UN: Israel trying to delegitimize aid organizations working in occupied territories
The United Nations aid coordination body says the Tel Aviv regime and Israeli groups have been trying over the past years to delegitimize humanitarian organizations working in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The push has been “advanced by a network of Israeli civil society groups and some associated organizations elsewhere, with the apparent support” of the regime itself, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report on Wednesday.
It said the overall bid had a negative impact on the ability of humanitarian organizations to deliver assistance and advocate on behalf of Palestinian rights.
The bid, the UN body said, had featured “targeted defamation and smear campaigns alleging violations of counter-terrorism legislation and international law, or political action against Israel.”
The report, however, stressed that most of these allegations “are baseless or misrepresent and distort critical, factual or legal elements.”
The campaign also included “impediments by Israeli banks to the transferring of funds and procedures to close down accounts; refusal of Israeli venues to host events involving certain NGOs; and the potential undermining of information disseminated by organizations whose reputation has been damaged.”
The Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), which represents the majority of international NGOs and non-profit organizations in the occupied territories, conducted a survey among its members between October and November 2018 to assess the impact of the campaign. Forty-three percent of AIDA’s members said the campaign had undermined their funding.
The campaign comes as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living inside more than a dozen refugee camps across the Israeli-occupied West Bank are in dire need of daily assistance by such organizations.
The pressure facing the Palestinians compounded in August 2018, when the United States, Israel’s biggest ally, said it was ending all funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
“The United States will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation,” the US State Department said in a statement on August 31, 2018.
Washington called the UN's Palestinian refugee agency "irredeemably flawed."
Palestinian officials condemned the move, with President Mahmoud Abbas saying the US decision was a “flagrant assault" against Palestinians.
UNRWA has rejected the Israeli accusations, saying it operates under a strict mandate outlined by the United Nations.
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