Ten days ago, Israel began circulating accusations that 12 employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza had involvement in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7. This led to a crisis of indispensable, largely western, funding for this crucial humanitarian services provider for Palestinian refugees, especially in Gaza, where a large majority are refugees from what has become southern Israel.
But this latest campaign is just part of a decades-long attack on the agency by Israel, which is itself just a subset of the broader campaign to eliminate the Palestinian refugee issue by eliminating Palestinian refugees as an internationally monitored and protected group.
On January 18, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini attended his monthly meeting with Israeli officials. He was presented with allegations that 12 of the 13,000 Palestinian employees of UNRWA in Gaza were directly linked to the October 7 attacks. The UN itself publicly revealed the claims by announcing that it had dismissed nine of the 12 accused employees (two were dead).
The news provoked a cascade of demands for UNRWA's dissolution and defunding, particularly since it broke on the same day that the International Court of Justice issued a favourable initial finding for South Africa's genocide case against Israel.
Israel added, without evidence, that 10 per cent of UNRWA’s Gaza workforce is linked to Hamas. That was likely intended to offset the obvious observation that if UNRWA could keep Hamas supporters or even members to a mere 12 out of 13,000 staffers in Gaza, that's an outstanding performance. UNRWA is not a government and it has no investigative or intelligence wing that would allow it to carefully vet thousands of workers – and it routinely shares its employment rolls with Israel.
But the useful immediate distraction is part of a larger and longer campaign that is even more insidious than it initially appears. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to paint Israeli anger as partly motivated by UNRWA-related testimony regarding Israeli abuses in Gaza cited in South Africa's ICJ case. But even that is a relatively minor detail in Israel's animus against UNRWA.
The real offence by the organisation, for which Israel has laboured mightily for decades to discredit and eliminate it, is that its very existence reflects the persistence of the Palestinian refugee problem and issue. This simultaneously points both backward to the past, to the origin of Israel's founding, as well as forward to the future and to the need to resolve the refugee question as a key part of any agreed-upon final status arrangement. Both are utterly unacceptable to not merely the Israeli political far-right, but deeply threatening to most Jewish Israelis.
Israel never tires of complaining that UNRWA is a unique refugee agency, dedicated to one particular people, as if that were somehow unfair to Israel. But, crucially, this is because when the agency was founded in 1949, the same year as the armistice agreements that formed Israel's de facto international borders, and Israel's membership in the UN General Assembly, the international community was well aware that for the first and only time, it played a direct role in creating a major refugee crisis that otherwise probably would never have existed.
The UN's predecessor organisation, the League of Nations, after the First World War issued a self-contradictory mandate to Britain over Palestine. As with all the other mandates, Britain was instructed to prepare the (almost entirely Arab) population for self-government and independence without altering the local society, and simultaneously repeated verbatim Britain's commitment to transform that society into a Jewish "homeland” as expressed in the earlier Balfour Declaration.
After the Second World War, the new UN itself had voted to partition Palestine between its overwhelming Arab majority and the Jewish settlers who were still less than 30 per cent of the population but were to receive 56 per cent of the territory.
In the subsequent war, between 1947-49, about 700,000-800,000 Palestinians, or 80 per cent of the Arabs in what became Israel, were displaced and forbidden to return. Thus, almost overnight, an Arab society vanished and was indeed replaced by a Jewish one. The creation of UNRWA was a clear recognition of the international community’s direct hand in this tragedy of the dispossession and displacement of one people to make way for another.
Many Israelis would regard all of that as the Palestinian national narrative at best, and Arab propaganda at worst. But not only is it true, but it is the truth as the rest of the world understood it at the time. Yet this history of dispossession as the indispensable foundational necessity for Israel is the subject of intense and systematic repression at home and suppression abroad. The mere existence of UNRWA threatens both.
In the present day, it isn't merely that seeking to deny UNRWA's relief services to the Palestinians in Gaza is part of Israel's war of vengeance, though the agency could shut down by the end of February if funding isn’t restored. Israel has long viewed the refugee issue and the "right of return" as a potent bargaining chip, one that is on par, and often paired with, Jerusalem, and a powerful form of Palestinian leverage in negotiations and international public diplomacy.
UNRWA's work requires it to carefully tally Palestinian refugees, providing accurate numbers and crucial legal status. Israel therefore sees the existence and work of UNRWA as the decisive obstacle to redefining the Palestinian refugees out of existence, and maintains that only those who themselves were physically displaced nearly 80 years ago deserve that status. Hence the astonishing spectacle that the country that created and refuses to resolve one of the world's great refugee crises blames the agency that cares for those refugees, because they are and remain refugees.
It's so simple: no refugees, no issue.
The cynical and cruel campaign against UNRWA operates at nearly every level of Israel's relentless conflict with the Palestinians: as part of the collective war in Gaza; key to suppressing historical realities and memories dangerous to Israel's self-serving national mythology (and, conversely, central to Palestinian mythologies); and crucial to eliminating a potent source of Palestinian leverage at the bargaining table and on the global stage.
The international community needs to see this charade for what it is and, while demanding reasonable reforms and accountability, redouble the commitment to the humanitarian services that UNRWA provides, what it stands for, and the role it must continue to play unless and until the displacement and dispossession of the 1940s is, at last, redressed.
Live updates: Follow the latest news on Israel-Gaza
How Islam's view of posthumous transplant surgery changed
Transplants from the deceased have been carried out in hospitals across the globe for decades, but in some countries in the Middle East, including the UAE, the practise was banned until relatively recently.
Opinion has been divided as to whether organ donations from a deceased person is permissible in Islam.
The body is viewed as sacred, during and after death, thus prohibiting cremation and tattoos.
One school of thought viewed the removal of organs after death as equally impermissible.
That view has largely changed, and among scholars and indeed many in society, to be seen as permissible to save another life.
'Worse than a prison sentence'
Marie Byrne, a counsellor who volunteers at the UAE government's mental health crisis helpline, said the ordeal the crew had been through would take time to overcome.
“It was worse than a prison sentence, where at least someone can deal with a set amount of time incarcerated," she said.
“They were living in perpetual mystery as to how their futures would pan out, and what that would be.
“Because of coronavirus, the world is very different now to the one they left, that will also have an impact.
“It will not fully register until they are on dry land. Some have not seen their young children grow up while others will have to rebuild relationships.
“It will be a challenge mentally, and to find other work to support their families as they have been out of circulation for so long. Hopefully they will get the care they need when they get home.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
SPECS
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Credits
Produced by: Colour Yellow Productions and Eros Now
Director: Mudassar Aziz
Cast: Sonakshi Sinha, Jimmy Sheirgill, Jassi Gill, Piyush Mishra, Diana Penty, Aparshakti Khurrana
Star rating: 2.5/5
Section 375
Cast: Akshaye Khanna, Richa Chadha, Meera Chopra & Rahul Bhat
Director: Ajay Bahl
Producers: Kumar Mangat Pathak, Abhishek Pathak & SCIPL
Rating: 3.5/5
BMW M5 specs
Engine: 4.4-litre twin-turbo V-8 petrol enging with additional electric motor
Power: 727hp
Torque: 1,000Nm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 10.6L/100km
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Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
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Takreem Awards winners 2021
Corporate Leadership: Carl Bistany (Lebanon)
Cultural Excellence: Hoor Al Qasimi (UAE)
Environmental Development and Sustainability: Bkerzay (Lebanon)
Environmental Development and Sustainability: Raya Ani (Iraq)
Humanitarian and Civic Services: Women’s Programs Association (Lebanon)
Humanitarian and Civic Services: Osamah Al Thini (Libya)
Excellence in Education: World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) (Qatar)
Outstanding Arab Woman: Balghis Badri (Sudan)
Scientific and Technological Achievement: Mohamed Slim Alouini (KSA)
Young Entrepreneur: Omar Itani (Lebanon)
Lifetime Achievement: Suad Al Amiry (Palestine)
I Care A Lot
Directed by: J Blakeson
Starring: Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage
3/5 stars
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
Mane points for safe home colouring
- Natural and grey hair takes colour differently than chemically treated hair
- Taking hair from a dark to a light colour should involve a slow transition through warmer stages of colour
- When choosing a colour (especially a lighter tone), allow for a natural lift of warmth
- Most modern hair colours are technique-based, in that they require a confident hand and taught skills
- If you decide to be brave and go for it, seek professional advice and use a semi-permanent colour
Yemen's Bahais and the charges they often face
The Baha'i faith was made known in Yemen in the 19th century, first introduced by an Iranian man named Ali Muhammad Al Shirazi, considered the Herald of the Baha'i faith in 1844.
The Baha'i faith has had a growing number of followers in recent years despite persecution in Yemen and Iran.
Today, some 2,000 Baha'is reside in Yemen, according to Insaf.
"The 24 defendants represented by the House of Justice, which has intelligence outfits from the uS and the UK working to carry out an espionage scheme in Yemen under the guise of religion.. aimed to impant and found the Bahai sect on Yemeni soil by bringing foreign Bahais from abroad and homing them in Yemen," the charge sheet said.
Baha'Ullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, was exiled by the Ottoman Empire in 1868 from Iran to what is now Israel. Now, the Bahai faith's highest governing body, known as the Universal House of Justice, is based in the Israeli city of Haifa, which the Bahais turn towards during prayer.
The Houthis cite this as collective "evidence" of Bahai "links" to Israel - which the Houthis consider their enemy.
The Equaliser 2
Director Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo, Ashton Sanders
Three stars
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What are NFTs?
Are non-fungible tokens a currency, asset, or a licensing instrument? Arnab Das, global market strategist EMEA at Invesco, says they are mix of all of three.
You can buy, hold and use NFTs just like US dollars and Bitcoins. “They can appreciate in value and even produce cash flows.”
However, while money is fungible, NFTs are not. “One Bitcoin, dollar, euro or dirham is largely indistinguishable from the next. Nothing ties a dollar bill to a particular owner, for example. Nor does it tie you to to any goods, services or assets you bought with that currency. In contrast, NFTs confer specific ownership,” Mr Das says.
This makes NFTs closer to a piece of intellectual property such as a work of art or licence, as you can claim royalties or profit by exchanging it at a higher value later, Mr Das says. “They could provide a sustainable income stream.”
This income will depend on future demand and use, which makes NFTs difficult to value. “However, there is a credible use case for many forms of intellectual property, notably art, songs, videos,” Mr Das says.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
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Transmission: six-speed manual
Power: 325bhp
Torque: 370Nm
Speed: 0-100km/h 3.9 seconds
Price: Dh230,000
On sale: now
