Electronic Intifada – February 4, 2024
Funding freeze could halt UNRWA operations by end of month in Gaza
by Maureen Clare Murphy
UNRWA will be forced to shut down its operations as soon as the end of the month if funding is not restored, according to agency director Philippe Lazzarini.
Donor countries including the US, the agency’s largest funder, suspended $440 million worth of aid after Israel made unverified allegations that a handful of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza were involved in the 7 October attacks led by Hamas.
Martin Griffiths, the UN’s relief chief, told the Security Council on Wednesday that the world body’s humanitarian response in the West Bank and Gaza “is dependent on UNRWA being adequately funded and operational” and called for “decisions to withhold funds” to be revoked.
Three Palestinian human rights groups – Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – condemned the freezing of funding to UNRWA, saying this week that it “amounts to an act of collective punishment against 5.9 million Palestinian refugees registered” with the agency.
Josep Borrell, the European Union foreign chief, also argued against what he described as “collective punishment” of the Palestinian people. He said that the collapse of the agency would cause “hundreds of thousands of people” to perish.
Petra De Sutter, the deputy prime minister of Belgium, this week described UNRWA as “irreplaceable in providing urgent and crucial humanitarian relief within Gaza.” One day before she made that comment, Israel bombed the Gaza offices of Belgium’s aid agency.
The Palestinian human rights groups warned that the suspension of funds, “leading to the halt of humanitarian aid in Gaza, could constitute complicity in genocide.” This is particularly so in the case of the US and Germany, two of UNRWA’s primary donors.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention said that the decision to suspend funding “represents a shift by several countries from potential complicity in genocide to direct involvement in engineered famine.”
The institute added that “it is an attack on what remains of personal security, liberty, health and dignity in Palestine.”
The UN agency for Palestine refugees is the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, where the vast majority of the population depend on it “for their sheer survival,” UNRWA said on Thursday.
The first UN agency ever established, UNRWA provides government-like services to some six million Palestinian refugees in the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million are refugees registered with UNRWA. More than 150 UNRWA staff are among the some 27,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October and more than 140 of the agency’s facilities have been damaged or destroyed, including its Gaza City headquarters.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are staying at UNRWA facilities throughout Gaza. More than 350 displaced individuals have been killed and 1,255 injured in strikes on those UN facilities.
“Malevolent motive”
The agency, which relies on voluntary funding from UN member states, has seen decreased contributions in recent years while needs for its services have only grown. The UN secretary-general warned last summer that UNRWA was “on the verge of financial collapse.”
The three Palestinian human rights groups say that the timing of Israel’s allegations against UNRWA “suggests a malevolent motive” following the interim ruling by the International Court of Justice at The Hague finding that Israel is plausibly committing a genocide in Gaza.
One of several provisional measures issued by the court requires Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.”
The human rights groups said that the conveniently timed allegations “amount to reprisals against UNRWA, whose statements are referenced with support in the authoritative ICJ ruling against Israel.”
There is a past pattern of such behavior: Israel routinely bars entry to UN officials and other human rights investigators and refused to renew a visa for Lynn Hastings, the former top UN humanitarian aid official for the West Bank and Gaza.
The state apparently refused to allow entry to Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, during his five-day visit to the region in early November last year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told UN ambassadors during a meeting in Jerusalem this week that UNRWA was “totally infiltrated” by Hamas and must be replaced.
“I say this with great regret because we hoped that there would be an objective and constructive body to offer aid,” Netanyahu told diplomats. “We need such a body today in Gaza, but UNRWA is not that body.”
Netanyahu also complained about UN scrutiny of Israel’s actions, repeated debunked atrocity claims and said that his country was “fighting the war of civilization against barbarism.”
Netanyahu singled out UNRWA for bringing forward information cited by South Africa in its genocide complaint against Israel at The Hague.
Other Israeli officials are less eager than Netanyahu to see the immediate collapse of UNRWA.
An unnamed senior official told The Times of Israel that “if UNRWA ceases operating on the ground, this could cause a humanitarian catastrophe that would force Israel to halt its fighting against Hamas.”
A humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has been underway for months after Israel cut the supply of electricity, fuel, water, food and medical supplies at the outset of its counteroffensive.
Some of those life essentials have been restored to Gaza, but at a level that falls far short of meeting the population’s basic needs as Israeli restrictions and military operations prevent commercial activity and the delivery of aid at scale.
Palestinians in Gaza are facing mass starvation on a pace and scope not seen since World War II and eating grass and drinking polluted water to survive the famine conditions imposed by Israel.
Christian Lindmeier, spokesperson for the World Health Organization, said that the allegations against UNRWA staff are “a distraction from what is really going on every day, every hour, every minute in Gaza.”
“It is a distraction from preventing an entire population from access to clean water, food, shelter,” he added. “It is a distraction from preventing electricity from coming into Gaza for more than 100 days.”
Right of return
Netanyahyu’s claim of regret is belied by Israel’s decades-long campaign to shut down UNRWA.
The three Palestinian human rights groups said that Israel’s desire to destroy the agency is “driven by the core issue embedded in UNRWA’s mandate: the implementation of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III).”
That resolution was approved by the UN General Assembly in December 1948 following the forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland by pre-state Zionist militias and the Israeli military.
“Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date,” the UN resolution states. It adds that refugees who choose not to return should be compensated for loss of or damage to their property.
Israel has denied Palestinians from exercising their right to return to lands it now occupies because doing so “would alter the demographic character of Israel to the point of eliminating it as a Jewish state,” as the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia stated in a 2017 report.
“Our organizations stress that UNRWA must be preserved as an institution to protect the rights of Palestinians,” the three aforementioned human rights groups said.
Palestinian refugees are “still systematically denied their inalienable right of return and left for generations to live in refugee camps, denied their freedom of movement and basic human rights,” the groups added.
The Palestinian rights groups note that the countries that have suspended support for UNRWA – which in addition to the US include Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Japan, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania – have disregarded their appeals to stop arming Israel.
The UK’s Sky News reported this week that it had seen Israel’s intelligence documents that purportedly support its claims that UNRWA staff are connected to Hamas.
Sky News said that the dossier, which has been shared with foreign governments but not UN authorities, alleges that six UNRWA employees “infiltrated” Israel from Gaza on 7 October. Four of those six employees “were allegedly involved in kidnapping Israelis, while another worker is said to have provided ‘logistics support,’” according to Sky News.
Initial reports last week stated that Israel claimed that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the 7 October attacks.
Sky News added that Israel’s dossier claims that 10 percent of UNRWA’s 12,000 employees in Gaza are operatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian faction engaged in armed resistance. The dossier also claims that around half of UNRWA’s Gaza staff are “first-degree relatives with a Hamas operative.”
Israel’s dossier apparently attempts to paint UNRWA’s coordination with local authorities as a form of subordination to Hamas, the de facto rulers of Gaza’s internal affairs since 2007.
“The Israeli intelligence documents make several claims that Sky News has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA,” the outlet stated.
Dodgy dossiers
The UNRWA dossier as reported by Sky News appears to be similar to past documents produced by Israel and its proxies attempting to link Palestinian nongovernmental organizations to resistance groups in an effort to starve them of their European funding.
European states said that they werenﾒt convinced by a secret dossier provided by Israel to prove its claims against several prominent Palestinian civil society groups that were declared as “terrorist organizations” in 2021.
The basis of the dossier are the testimonies of two men who were fired from one organization for suspected financial misconduct.
The lawyer for one of the men alleges that he may have been subjected to ill-treatment or torture during his interrogation.
The two men were shown in the secret dossier, the contents of which were revealed byﾠ+972 Magazine, to lack familiarity with the other Palestinian organizations that their testimony was used against.
Statements by Israeli officials suggest that the current allegations against UNRWA employees may be based on information extracted from detainees, giving rise to concerns of torture and ill-treatment.
Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada.
Iraq says 16 people, including civilians, killed in ‘new US aggression’
In response, Iran-aligned groups say they have attacked US bases in Syria as well as western and northern Iraq.
By Al Jazeera Staff
At least 16 people have been killed in US strikes in Iraq, the government said, as it condemned the “new aggression against” its sovereignty and warned of dire consequences in the region.
Civilians were among those killed and 25 people were wounded in the bombings that targeted both civilian and security areas, a government spokesperson said on Saturday.
The United States warned of more retaliatory attacks after it hit Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria overnight in response to an attack that killed American soldiers in Jordan amid Israel’s war on Gaza.
“This aggressive strike will put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of the abyss,” the Iraqi government said, and denied Washington’s claims of coordinating the air attacks with Baghdad as “false” and “aimed at misleading international public opinion”.
The presence of the US-led military coalition in the region “has become a reason for threatening security and stability in Iraq and a justification for involving Iraq in regional and international conflicts”, read the statement from Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s office.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsequently summoned the US charge d’affaires in Baghdad to deliver a formal protest.
The Syrian Ministry of Defence slammed the “aggression of the American occupation forces”, which it said was attempting “to weaken the ability of the Syrian Arab Army and its allies in the field of fighting terrorism”, adding that the areas targeted were the same where the military is fighting remnants of the ISIL (ISIS) armed group.
Syrian state media reported several casualties after the attacks in the country’s desert region and border areas with Iraq. The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 23 Iran-aligned fighters were killed in the Syria attacks, but it could not be independently verified.
The strikes did not take place inside Iranian territory. Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday called them “another adventurous action and another strategic error by the US government which will have no result but to intensify … instability in the region”.
US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told journalists that the goal of the “multitiered” attacks was to stop attacks by Iran-aligned groups, and not to start a war with Iran.
The Iranian ministry said tensions in the region “go back to the occupation by the Israeli regime and [its] military operations in Gaza and the genocide of the Palestinians with the unlimited support of the US”, adding that stability would only return by resolving “the root cause of the crisis”.
President Joe Biden said the strikes “will continue at times and places of our choosing” as his chief diplomat Antony Blinken is preparing to embark on his fifth regional tour since October 7 from Sunday, visiting Israel, the occupied West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it flew bombers from the US and used more than 125 precision munitions to hit more than 85 targets that included command and control operations centres, intelligence centres, weapons storage and supply chain facilities of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the armed groups backed by Tehran.
Iraqi security sources told Al Jazeera that six air strikes targeted a number of locations in the country.
No Iranians believed killed
Even though Washington said all its intended targets were supported by the Quds Force command of the IRGC, no Iranian personnel are believed to have been killed.
The US took nearly a week to act after three of its soldiers were killed in a drone attack on the Tower 22 base near the Syria-Jordan border to strike back, and continued to leak information to the media prior to the overnight raids.
The attack on the US base had been claimed by the coalition of forces known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which views US troops as “occupying forces” and has demanded an end to Israel’s deadly war on Gaza.
Iran, which, Washington suspects of supplying the weapons that hit the American soldiers in Tower 22 but not of ordering the attack, has maintained that members of the “axis of resistance” that it supports across the region act independently.
Reporting from Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed said on Saturday that the Iraqi resistance, which includes Iran-aligned groups, carried out attacks, with missiles targeting the al-Tanf military base in Syria that is home to US personnel, as well as the Ain al-Assad base in western Iraq.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which had announced the suspension of hostile operations against US troops this week, said it “attacked the American occupation’s Harir base in Erbil” in northern Iraq with an unspecified number of drones on Saturday.
It said in a statement that the attack comes in resisting “American occupation forces” in Iraq and across the region, and in standing up to Israel’s war on Gaza.
However, three security sources quoted by the Reuters news agency said there had been no attack detected on the air base hosting US forces.
Gaza ‘key’ to stopping escalations
The Biden administration’s actions triggered dissatisfied reactions from US politicians who have demanded stronger and faster attacks, including direct strikes on Iranian soil, despite concerns that such a move would lead to an all-out war.
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, accused the president of “placating” Tehran after the strikes, and said: “To promote peace, America must project strength.”
But the same US politicians are refusing to mention the Gaza war that has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, as being a key link in the chain of more than 150 attacks that have been directed at US bases in Iraq and Syria since last October.
“I’m not surprised there has been this reprisal and retaliation by the United States,” HA Hellyer, a military analyst at the UK-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Al Jazeera, adding that if the US wants to de-escalate and not go to war with Iran the key to that is Gaza.
Washington has “failed to apply any real leverage in order to bring a ceasefire to Gaza, which I think would really diminish the tensions in the region and remove the fuel for this sort of escalation taking place, which is likely to continue over the coming days and weeks and beyond”, he added.
Democracy Now – February 1, 2024
“The Houthis Are Not Iranian Proxies”:
Helen Lackner on the History & Politics of Yemen’s Ansar Allah
The U.S. continues to launch airstrikes on Yemen in response to the campaign of missile and drone attacks on commercial ships along key global trade routes through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden led by Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. The Houthi strikes have expanded from targets connected to Israel, in protest of the siege and bombing of Gaza, to ships affiliated with the U.S. and U.K. in what the group calls acts of self-defense. “The Houthis have been extremely explicit and repeat on an almost daily basis that their attacks on ships in the Red Sea will stop as soon as the Gaza war ends,” says Helen Lackner, author of several books on Yemen, who describes the history of the Houthis, the political landscape in Yemen, and debunks the idea the group is controlled by Iran. “The Iranian involvement has become greater, but it’s very important to know that the Houthis are an independent movement. The Houthis are not Iranian proxies. … They make their own decisions.”
Transcript
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The U.S. military carried out new airstrikes in Yemen today, targeting 10 drones and a ground control station that it said, quote, “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the region.” The airstrikes are the latest targeting the Houthis. The group, also known as Ansar Allah, has waged a campaign of attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since November 19th in response to Israel’s assault on Gaza.
On Tuesday, U.S. Central Command said its forces shot down an anti-ship cruise missile. According to CNN, the missile came within a mile of a U.S. destroyer before it was shot down, marking the closest a Houthi attack has come to a U.S. warship.
Meanwhile, the Houthis said they would stage more attacks on U.S. and British warships in the Red Sea in what they called acts of self-defense. This is Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea on Wednesday.
YAHYA SAREA: [translated] The Yemeni Armed Forces will confront the American-British escalation with escalation and will not hesitate to carry out comprehensive and effective military operations in retaliation to any British-American foolishness against beloved Yemen.
AMY GOODMAN: The Houthi campaign targeting shipping has affected a key route for global trade between Asia, the Middle East and Europe, with several shipping companies suspending transit through the Red Sea. On Thursday, Italy’s defense minister warned the shipping disruptions threaten to destabilize Italy’s economy. This comes as the European Union’s Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said on Wednesday the EU plans to launch a naval mission of its own within three weeks to help defend cargo ships in the Red Sea.
For more, we’re joined by Helen Lackner, the author of several books on Yemen, including Yemen in Crisis: The Road to War and Yemen: Poverty and Conflict. She’s been involved with Yemen for over half a century, lived there for a total of more than 15 years between the '70s and the 2010s. She's joining us from Oxford, England.
Helen Lackner, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you tell us who the Houthis are and explain what their demands are, the significance of what’s happening in the Red Sea?
HELEN LACKNER: Well, thank you very much for inviting me.
Yes, I think I’ll start with the second half of your question, which relates directly to what has been happening and the various announcements you’ve just made. And the Houthis have been extremely explicit and repeat on an almost daily basis that their attacks on ships in the Red Sea will stop as soon as the Gaza war ends and humanitarian and other supplies are allowed into Gaza, and therefore the Palestinians will no longer be under the threat and the horrors that you’ve earlier described and that most of us have seen on our screens for many, many weeks. So, the important thing is that although the U.S. and the U.K. claim that they’re only defending free movement in the Red Sea and refuse to accept any connection between this and the war in Gaza, for the Houthis it’s absolutely straightforward and explicit that, number one, they’re only targeting ships that have any connection with Israel — whether they’re going to Israel, coming from Israel, delivering stuff owned by Israelis, or whatever, any connection whatever — and that other ships are not targeted — except, of course, now. Since the U.S. and U.K. strikes have started, they are also targeting U.S. and U.K. ships. So, they’re absolutely explicit that all other ships are welcome to travel through the Red Sea and that there is — you know, there is complete freedom of movement for any ship other than an Israeli- or U.K.- or U.S.-connected one. And I think that’s extremely important.
And the reason the Houthis have taken this action in support of Palestine is that one of the very fundamental policy issues or ideological positions that the Houthis have is the support for Palestine and, more directly, being anti-Israelis. The Houthis are — the Houthis’ foreign policy is quite clearly summarized in their basic slogan of “death to America and death to Israel.” They are absolutely — you know, their positions are absolutely straightforward on these points. So, although they are willing to allow other ships through, they are actually, up to a certain point, not displeased at the fact that the Americans and the U.S. are now actually targeting their various launch positions.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Helen, could you give us some background, though? What are the origins of this movement? And how is that they came to play such a prominent role in Yemen?
HELEN LACKNER: Yeah. So, the Houthi movement started in the 1980s, 1990s. I think what you need to understand is that, in terms of religious sects, Yemen is divided into two basic sects: a Sunni sect of — called al-Shafi’is, who basically live in the majority of the country, and a branch of Shi’ism called the Zaydis, who live basically in the mountainous highlands of Yemen. And the Houthis are al-Zaydis. And in that sense — and again, within the Zaydi movement, there’s a certain variety, in the sense that the Houthis, I would say, are extremist Zaydists, and they’ve developed their ideology and their policies to strengthen their own branch of Zaydism. And they basically emerged in response to the rise of Sunni Salafi fundamentalism within their own area in the far north of Yemen. And so there have been conflicts and problems, you know, arising since the 1990s.
Between 2004 and 2010, there was a series of six wars between the Houthis facing and fighting the then-regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. And this ended, basically — each one ended with a ceasefire which was promptly broken. The reason the last one in 2010 was not broken was as the result of the uprisings in 2011 of the — you know, known as the Arab Spring in various places. And that was a moment when the Houthis joined with the revolutionaries and basically took a position against — you know, they continued their position against the regime. So, they then were for — during what was a transition — supposedly, a transition period between the Saleh regime and what should have become a more democratic regime in 2014, the Houthis then changed their alliances, and indeed Saleh changed his alliance, so they operated together against the transitional government. And then, eventually, that allowed them to take over the capital Sana’a in 2014 and then to oust the existing transitional government in early 2015.
And that’s when, really, the war started, which was then internationalized from March 2015 with the intervention of what was known as the Saudi-led coalition, which was basically a coalition led by the Saudis and the Emiratis, with a few other states with minor roles, but supported actively by the U.S., the Europeans and the British and others.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what was the point at which —
HELEN LACKNER: So, those are really —
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sorry, just to clarify, what was the point at which the Iranians started backing the Houthis? Was it in the moment when the Saudi-led bombing began, in 2015, or was it prior to that? And if you could also clarify the distinction between — as you said, the Yemenis are Zaydi Shias, and to what extent Zaydis are ideologically or theologically aligned with the dominant form of Shi’ism in Iran, and what that has to do with Iran’s complicity or support for Houthis, whether or not now they do as Iran says?
HELEN LACKNER: Yeah. Thank you for these, for bringing up these points. The Iranian role at the time, in 2015, when we’re in the internationalized civil war started, was minimal. The Iranian involvement with the Houthis, and prior to that and since then, has always been connected with, partly, theological connections, but differences. So, in that sense, the Houthis are differentiating themselves from other Zaydis by having adopted a number of the rituals and activities and approaches of the Iranian Twelvers. It’s all a matter of how many imams they trust or they believe in after the Prophet Muhammad. But in practice, the Houthis are getting closer to the Iranians in — to the Iranian Shi’ism over the last decades, but they are still — sorry, the last decade, but they are still, you know, quite distinct. So the alliance is much more a political alliance.
And the Iranian involvement, which was really very, very insignificant at the beginning of this war, has increased over time, and is primarily — you know, has been, for a while, mainly financial and of providing fuel and things like that to the Houthis, but more recently has been much more focused on military activities and primarily on the supply of advanced technology. If you look at the Houthi weaponry — and I’m no military expert — but the Houthi weaponry originally was basically a lot of Scuds and other Russian-supplied materials and also some American-supplied materials to the Saleh regime. And these have been upgraded and improved and changed, to some extent, thanks to Iranian support. So, in that sense, you have more — the Iranian involvement has become greater.
But it’s very important to note that the Houthis are an independent movement. The Houthis are not Iranian proxies. They are not Iranian servants. They don’t do what the Iranians tell them to do. They make their own decisions. If their decisions and their policies coincide with those of Iran, then, you know, there’s no issue. But if they don’t, they don’t do it. So it’s very important, I think, to destroy this myth of Iran-backed Houthis in a single word as if it’s kind of a conglomerate. That is not the case.
AMY GOODMAN: Helen, if —
HELEN LACKNER: I hope that briefly answered your point.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, and we don’t have much time, but I did want to ask you about the Houthi support in Yemen, whether it’s increased, and the Houthi human rights record.
HELEN LACKNER: Yeah, great. Well, yeah, as you said, we haven’t got much time. Basically, the Houthi — the support for the Houthis in Yemen has increased, has multiplied. I can’t even imagine — find a suitable terminology to say it. The Houthis, you know, who run an extremely authoritarian and autocratic regime, which is not a pleasant regime for people to live under, you know, and was lacking support — and you have to remember that the Houthis actually rule and run the lives of two-thirds of the population of Yemen, so, you know, about 20 million people live under Houthi rule, and it’s not a pleasant place to be. There’s no freedom of expression. You know, women are oppressed. All kinds of negative features connected with Houthi rule.
But the Yemeni population are extremely supportive of Palestine. And therefore, this action of the Houthis has, you know, really, really increased their support. If you take a look and you maybe show on your screen some of the demonstrations that happen every Friday in Sana’a and in other cities, they’ve become absolutely massive, because although people may not like living under Houthi rule, they agree with the Houthi actions in support of Palestine. And so, that has increased and improved their popularity an enormous amount, not only in the area they rule, but also in the rest of Yemen, which is, you know, not ruled by them.
AMY GOODMAN: Helen Lackner, we want to thank you so much for being with us, author of a number of books on Yemen, including Yemen in Crisis: The Road to War and Yemen: Poverty and Conflict. She’s been involved with Yemen for over 50 years, has lived there for about 15.
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