IN JANUARY, the Israeli regime unleashed a propaganda campaign against UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, accusing members of its staff of being members of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and taking part in Operation al-Aqsa Storm on October 7th.
Israel followed its usual policy of making accusations without bothering to provide any evidence to substantiate them, secure in the knowledge that proof was not required by its imperialist backers before they immediately suspended aid to starving Palestinians.
Immediately after the Zionist state made its accusations, 18 major international donors to UNRWA, including its largest donor the US, suspended funding to the agency, vastly accelerating the humanitarian crisis for the 2.1 million Palestinian men, women and children already under constant bombardment by Israeli forces.
$450 million in funding to the main humanitarian agency working in Gaza was stopped on the say-so of the Israeli government.
Now a rigorous international inquiry, headed by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna and supported by three major research institutes, has concluded that there is no evidence to support the claim that UNRWA employees had links to Hamas or any resistance group.
The majority of donors have already reversed this initial decision as it became clear that Israel had no intention of backing up its wild claims. However the US has refused, and insisted it will maintain its funding suspension until March 2025 at the earliest, despite its own intelligence services expressing ‘low confidence’ in the Israeli allegations back in February.
As for the UK Tory government, it has followed the lead of the US and so far refused to reinstate funding, instead prevaricating saying it will take the findings of the Colonna report into account when they ‘review their position’.
Germany, the biggest supplier of arms to Israel after the US, said it would resume funding for UNRWA activities in all areas except Gaza – the one area where food and humanitarian aid is an urgent necessity, as Palestinians face the imminent threat of famine as the Israelis carry out the policy of starving the Strip by denying food and aid.
Al Jazeera reported yesterday that official reports estimate that nearly 210,000 people living in northern Gaza and Gaza city are likely to already be experiencing famine with the rest of the Strip expected to succumb to famine by July if no intervention or ceasefire comes about.
There will be no ‘intervention’ by the imperialist powers led by the US to hold back the Zionist genocide.
In fact, it is becoming clear that Israel is ready to escalate its war on Gaza. Analysis of satellite imagery of troop movements just outside the Strip by Al Jazeera indicates that Israel is preparing for a further onslaught on Gaza to ‘finish off the Strip’.
Across the world, workers and young people have risen up against the genocidal war to finish off Palestinians in Gaza and drive them from their land.
This war has so far killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mainly women and children, and now Israel is intent on unleashing famine as a weapon of war – all done with the permission and complicity of the US and its faithful imperialist allies in the UK.
In America, student protests and pro-Palestinian demonstrations have spread across major universities with camps being set up on college lawns, walk outs by students calling for a ceasefire and demanding the universities divest from companies with ties to the Israeli military.
These students have been undeterred by all the threats and arrests as the college authorities have attempted to crush this support for Palestine. This mass movement of students in America is a powerful reflection of the mass movement across the UK and Europe in support of Palestine and for an end to Israeli occupation and genocide.
The working class has the power to end Zionist genocide by bringing down its governments who support and arm Israel by calling general strikes to bring them down replacing them with workers’ governments and socialism.
Workers governments will provide all the aid and military support required by Palestinians to smash the occupation and bring in the independent state of Palestine.
