I was born in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza in the late 1980s. My mother told me that when I was born, the refugee camp was under an Israeli curfew, so she had to navigate her way out of the camp to travel ten miles away to Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, which has been raided, attacked, and burned by Israeli forces many times over the decades.
I was born a refugee, a status that has haunted me for my entire life. Like 70 percent of people in Gaza, my family members are refugees in their own country. From first through ninth grade, I attended schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was established in December 1949 to provide services for the massive influx of Palestinians who were violently displaced from their towns and villages during the establishment of Israel, known as the Nakba, in 1948.
UNRWA is the backbone of aid operations in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes and attacks have already decimated healthcare, education, food access, clean water, energy and shelter. But Israel is now waging a war on UNRWA due to its role in preserving the rights of Palestinian refugees. In just over a year, Israel destroyed 90 percent of UNRWA schools and killed more than 230 UNRWA employees.
In late October, the Israeli Knesset voted to classify UNRWA “a terrorist organization”—a vote supported by both rightwing and leftwing Israeli political parties. The legislation prohibits the agency from operating or providing services in any territory controlled by Israel. The vote came after Israel banned United Nations Secretary General António Guterres from entering the country. In early October of this year, Israel also confiscated UNRWA’s headquarters in Jerusalem, declaring that hundreds of new settler units will be built on that land instead.
As a child, the blue and white colors of UNRWA’s buildings were a constant part of my memory. I remember lining up with my father to receive UNRWA aid at an aid center. The support given to my family included flour, cooking oil, beans, lentils, dry milk, fish cans, blankets, and a small amount of money. My family received aid once every three months, and it sustained our basic needs. My family also had access to free primary healthcare and education through UNRWA. I was able to receive an education at UNRWA schools, where I studied Arabic, English, math, science, religion, geography, sports, and arts. The school was fairly well maintained, but from time to time, we would have a broken window. I remember shivering from the cold inside one of my classrooms which had no heat.
UNRWA employs many Palestinians as teachers, health workers, sanitation workers, technicians, and administrators, meaning that in most families in Gaza, someone is or was employed by the agency. My Aunt Ghalia worked as UNRWA teacher from 1967 until her retirement in 2008. Aunt Ghalia was herself a refugee of the Nakba—in 1948, when she was only one month old, her mother had to carry her all the way from the outskirts of Ramleh to Gaza by foot. Thanks to an UNRWA education, my aunt was able to become a teacher and provide for her own family.
Aunt Ghalia was known to be strict with rules and homework; families would compete to send their kids to her class because they knew that their children would receive a good education under her guidance. When I was young, she would take me with her to the school from time to time. Spending time with her, and noticing the way the surrounding teachers and students treated me, made me realize how well-respected she was in the community. After retiring in April 2008, she chose to continue teaching her class for two more months, until the end of the school year. She would not leave her job half-finished.
My sister Zainab also worked for UNRWA. She lost her life in June 2007 at the age of twenty-six when Israel denied her a permit to have a life-saving surgery in the West Bank. The surgery she needed was not available in Gaza due to the Israeli siege and the collapse of the health system.
Earlier this month, while reading news from Gaza, I came across a photo of my former classmate Saa’ed, who had been killed by an Israeli airstrike. Saa’ed’s uncle, Fuad, was a great poet and our Arabic teacher who worked for UNRWA for decades. He explained Arabic to us in a way no other teacher did. Saa’ed was smart, too: In high school, his GPA was 98 percent. We lost touch when he went to study engineering. I remember him being very good at math, a subject I barely liked. His life, like the lives of many students I went to school with, was cut short—ironically at an UNRWA school, where he was sheltering during the genocide.
Over the course of my life, I’ve had a lot of frustrations with UNRWA. I felt frustrated when the agency didn’t step in to pressure Israel to get my sister a permit to have the surgery in the West Bank. I felt disappointed when high-ranking UNRWA officials collected their luggage and left at the end of each Israeli escalation. I got angry each time I heard of corruption cases or high salaries paid to “international experts” working for the agency.
But my occasional frustration with UNRWA never changed my firm commitment to the agency and its crucial role in providing basic services to registered Palestinian refugees. I am forever grateful for the education UNRWA gave me and my siblings, which later allowed us to continue our higher education. The agency is the largest and last standing symbol of the fact that seventy-six years after the Nakba, the issue of Palestinian refugees is still unresolved. Israel wants to remove the agency because it is a reminder that there are millions of Palestinian refugees that must be allowed to return home.
Efforts to eliminate UNRWA are illegal under international law and will only amplify the genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza. The Israeli government is not only deliberately obstructing and targeting humanitarian and medical aid to Palestinians who are starving and dying—it is trying to destroy the international legal framework protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees.
If the world has any respect for international law and the role of the United Nations, Israel’s move against UNRWA should be challenged. The failure to do so undermines the legitimacy of the U.N. system and global commitments to the U.N. Charter, opening the door for other states around the world to disregard these guardrails and international rules without repercussions. All states, bodies, organizations, and individuals that support the rights of Palestinian refugees—and the U.N. system itself—should pressure Israel to end its destructive policies against the U.N. agency and against all Palestinian refugees.