Dozens of citizens staged a sit-in Sunday morning outside the UNRWA funding headquarters in Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza to demand renewing UNRWA´s mandate and continuing its services to refugees.
Attiyah Salha, a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front in the northern Gaza Strip, called on countries that have stopped funding UNRWA under the pretext of financial corruption to reverse their decisions to suspend their support until the results of the UN investigation are completed.
He called for the widest political movement towards states and donors to assume their political, legal and moral responsibilities to fund UNRWA as an institution to alleviate the suffering of refugees until they return to their lands from which they had been displaced since 1948.
He also called for renewing the mandate of UNRWA at the next session of the UN General Assembly and ensuring that the largest number of votes is obtained.
Salha asserted that the Palestinian people will stand a strong barrier in the face of the American project called the "deal of the century", stressing the need to preserve the Palestinian presence in the camps and to develop the work of the Department of Refugees Affairs in the PLO, to increase its responsibilities on the limits of its presence in the Strip towards the rest of the refugee communities.
Salha affirmed that the issue of refugees and the right of return are two main axes to deal with the deal, calling for the widest popular movement in the Palestinian camps in the homeland and the Diaspora, adhering to UNRWA, and rejecting the resettlement projects and the alternative projects of the right of return.
He stressed that this requires the development of the tools of the mass movement of refugees through effective popular committees carrying programs that respond to the challenges and risks facing the issue and national rights, including the issue of refugees and the right of return.
He stressed the need to strengthen the role of civil control on the services and projects of UNRWA and its budgets and to devote the principle of community participation.
For his part, member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front Ibrahim Sultan, that UNRWA is the real witness to the crime of the Nakba, which was the cause of the suffering of the Palestinian refugee people for 71 years.
In his speech, the National and Islamic Forces warned the UNRWA administration of its continued curtailments and austerity measures for the services provided to the Palestinian refugees.
The Sultan called on the United Nations and international and human rights institutions to stand by our Palestinian people and support their steadfastness and support UNRWA to carry out its duties and provide its services until the right of return is achieved in accordance with resolution 194.
