UNRWA: From Birth to Present, Palestinians Can't Imagine a Future Without It

For Nour Abo Aisha, a Palestinian who grew up in the Gaza Strip, UNRWA is not just a humanitarian organization – it is an inseparable part of her life. From receiving her first vaccinations as a baby at an UNRWA clinic to years of schooling in its classrooms, the UN agency has accompanied her and her family across generations.

Her family's story begins in 1950, when UNRWA staff first approached her grandfather, Ahmed Abo Aisha, then just six years old. After the 1948 Nakba, his family fled on foot from their hometown of Bir al-Sabea, leaving behind all their belongings, property deeds, and livestock. They carried no identification. It was UNRWA that issued him a birth certificate with an estimated date of birth, giving him a “documented existence” and later enabling him to obtain an ID card.

UNRWA also provided his family with the “kart al-moun” – a family registration card considered the sole legal and political proof of their refugee status. From there, the agency gradually built refugee camps across Gaza: from Jabalia and Shati in the north to Nuseirat, Bureij, Maghazi, and Deir el-Balah in the center, and Khan Younis and Rafah in the south. Each camp had its own schools and clinics.

Her grandfather, then her father, and later she herself – all attended UNRWA schools. By her generation, UNRWA had built and operated nearly 200 schools across Gaza. She fondly recalls wearing the blue-and-white checkered uniform to Al-Daraj Co-educational School B, where students received notebooks, pens, and backpacks bearing the UNRWA logo, and each term were given cash assistance right in the classroom.

UNRWA provided more than education – it offered free medical services, regular food distributions through “kapona” vouchers for rice, flour, sugar, milk, lentils, and cooking oil. The agency also served as an employer for thousands of Palestinians. For her, “UNRWA became the backbone of Palestinian education, laying the foundation for Gaza to achieve one of the highest literacy rates in the world despite occupation and siege.”

Now, Palestinians face a grave threat as Israeli and US officials have called for banning UNRWA’s operations in Gaza, while reports and an Israeli Supreme Court justice may reject appeals against laws aimed at restricting the agency. She says, “My heart aches” watching efforts to tear down an organization that has been part of their lives from birth.

In her view, the attacks on UNRWA are really a scheme to erase the Palestinian refugee issue. “They want UNRWA to disappear and our right of return to be denied. But we will not give up. The world must not give up either.”

In 1948, approximately 200,000 Palestinians poured into Gaza. Seventy-eight years later, that number is 2 million refugees. She stresses that UNRWA is the only agency capable of responding to the displacement and dispossession of nearly all of Gaza’s population after the war. If the international community wants to repair the devastation of Israel’s war, they must support UNRWA and block attempts to dissolve the agency.