I Would Not Have Survived Without UNRWA

Through the genocidal battle on Gaza, UNRWA, the United Nations Aid and Works Company for Palestine Refugees, was a critical resource that distributed meals, blankets, and provides to tens of millions of individuals. For a lot of, it was the one factor standing between them and hunger. With out UNRWA, our livelihood would have been unimaginable.

Now, with Israel’s new law banning its activities in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, greater than two million individuals are vulnerable to dropping entry to meals, healthcare, and schooling. The United Nations has warned that famine is imminent. How can humanitarian help be politicized when lives are at stake?

This isn’t only a political challenge; it’s a private one. In truth, I wouldn’t be right here with out UNRWA.

Through the Nakba of 1948, my great-grandparents have been expelled by Zionist militias from their village of Dayr Sunayd, simply 12 kilometers from Gaza Metropolis. Like a whole bunch of hundreds of Palestinians, they have been compelled into exile, stripped of their land and properties, and of the proper to return beneath Israel’s Absentees’ Property Law. The house they as soon as knew was erased, leaving solely the reminiscence of a spot they might now not attain.

In response to this mass displacement, the United Nations established UNRWA in 1949. Initially meant as a brief reduction company, it rapidly turned the cornerstone of help for Palestinian refugees. Over time, its function expanded, offering important companies and evolving into the main supply of reduction for tens of millions of displaced Palestinians throughout the Center East.

My father was born into this actuality, rising up within the Jabalia refugee camp amidst deep poverty. At simply two years outdated, the 1967 Naksa additional reshaped his life. His father — my grandfather — was trapped in Egypt after the battle and was unable to return to Gaza. The Israeli army occupation left hundreds of Palestinians, together with my grandfather, with out identification paperwork and the proper to reunite with their households. My father would meet his father solely as soon as in his lifetime.

Like numerous different refugees, my father’s survival depended fully on UNRWA, which offered his household with meals, clothes, schooling, and healthcare within the absence of secure revenue. Regardless of these hardships, my father excelled academically, turning into one of many prime college students in his faculty. He earned a scholarship to review arithmetic within the West Financial institution and later devoted over 35 years of his life to educating. His mom and grandfather, although illiterate, supported his aspirations, recognizing that schooling was the important thing to a future that they had lengthy been denied.

With out UNRWA, none of this might have been potential. It offered my father with the chance to interrupt the cycle of poverty, and in flip, it modified my life as nicely. I studied in UNRWA faculties, the place I labored laborious to excel and gained the instruments to say my rights in a world that always seeks to silence voices like mine.

UNRWA Is Extra Than Simply Help

Rising up in Tel al-Zaatar, a modernized neighborhood inside Jabalia refugee camp, I attended faculty with classmates from low-income households. I bear in mind a trainer asking about our fathers’ jobs, and plenty of of my friends responded that their fathers had none. These from extra secure households usually had caregivers employed by UNRWA. This state of affairs was typical in Gaza, the place Israel’s occupation insurance policies have created a cycle of hardship that’s exceedingly troublesome, if not not possible, to interrupt.

Since 1967, Gaza has confronted steady financial crises, worsened by the blockade that started in 2007. Restrictions on imports, exports, and motion have stifled progress, leaving many households unemployed. Previous to the newest genocidal battle, Gaza’s unemployment charge was round 45%, with youth unemployment nearing 60%. The battle solely intensified this disaster, pushing unemployment to just about 80% and shrinking the financial system to lower than one-sixth of its prewar dimension. On this dire scenario, UNRWA turned way over a reduction company; it served as an financial lifeline, offering employment to hundreds and serving to to maintain the complete group.

For Palestinian refugees, who represent almost 70% of Gaza’s inhabitants, UNRWA has been indispensable, providing vital companies equivalent to schooling, healthcare, and meals. As the only company delivering this complete help, it turned a necessary security web within the absence of presidency companies.

For college students, UNRWA offered extra than simply tutorial studying. We had entry to meals, summer season camps, and extracurricular actions, together with artwork classes, subject journeys, science labs, and pc workshops — all freed from cost. The company additionally prioritized our well-being, providing healthcare companies like vaccinations, medical and dental checkups, free eyeglasses and listening to aids, and uniforms for susceptible college students.

Personally, in my UNRWA faculty, I had the prospect to observe and carry out in my first play, in addition to learn and write brief tales. I took half in my first journeys to native human rights organizations, participated in my first debates, and recited my first poems in entrance of an viewers, together with the prospect to be taught and converse English. By these experiences, I developed vital pondering abilities and gained a deeper understanding of complicated points, together with the realities of Israel’s violations. Immediately, I maintain a grasp’s diploma, write passionately, and interact in significant conversations — alternatives I’d by no means have had with out the sources that UNRWA offered.

My sister, who was additionally educated in UNRWA faculties, is now a physician at one among its clinics. It was not simply an help supplier; it cultivated a way of solidarity amongst refugees, a lot of whom labored for the company. It turned an emblem of Palestinian perseverance, serving to to protect our dignity and potential.

The Assault on UNRWA Is an Assault on Palestinian Existence

When Israel describes its plans to dismantle UNRWA it claims different organizations can step in and fill the identical want, however they’re mistaken. No different group has the identical deep-rooted connection to Gaza as UNRWA. Its greater than 10,000 employees members — a lot of them refugees themselves — share our actuality. Over a long time, they’ve constructed deep-rooted infrastructure and belief inside our communities, one thing no exterior group can replicate.

After I learn concerning the assaults on the group I take into consideration the youngsters in UNRWA faculties, the households who depend on its clinics, and the employees who danger their lives to ship help beneath not possible situations. Each month, hundreds depend upon UNRWA’s meals help to outlive. What occurs to them now? What occurs to us?

In the meantime, the threats lengthen past Gaza. U.S. President Donald Trump not too long ago advised that he desires to “take over” the Gaza Strip and forcefully expel its individuals, stripping them of their rights and any hope of return. His plan could seem unhinged, however the ongoing efforts to dismantle UNRWA and render Gaza unlivable by hunger and destruction make it dangerously believable. We have now already misplaced a lot — our houses, our land, our family members. Eliminating UNRWA is a component of a bigger technique of erasure, because it means eradicating the final pillar of help and pushing tens of millions nearer into compelled exile.

UNRWA’s existence is inseparable from Palestinian identification. Palestinian refugees are a individuals whose land was taken from them by power, and the company stands as a testomony to this historic injustice and to the worldwide group’s accountability in direction of these it displaced. Israel has repeatedly sought to erase this reality, working to dismantle the popularity of Palestinian rights and historical past. But, so long as UNRWA stays, so does the plain reality of our wrestle and our demand for justice. An assault on it’s an assault on all of us, and we can’t let it go unanswered.