Gaza

Open letter to Hon. Ahmed Hussen: seven questions about Canada’s decision to suspend funding to UNRWA, the main provider of humanitarian aid to Gaza

Ottawa, February 3, 2024

Honourable Ahmed Hussen,

Minister of International Development

Dear Minister Hussen,

I am writing to ask you for clarification on the reasons and thinking behind Canada’s decision to “suspend” its contributions to UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees. Canada’s decision appears to have been made hastily, in contrast to some of our other allies like Norway and Iceland.

According to the National Post, this action has been taken at the encouragement of Israel and of several lobby groups in Canada on the grounds that some UNRWA employees allegedly participated in the October 7th attack on Israel.

Canada always proclaims adherence to international law and supports the idea of “evidence based” policy making. It seems to me that your decision falls short on both counts.

In this context, I would like to raise seven concerns with respect to Canada’s decision.

  1. How do you square this decision with Canada’s responsibilities flowing from the “provisional measures” ordered by the International Court of Justice? One of those immediate measures was to increase the flow of humanitarian aid, and all signatories to the Convention on Genocide are obliged to assist. Your decision seems to fly in face of the ICJ’s decision.
  • Are you aware that UNRWA is the only organization in Gaza with the current staff capable of delivering necessary food and medical aid to the starving population of Gaza? Making an increased contribution to WHO, or the International Red Cross, is a good gesture but of limited value in this emergency. Palestinians cannot eat money nor use it to perform surgery. If UNRWA is forced to shut down, any other organizations would have to recruit many of the same doctors, nurses, teachers, etc who now work for UNRWA.
  • Have you or your staff seen and had time to evaluate, the Israeli evidence that ANY UNRWA employees were involved in the events of October 7th?  How reliable is it? What exactly was their involvement? Among the thousands who entered Israel on October 7th , were hundreds of “gawkers” who flooded out of Gaza for the first time in their lives when the fence was torn down. Was any of the “evidence” procured through torture of Palestinians captured by Israel on October 7th. (UNRWA officials claim that Israeli told UNRWA about the accusations but did not share any actual evidence). Secretary Blinken told the media that he had not seen the evidence himself at the time of the US announcement.
  • Do you think it is purely coincidental that the Israeli claim was made public on the day of the damning ICJ decision which found it plausible that Israel was committing genocide? Media reports that Israel has probably been holding this information for some time. Releasing it on January 26 seems like a blatant attempt redirect international attention away from the charges against Israel by putting a key UN agency on the defensive.
  • How did the fact that the UNRWA is already the most audited, and most neutral, UN body factor into your decision? It was most recently audited for political “neutrality” by the USA in 2019. UNRWA has an extensive vetting process in hiring its staff. No evidence has been offered to support the Israeli claim that UNRWA is “overrun” by Hamas. Of course Hamas does enjoy considerable support among the Palestinian population. But the vetting process has meant that there is a lower level of Hamas presence among UNRWA employees than among the broader Gazan population.
  • Did your decision take into consideration that Israel has a particular political reason to oppose UNRWA and has carried on a systematic campaign over many decades to undermine it and have it disbanded? UNRWA was created to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians who were made refugees by Israel in 1947/48. According to UN resolution 194 they have a right to return to their homes. Israel appears to hope that if it can undermine or eliminate UNRWA it can eliminate its responsibility for the Palestinian refugee issue and wipe out their internationally supported the right of return?
  • What weight did you give to the fact that UNRWA’s 30,000 employees provide schooling and medical assistance to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and in the West Bank in addition to Gaza? Cutting off financial support for UNRWA will not only increase poverty in the region but contribute to regional instability.

Minister, I am concerned that a hasty decision by your government, based on pressure from certain lobby groups, will aggravate an already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, contribute to regional instability across the middle east, and damage Canada’s reputation as an evidence-based policy maker and reliable supporter of international law. It also exposes Canada to risk of prosecution for being a complice in genocide.

It would be my pleasure to provide you with any more information you might want on any of these matters. I suggest you might start by looking at this video interview with former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness.  

Thank you in advance.

Peter Larson

Chair, Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine

end of letter

Readers – if you want to know more

CTIP readers are encouraged to watch this excellent 36 minute interview with former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness.

I also encourage any CTIP reader who feels the minister’s decision might have been too hasty, to send a note to him at ahmed.hussen@parl.gc.ca

Or – just forward this post to him.

Canada Talks Israel Palestine (CTIP) is the weekly newsletter of Peter Larson, Chair of the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine (OFIP). It aims to promote a serious discussion in Canada about Canada’s response to the complicated and emotional Israel/Palestine issue with a focus on the truth, clear analysis and human rights for all. Readers with different points of view are invited to make comment.
Want to learn more about us? Go to Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine.ca

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After the International Court of Justice found that there were plausible grounds that Israel is committing genocide, Foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly ducked questions about Canada’s response. She said that Canada would wait for a final judgement (at least a year away). But she avoided commenting on the urgent “provisional measures” which the court ordered. There are things that Canada could and should do right now. Read

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“A textbook case of genocide the UN is powerless to stop” – resignation letter of senior UN official

Craig Mokiber resigned from his senior position at the UN on October 30th. In a final letter to his boss, Volker Turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights, he praised the UN’s work in human rights in other conflicts, but expressed anger and frustration over its inability to offer the same protection to Palestinians. He offered a radical 10 point program on what the UN and the international community needs to do. Read more…

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“The South African accusation of Israeli genocide before the International Court of Justice is a very big deal” – international law expert

Israeli’s murderous attack on Gaza has led many to accuse it of genocide – the most serious of war crimes. Now South Africa has made the allegation formally in a filing before the International Court of Justice. This will cause problems for Israel, for the USA and even for Canada, according to well known Canadian international human rights lawyer Alex Neve. Watch our interview with him……

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Israel’s Gaza campaign is a continuation of its “Hundred Years’ War” against the Palestinian people – Prof. Rashid Khalidi
Photos show scale of the destruction of Israel air attacks on Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Israel claims that it is carrying out a “war on Hamas” but the evidence shows that its objective is something bigger. Professor Rashid Khalidi argues that this is one more chapter in Zionism’s “hundred years war“ to take over all of Palestine and expel the Palestinian people. Read more….

The Israeli government formally declared war on Hamas on October 8th, setting the stage for a massive Israeli military attack on Gaza. But the destruction of water mains, hospitals, electric power stations, water treatment plants, schools and other infrastructure indicates that Israel is really aiming at something much darker – to make Gaza unliveable and force Palestinians to leave. That fear is borne out by statements from Israeli ministers and even from a recently leaked Israeli government report.

Israeli cabinet minister Avi Dichter declared: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba … Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.” (In 1947/1948, Jewish forces expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, in what Palestinians refer to as the “Nakba” or “Disaster”).  

Minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

Prime Minister Netanyahu himself recently made a speech in Hebrew in which he cited a biblical passage which called for the death of all Israel’s enemies, men, women, and children, as well as their “infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

And now an Israeli government document which has been leaked suggests the “mass relocation” of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and makes explicit Israel’s intention to carry out another mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The leaked document, first reported in Israeli media, was compiled by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence and had apparently been already drafted well before the October 7th attack.

All of this has revived Palestinians’ memories of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948, which Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe.

Neither Israel’s brutality nor its objective come as a surprise to Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. It fits into what he calls the “hundred years’ war on Palestine”, initiated by the British at the end of the first world war and carried on today by Israel backed by the United States.

Dr. Khalidi speaking at an OFIP webinar Nov. 2020

Khalidi’s thesis is brilliantly laid out in a 2019 book called “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” in which he describes the successive Israeli attempts to take over Palestinian territory. He agreed to do a Canadian book launch of his book in a webinar with the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine in November 2020.

In a recent interview with US journalist Chris Hedges, Dr. Khalidi explains how the recent brutal Israeli attack on Gaza is a continuation of this Hundred Years’ War.

Canada Talks Israel Palestine (CTIP) is the weekly newsletter of Peter Larson, Chair of the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine (OFIP). It aims to promote a serious discussion in Canada about Canada’s response to the complicated and emotional Israel/Palestine issue with a focus on the truth, clear analysis and human rights for all. Readers with different points of view are invited to make comment.
Want to learn more about us? Go to Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine.ca