The harassment and smear campaign puts the work of the UN agency for the Palestinians at risk

A group of workers collects garbage while the bustle of a school yard rises above the fence next to a health center where mainly women with children enter and leave.

None of what happens in that scene of daily life in the Aida camp (West Bank) would be possible without the presence of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

“Everything in this health center, from the cleaner to the head doctor, are employees [of the agency].

The same with the educational system.

The guard, the cleaner, the second grade teacher, the eighth grade teacher… they are all our staff,” explains Adam Bouloukos, head of the agency in the West Bank, during a visit to Aida in late February.

Bouloukos emphasizes the need for an institution born almost 75 years ago, which serves almost six million refugees and which faces a campaign to discredit Israel in the shadow of the war in Gaza.

This agency, which operates in Palestine - East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza - and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, has been in the eye of the storm for weeks, accused by Israel of being part of the Hamas terrorist network.

As a consequence of this campaign, at a critical moment in the conflict unleashed after the attacks on October 7, 16 donor countries have taken a step back.

More than 400 million euros have been frozen, which endangers the functioning of an institution that is the main source of income for the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza.

Spain announced an extraordinary donation of 20 million on Thursday, and Canada and Sweden reported on Saturday that they would once again fund the agency's operations.

The United Nations has opened an investigation while UNRWA defends itself against the accusations and denounces that Israel tortured some of its employees to force false testimonies.

Israel first targeted 12 of its 33,000 workers, who were expelled.

Later, he expanded the number to 450, who were supposedly part of Palestinian Islamist groups.

The head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, assures that he has not received evidence of this.

“It is not just Gaza that is affected by the accusations of the 12, it is the entire organization,” acknowledges Bouloukos, who describes how Israel's attack and the reduction in donations spreads like an unstoppable oil spill beyond the Stripe.

General view of the Aida refugee camp and the wall that separates it from Jerusalem.

Luis de Vega

“Conflict and occupation are part of everyone's lives, no matter what you do or where you are in the West Bank.

There is no Palestinian who is not affected in some way by the occupation,” he describes.

Israel cannot expect UNRWA to control each of its 33,000 workers, of whom 3,700 are in the West Bank and 13,000 in Gaza, he adds.

All of them, Bouloukos assures, continue to receive their salaries on time despite the economic collapse, something that many officials in the Palestinian Administration cannot say.

Meanwhile, in the Strip alone, 150 employees have died in the current war and 3,000 have been left homeless.

“We have a policy of zero tolerance for violations of neutrality, but we do not have a zero-risk environment,” concludes the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank.

Military objective

The “harassment” against the agency's employees is almost systematic as a consequence of the war in Gaza, he denounces while describing cases such as that of two employees who were recently stopped by Israeli soldiers on a West Bank road while shouting “UNRWA, Hamas!

UNRWA, Hamas!”

“They arrested them, took them out of the car, handcuffed them, threw them on the ground blindfolded and beat them,” details Bouloukos, who regrets that the agency is a direct “target” of the military.

That is just one of the evidence of the “escalation” of violence in the West Bank that the conflict has brought, which led to the record number of deaths being broken in 2023, above 500, more than triple that of 2022, he denounces. Bouloukos.

Many of the 12,000 incursions carried out last year by the Israeli army in the West Bank, where “it has access to the last corner”, took place in refugee camps.

Boulokos describes what UNRWA considers a “new strategy” of the Israeli Armed Forces to raze the infrastructure of the refugee camps, housing, roads, streets or sanitation, under the war situation.

The arrest of a person who lives in a multi-story house often means the destruction of the residence for 50 or 60 people, "like an earthquake," details the head of UNRWA in the West Bank.

This is the prevailing strategy since October 7 and the settlers are also part of it, denounces Bouloukos, referring to the most violent Jews of the half million who live in Palestinian territory.

He estimates that some 4,000 people belonging to a thousand families have been displaced from their place of residence and some 10,000 olive trees destroyed, which means a “tragedy” not only for the economy, but also for the Palestinian way of life, very attached to this crop.

Added to this is the denial of work permits by the Israeli authorities to more than 200,000 people in the West Bank in retaliation for the war.

“So you have a young male population unemployed, with no money in their pockets and nothing to do.

“This is a bad recipe, isn't it?” asks Adam Bouloukos.

And as a consequence, he adds, something “new” for him, such as assaults and robberies in stores due to the absence of money.

Interior of the UNRWA health center in the Aida refugee camp.

Luis de Vega

The more than 8,000 inhabitants of the Aida camp are descendants of the 2,500 who were expelled from their towns in historic Palestine and resettled in tents on this small plot of land on the outskirts of Bethlehem, coinciding with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Over the years, population density has skyrocketed above 100,000 inhabitants per square kilometer.

At the exit of the health facilities, Duaa, 30, and her son, Mohamed, three, represent those new generations of refugees who are settling in the same territory anchored in the desire to return to the place from where their ancestors were taken. .

In fact, the entrance arch to the refugee camp is a large lock crowned by a key several meters long that reminds everyone at every moment of the dream of return.

Meanwhile, in these displaced persons camps, which grow in the allocated space without any urbanization plan, they try to deal with common problems such as having drinking water and sanitation amid a poverty rate higher than other places in Palestine.

Some 300,000 refugees, about a third of all those living in the West Bank, live in a total of 19 camps.

UNRWA keeps 46,000 children in school in the West Bank alone.

“We are not responsible for managing the camp, UNRWA only provides services,” clarifies Amjad Abu Laban, one of the agency's employees in Aida.

But, over the years, these places continue to be the focus of continuous problems not only due to the low quality of life, but, basically, due to the violence generated by the occupation.

Aida, with soldiers stationed a few meters away, is one of the places that is most frequently assaulted by Israeli troops.

Aida, one of 19 refugee camps in the West Bank, occupies 70,000 square meters, the equivalent of about seven football fields.

Over the years, the tent canvas turned into brick and, once horizontal growth was impossible, the homes began to gain floors in a disorderly and uncontrolled manner.

“No one” supervises the works, acknowledges Amjad Abu Laban, one of the UNRWA employees responsible for Aida at the foot of a house to which a floor is being added.

Vehicles cannot fit through many of the narrow alleys, making evacuating people difficult.

Laban doesn't even want to think about a fire or an earthquake.

A ten-meter concrete wall built by Israel isolates the neighbors and separates Aida from the domain of the city of Jerusalem.

From the roof of the health center, built in 2020 by UNRWA, the houses of different Jewish settlements, illegal for the international community, appear from behind the fortress.

At street level, dozens of children rush out of school with their backpacks jumping on their backs.

They pass in front of the mural painted on a wall with the face of teenager Mohamed Azeha, who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers last November.

Children leaving school in the Aida refugee camp.

In the background, a mural with the image of a teenager killed by bullets from the Israeli army last November.

Luis de Vega

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