Saturday, November 9, 2024

UNRWA's Ban is Catastrophic for Palestinian Sports

 

Issam Khalidi


   Israel's decision to ban UNRWA's operations in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza is destructive to the Palestinian people. A catastrophic outcome could result from this. UNRWA's staff is being accused by Israel of being Hamas members who participated in the mass killing that took place on October 7th. This campaign against UNRWA began even before October 7 as a result of the efforts of Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, during the first administration of Donald Trump. In doing so, Israel seeks to starve the Palestinian people to death, robbing them of all their necessities, including education, and denying them the right to exist.

 

   It is believed that the main reason for this ban is that UNRWA was established in 1949 (year following the Nakba of 1948) by the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV). It began its operations on May 1, 1950. The purpose of this was to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian refugees who had been expelled from their towns and villages. Therefore, Israel is blatantly seeking to conceal and weaken all the evidence that could be used to demonstrate to the world the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people as a result of the 1948 Nakba in order to conceal and weaken it.

 

  “The ongoing war on Gaza and the push to annex large parts of the West Bank represented a golden opportunity for Netanyahu and his extremist government to increase the pressure on UNRWA. They have been enabled by unconditional US support, and the willingness of various western governments to recklessly act upon Israel’s false claims regarding the UN organization,” writes Ramsy Baroud. [1]

 

   International agencies like UNRWA had been set up to help with the specific problem of Palestinian refugees in their main places of exile, although the main goal has always been survival for Palestinians just short of political independence; UNRWA policy has been in harmony with the annual UN General Assembly resolution calling upon Israel to take back the refugees, but the call has been issued on more or less neutral humanitarian grounds, again just short of acknowledgement that the Palestinians and the Israelis are opposed to each other on national, political grounds.[2]

 

    United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. [3] UNRWA was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly UNGA. As part of UNRWA's mandate, it is responsible for providing assistance and support to Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the Nakba (the catastrophe of 1948). It also includes their descendants, including those who have been legally adopted. As of 2019, more than 5.6 million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees.[4]


  In Gaza, 1.476.706 Palestinians are registered as refugees in eight Palestinians camps. While in the Occupied West Bank, about a quarter of 871.537 registered live in 19 refugee camps, while others in towns and villages. [5]


In 2021, about 545,000 children were enrolled in UNRWA schools; Social Safety Net Programme (SSNO) assistance reached 398,044 beneficiaries; and 1.7 million received critical humanitarian aid.

 

The UNRWA Education Program in Gaza is the largest of all UNRWA in the five, serving 291,100 students (150,608 males and 140,492 females) from 1-9 Grades in the 2021/2022 school year. Students study in the 183 UNRWA schools across the Gaza Strip, staffed by some 9,443 education personnel. The UNRWA curriculum includes physical education as part of its curriculum. As a part of this huge group of personnel, there are tens of physical education teachers and supervisors.[6]

 

   UNRWA established centers for social services which later adopted sports activities and contributed to the growth of sports in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Gaza Sector, and the West Bank. Sport was a way to overcome the living conditions in the camps. Through sports the community resisted against the unproductive use of leisure time and moral deviation; it had an importance in the humanization and the restoration of values lost to the dehumanizing living conditions of the slum-like camps.

 

  As far back as the early fifties, the UNRWA established service centers in Jabalia, Rafah, Khan Yunis, Al-Shati, Al-Nuseirat, Al-Bureij, and Al-Maghazi, which became clubs with their own teams, participated in local and Arab championships, and played a leading role in the development of sports in the Strip. It is estimated that there were around fifty-eight sports clubs in the Strip before October 7, 2023, with football teams competing in the Premier League, the First, Second and Third Divisions. [7]

 

    UNRWA places a special focus on youth, in light of their current situation and the many conventions that address their rights, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Our program seeks to promote the well-being of children and youth and increase their participation in constructive activities. We provide capacity-building and awareness-raising activities, as well as sports, cultural and recreational opportunities. In 2012, the program served a total of 25,527 children and youth. [8]

 

Endnotes

[2]Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), p. 31.

[6] https://www.unrwa.org/what-we-do/curriculum

[7] See this link for more info about sports in Palestine: www.hpalestinesports.net


No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)