Israel’s Unrwa ban

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What will it mean for Palestinians if Israel bans Unrwa, the UN agency that provides vital aid and essential services to millions of refugees in Gaza and the West Bank? The proposals have drawn widespread condemnation and warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe. Israeli politicians have accused UNRWA staff of taking part in the 7 October attacks alongside Hamas, and have designated it a terror group. We visit refugee camps across the occupied territories to hear about the role UNRWA plays in education, health and emergency food aid, and people’s despair about the prospect of it disappearing. The agency’s services and dependents have mushroomed over the last 75 years. We look at its origins and why it has long been controversial in Israel.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	These school girls are putting on a play using puppets.
0:13.1	A classroom of seven and eight-year-olds in light blue, checkered pinafores,
0:18.6	gazes on as four of their friends from a makeshift puppet theater
0:22.6	tell the story of a shepherd
0:24.8	protecting their sheep from a menacing wolf.
0:30.5	These students live in Sha'ath
0:32.6	camp on the outskirts of Jerusalem
0:34.8	and they're all Palestinian refugees,
0:38.9	like their parents and grandparents before them.
0:43.6	But from their beaning faces, you would know nothing of their precarious and sometimes difficult
0:50.2	existence.
0:54.0	There are more than 600 boys and girls in schools like this throughout the camp,
0:59.0	but they are not run by any Palestinian authority, nor any Israeli one.
1:05.0	These schools, like dozens of others here in the West Bank and hundreds in Gaza,
1:10.0	are run by a humanitarian aid agency.
1:15.0	It provides health care,
1:17.3	builds and repairs roads and homes,
1:19.5	organizes waste collection.
1:21.4	In many ways, it looks more like a government.
1:24.2	It even gives loans to small entrepreneurs,
1:27.2	all on top of supplying emergency food
1:29.4	and shelter to the impoverished and victims of war. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.