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 151: Israel ‘Campaigns’ To End UNRWA

March 6, 2024 Mustafa Abu Sneineh, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
Israeli forces shot at Palestinians in north Gaza as they waited for aid trucks to arrive, killing and injuring several people. Such an incident has been repeated a few times since last week when Israel killed more than 100 Palestinians seeking food and water, in what is now known as the “flour massacre.” Al-Jazeera’s correspondent, Anas al-Sharif, was with the Palestinian crowd on Monday night, waiting in the dark and running in a destroyed, dusty road behind international aid trucks. However, when vehicles arrived at north Gaza’s Kuwaiti roundabout, Palestinians were scattered, running in different directions, fleeing Israeli bullets.

International Coalition To Stop Genocide In Palestine Denounces Starvation As Genocide

February 29, 2024 the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine, Popular Resistance. , , , , ,
The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine (ICGSP) encourages social movements worldwide to take urgent action to stop the intentional starvation of people in the Gaza Strip and to participate in upcoming global days of action in March aimed at raising awareness of and pressuring governments to stop the famine. In January of this year, the World Court ordered the state of Israel to cease all activities consistent with genocide. This includes actions that would threaten the well-being of Palestinians, such as the withholding of basic necessities: food, water, medicines and fuel, to name a few. 

UNRWA Will Face ‘Negative Cashflow’ If US-Led Blockade Continues

February 16, 2024 News Desk,  The Cradle. , , ,
The severe funding crisis facing the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), thanks to US-led cuts, is expected to worsen significantly in the coming months.  UNRWA Chief Philippe Lazzarini asked the countries that recently suspended financial support for UNRWA to "urgently rescind that decision"  during a news conference in Ireland on 15 February. "Our operation will start to be compromised as from March, but April will be really the month where we will be under deep, deep, deep negative cashflow," Lazzarini said, emphasizing that the agency is facing an “existential threat.” His comments come after Ireland pledged €20 million to the UN agency and urged others who cut their funding to resume support for UNRWA.

Let Them Eat Dirt

February 9, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire. Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation. When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed. Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

International Coalition To Stop Genocide In Palestine Demands Full Funding Of UNRWA

February 5, 2024 the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine, Popular Resistance. , , , , , , , ,
On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released its ruling in the case of South Africa v. Israel in which the court found there was sufficient evidence to support South Africa’s allegations of genocide against the Palestinian people (see our previous press release for more details) and rejected Israel’s claim to be acting in ‘self-defense’. The World Court ordered the state of Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of” acts of genocide, including deaths, harm to mental and physical health and conditions that threaten the well-being of the Palestinian people, in effect, an order for a ceasefire.

US Admits It Hasn’t Verified Israel’s UNRWA Claims, Media Ignores It

February 4, 2024 Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
In the latest demonstration of the boundless cruelty of U.S. President Joe Biden and his despicable administration, they have turned the backbone of what little aid Palestinians in Gaza receive into a political football, to be toyed with and batted around while jeopardizing that support for people who are already near the edge of what any human, however brave, can possibly endure. It’s the latest in what feels like an eternal cycle of the United States and Israel beating up on the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for political gain. There have been many hearings on Capitol Hill over the years bashing UNRWA and calling for either a complete structural overhaul of the agency or its dismantlement and absorption into the larger United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

The Silence Of The Damned

February 1, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , , ,
There is no effective health care system left in Gaza. Infants are dying. Children are having their limbs amputated without anesthesia. Thousands of cancer patients and those in need of dialysis lack treatment. The last cancer hospital in Gaza has ceased functioning. An estimated 50,000 pregnant women have no safe place to give birth. They undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia. Miscarriage rates are up 300 percent since the Israeli assault began. The wounded bleed to death. There is no sanitation or clean water. Hospitals have been bombed and shelled. Nasser Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, is “near collapse.”

The ICJ Ordered Israel Not To Engage In Genocide; What Happens Now?

January 31, 2024 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , , , , ,
What comes next, now that the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, has handed down its near unanimous ruling that South Africa presented a “plausible” case that Israel was violating the Genocide Convention? The January 26 provisional ruling – which was a landmark victory for the Palestinian people, and indeed, for international law itself — now goes to the United Nations Security Council for enforcement. It would be within the Security Council’s purview to order economic or trade sanctions, arms embargoes, travel bans or even military force. But in the likely event that the United States vetoes enforcement measures from the Security Council, the UN General Assembly can still act independently in materially significant ways.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 113: US And Allies Withdraw Funding To UNRWA

January 28, 2024 Palestine Bureau, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on Friday — which found that there was plausible evidence of Israel committing genocidal acts in Gaza and ordered that Israel show proof within a month that it was reversing course on its indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Gaza and obstruction of humanitarian aid, but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire — has sparked reactions from Israel, Palestine, and across the world. Some of the Israeli press framed the decision not to order an immediate ceasefire as a “win” and the “best Israel could hope for.” Others interpreted it as a “warning shot” that could further isolate the Israeli government and its closest ally, the United States, on the international stage.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here