Introduction

Having looked at the aid aspects that relate to funds to the PA and CSOs, it is now time to look at similar aspects peculiar to UNRWA as one of the key organisations responsible for aid delivery to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. There are two core issues to focus on: first, the ways the post-Oslo aid dynamics have impacted humanitarian operations in Gaza; second, how these dynamics have led to the imposition of further control over the humanitarian spaces in the territory. We have seen in the introductory chapter that the postaid dynamics are associated with two things: the ‘aid for peace’ and the set of political and security conditions that influenced this paradigm.

It is important for us to understand the way UNRWA conducts its work and how its operations have changed over past decades, more specifically following the creation of the PA in 1994. The changing working dynamics of the organisation have exposed it to a great deal of criticism from different stakeholders, including refugees, the PA and other humanitarian organisations, especially its service provision in Gaza. There is a need to investigate in depth the challenges the organisation is experiencing in its attempt to continue its operations in Gaza, particularly after the recent significant cut of US funding to the organisation by the Trump administration. Hence, it is essential to this analysis to investigate those elements of control discussed throughout this thesis, and in particular how Western donors impose certain operational agendas on the organisation and how these agendas are influenced by securitised and politicised frameworks.

We will briefly look at the historical role of UNRWA as an organisation, a role that was established solely to assist displaced Palestinian refugees to integrate socially and economically into their new community and to provide the necessary humanitarian relief to facilitate this integration. This will help us demonstrate how the humanitarian operations have changed over time and how UNRWA's roles have changed in accordance with the political and demographic changes on the ground as well as the funding trends of the organisation's main donors. These factors, as will be demonstrated in the following sections, had a significant impact on the level and types of services the organisation could provide and the organisation's autonomy over its operational and financial agendas.