The Electronic Intifada Podcast 11 January 2025
And because of that, even more Palestinian lives are at stake, Chris Gunness, the former spokesperson for the UN agency that provides essential services and life-saving aid to Palestinian refugees, told The Electronic Intifada Livestream on Thursday.
A law passed by the Israeli parliament in October – and set to take effect at the end of January – would prohibit the UN agency from operating in the occupied Palestinian territories, a move that will have disastrous political and humanitarian consequences.
In a packed show, we also spoke live from Gaza to Electronic Intifada contributor and teacher Donya Ahmad Abu Sitta.
She shared two poems she wrote reflecting on the horrific genocide she and her community are trying to survive.
Nora Barrows-Friedman’s news brief highlighted recent developments in Gaza, where aid agency Oxfam is describing the situation is “apocalyptic.”
There is also growing concern that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, who has been disappeared by Israeli occupation forces, is at high risk of being murdered by his captors.
This writer provided an update on Israel’s genocidal propaganda campaign which claims – without any credible evidence – that Hamas fighters carried out a systematic campaign of mass rape on 7 October 2023.
Recently, a senior Israeli prosecutor admitted that 15 months after the alleged event, Israeli authorities are still unable to identify any alleged victims and won’t be able to prove that these attacks took place.
Meanwhile, there are new reports of the Israeli military engaging in sexual violence against Palestinian women.
We also featured the powerful speech by regular Electronic Intifada contributor Abubaker Abed.
Speaking alongside fellow journalists in Gaza, Abed called the lack of solidarity Gaza media workers are receiving from international colleagues.
“We are Palestinian journalists. We have been let down by the international community, particularly the international media organizations,” Abed said. “Even the press vests we’re wearing right now, mark us as a target. They do not protect us at all.”Saving UNRWA, saving lives
Gunness is ringing the alarm bells that UN Secretary-General António Guterres and world governments are not doing enough to deter Israel from shutting down UNRWA’s life-saving services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza..
“The secretary general’s position is, Israel is the occupying power [and] under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupying power has an obligation to provide services,” Gunness said.
Therefore, the logic goes, if UNRWA isn’t going to be allowed to provide them, then Israel will have to do so.
Gunness added: “Now, obviously, if you’re a Palestinian in Gaza having a genocide committed against you, you hear that and you think, why is the world’s top diplomat in charge of all of these humanitarian organizations, including UNRWA, mandated by the General Assembly to provide us with these services – why is he saying that a genocidal state that’s killing us and our children in our droves should be in control, in charge of delivering these services?”
“Clearly, the secretary-general’s strategy is to suggest that there is no alternative, and therefore to prohibit any contingency planning,” Gunness asserted.
“Now, on the other side, the threat against the Israelis – and I have to say, it seems that this is not a threat they particularly care about – is that they will be held up to international opprobrium.”
“I have real problems with that strategy, with the idea that the secretary-general is playing chicken with the suffering of Palestinians,” Gunness said.
Instead, Gunness urges Guterres to call the UN Secretary Council into session and use all means available to bring international pressure on Israel.
“He needs to work the phones politically,” Gunness said. “Now he seems to be saying, I’m not going to do that because it’s Israel’s responsibility.”
And while UNRWA does not appear to be doing any contingency planning to provide vital services if Israel does shut it down, Gunness said he has seen communications suggesting that the agency is making plans to move its headquarters staff from Jerusalem to the Jordanian capital Amman, an abandonment that he warns will cement Israel’s illegal occupation and annexation of the city, which Tel Aviv purports is its capital.
Gunness also urged Arab states, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia – which continues to hint at normalization with Israel – to rally much more forcefully against the attack on UNRWA.
For its part, Israel denies legal any responsibility for supplying the humanitarian needs of the two million people it is systematically exterminating in Gaza, while militarily occupying, besieging and bombing the territory.
UNRWA is a lifeline for some six million Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. Its tens of thousands of workers provide basic health, sanitation, education, job training and other vital services.
In Gaza, amid the ongoing genocide, it is the only organization with the capacity to distribute life-saving food aid to any significant number of Palestinians there.
Israel has waged a years-long propaganda campaign against UNRWA, falsely accusing the agency and its staff of involvement in “terrorism” and “anti-Semitic” indoctrination – lies aimed at undermining the right of return of Palestinian refugees to the land and homes from which Israel has expelled them solely for not being Jewish.
“It’s a kind of mad right-wing Zionist fiction, a fantasy that by somehow destroying an agency which is mandated by the United Nations to serve this population – that by destroying that, you somehow get rid of these people, their history, their identity, their group rights,” including their right to self-determination, Gunness said.
If there is any hope in a dire situation, it is in UNRWA’s staff. Virtually all of its tens of thousands of workers, including thousands still in Gaza, are themselves Palestinians hailing from the refugee communities they serve.
Israel has murdered some 260 UNRWA workers during the genocide in Gaza, and yet thousands continue to show up to work there.
“I know Palestinians in the West Bank, they were my colleagues for many years. They will carry on working,” Gunness said. “You know, bullets and genocide have not stopped UNRWA workers in Gaza doing their daily job.”
Israeli army’s sexual violence against Palestinian women
Recently, a senior Israeli prosecutor admitted that 15 months since the 7 October 2023 events, Israeli authorities are still unable to identify any alleged victims and won’t be able to prove that these types of attacks took place.
In addition to talking about the latest developments debunking Israel’s 7 October mass rapes claims, we discussed the newest reports of sexual violence by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian women.In the context of Israel’s assault on Kamal Adwan hospital in December, Israel committed atrocities including “detonating booby-trapped robots near several inhabited homes, causing their collapse and killing civilians inside” as well as “executing civilians on the spot, some of whom were wounded, while others carried white flags,” according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which has collected survivor testimonies.
Testimonies taken by the human rights group also document how Israeli forces “detained dozens of women and girls, subjecting them to severe abuse amounting to sexual harassment, alongside degrading treatment that violated their human dignity.”
This included beating them and forcing them to remove their clothing.
Resistance remains steadfast on the ground
Contributing editor Jon Elmer brought us up to date on all the latest resistance news from Gaza, with a focus on Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun, where fighters continue to mount complex and effective attacks on the Israeli military.
Among Elmer’s observations was how Israel’s use of makeshift drones adapted from commercial models, captured and exhibited by resistance fighters, indicates that the occupier may be facing shortages of some types of weaponry.
You can watch the program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program. Michael F. Brown contributed pre-production assistance and Eli Gerzon contributed post-production assistance.
Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada Livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
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