The new Israeli map proposing to annex 80% of the West Bank, explained
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich released a map proposing to annex over 80% of the West Bank. He's not far off from the rest of the Israeli political establishment — even the "pragmatic" opposition.

BY QASSAM MUADDI

More than 80 percent of the occupied West Bank would become part of Israel, according to a new annexation proposal drafted by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday. 

The hardline Minister presented a map showing all of the West Bank as a part of Israel, including Bethlehem, the Jordan Valley, and the entire Palestinian countryside, while only six Palestinian cities — Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus, Jericho, Ramallah, and Hebron — were marked as isolated ghettoes. Smotrich said that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) opposes his plan, Israel would “uproot it like it did with Hamas.” Smotrich also called on Netanyahu to implement his proposal if he wished to “enter history as a great leader.”

On the same day as Smotrich’s presentation, Israeli forces arrested the mayor of Hebron, Tayseer Abu Sneineh. Hebron is the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank and is home to 800,000 Palestinians. Some 500 messianic Israeli settlers have been imposing their presence in the city’s old town since the 1980s, and Abu Sneineh is known for his role in a Fatah cell that planned and carried out the shooting of six Israeli and Jewish settlers in the city’s old town in 1980, locally known as the “Dabuya Operation.” After his initial arrest, Abu Sneineh was later released in a prisoner swap in 1983 alongside other members of the cell.

Abu Sneineh’s arrest came days after Israeli media outlets reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was considering the establishment of a tribal “emirate” in Hebron, separate from the Palestinian Authority, which first surfaced in the pages of the Wall Street Journal last July. 

Local Palestinian media speculated as to whether Abu Sneineh’s arrest was possibly a prelude to removing potential sources of local opposition to annexation, especially given Abu Sneineh’s background and his status as a consequential local nationalist figure in Hebron.

These events, in addition to a number of other developments in the lead-up to the Smotrich proposal, have catapulted the issue of Israel’s potential annexation of the West Bank to the top of the Israeli government’s agenda, and have left millions of Palestinians in the West Bank unsure of their future.

The Israeli cabinet met last Sunday for the second time in two weeks to discuss options for the annexation of parts of the West Bank. It was followed by a meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week, in which Saar informed Rubio of Israel’s intention to “impose Israeli sovereignty” on the Palestinian territory, according to the Israeli news site, Walla.

Meanwhile, Israel has been engaging in a show of force against the PA by launching several raids on major West Bank cities that make up Area A under the Oslo Accords, which comprise about 18% of the West Bank and are supposed to be under PA jurisdiction. The Israeli army launched the largest military raid in years on Ramallah last week, occupying the city center of the PA’s de facto capital with hundreds of troops accompanied by Israeli media crews for over three hours. The very next day, the Israeli army launched a similar raid in Nablus, the second most important PA center of power.

Although Israel claims that its latest moves to annex the West Bank are a response to the announcement by several European states that they intend to recognize Palestine as a state, Israel’s annexation of the West Bank has been years in the making. 

In 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged during his election campaign to annex the Jordan Valley. The first Trump administration allegedly stopped Israel twice, in January and June of 2020, from formally announcing annexation.

However, the same Trump administration announced its “Deal of the Century” plan in 2020, which included the annexation of most of the West Bank, including all of the Jordan Valley. Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over illegal settlements in the West Bank, the occupied Syrian Golan heights, and over all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Palestinians overwhelmingly rejected it.

Israel’s current plan of annexation is based on Smotrich’s 2015 “decisive plan,” which aims to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and expel Palestinians through encouraging so-called “voluntary migration.” Smotrich also said that Palestinians in the West Bank would either submit to Israeli sovreignty, leave the country, or “be dealt with” by Israeli forces. After October 7, Smotrich said that the annexation of the West Bank should be Israel’s response to the Hamas attack. He later said that Israel’s expulsion of half of Gaza’s population would “set a precedent” to do the same in the West Bank.

Over the past two years, Smotrich has been leading a campaign of financial strangulation against the PA, pirating Palestinian customs money that Israel collects on the PA’s behalf as per the Oslo Accords. Smotrich has also periodically threatened to ban Israeli banks from dealing with Palestinian banks, and in the meantime has compelled Israeli banks to limit the amount of cash that Palestinian banks can transfer to Israeli banks. 

Both of the above measured have forced the PA into an ongoing financial crisis, unable to pay public functionaries, medics, teachers, and security staff their full monthly salaries for months on end. And if Smotrich goes through with actually banning all financial dealings between Israeli and Palestinian banks, it would spell total financial collapse in the West Bank, threatening the PA’s very existence.

Weakening the PA to this level is meant to obviate its need for Palestinians and to pave the way for annexation. And Smotrich is just the face of this recent push to isolate and besiege the PA — he is one of many Israeli ministers key to the continuity of Netanyahu’s government, including Itamar Ben-Gvir, Amichai Elyahu, and Orit Strock, all of whom represent the religious right and control the majority in the Israeli Knesset.

The Knesset has also been laying the legal grounds for the West Bank’s annexation for years. In 2018, the Knesset passed the Israeli Nation State Law, which states that the only right to self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea belongs to the Jewish people. In July of last year, the Knesset passed a bill rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state anywhere between the river and the sea, and a year later — last July — the Knesset passed a bill enabling the annexation of the West Bank.

The prelude to the official annexation of the Palestinian territory isn’t limited to Israeli measures, but also includes what are so far symbolic U.S. moves underwriting Israel’s intentions. As European states, including France, the UK, and Belgium, announce plans to recognize a Palestinian state during the UN General Assembly later this month, the U.S., for its part, revoked visas for Palestinian officials, including the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, set to attend the General Assembly. The move was followed by Washington’s decision to stop issuing visas to any Palestinian passport holders.

In essence, this means that the U.S. is implicitly supporting Israel’s plans to erase the possibility of a Palestinian state and extending Israel’s control over all Palestinian territories. 

Although Smotrich’s most recent plan has been described as “maximalist,” the general orientation of Israeli lawmakers, even the “pragmatic” opposition represented by Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, does not oppose annexation in any meaningful sense. The main differences that do exist between Israelis is not over annexation per se, but over its extent. 

The less “maximalist” Israeli lawmakers either call for the annexation of all Israeli settlements, the annexation of Area C (which makes up over 60% of the West Bank), or the annexation of the Jordan Valley. But all those versions would deprive Palestinians of any meaningful geographic continuity, control over natural resources and borders, or prospects for future population growth. In essence, the entire Israeli political class is deadset on making a Palestinian state an impossibility. This is the range of political currents the U.S. is picking between to support.

Ultimately, the U.S. will be the one to decide whether official annexation as a whole will move forward. Axios quoted two unnamed U.S. officials that it was “unlikely” Trump would support such a move. But even if Washington halts the de jureannexation of the West Bank, it will most likely offer an “alternative” that would solidify de facto annexation.

https://mondoweiss.net/2025/09/the-new-israeli-map-proposing-to-annex-80-of-the-west-bank-explained/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

By Chris Hedges
The Chris Hedges Report

For millions of Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is more than just a humanitarian organization — it is a lifeline. For 75 years, it has provided crucial infrastructure support and sustained a population facing heavy repression at the behest of Israel. For the past 22 months, the organization has proved as important as ever in the midst of genocide.

UNRWA and its facilities have provided schools, hospitals, cafeterias and more for Palestinians when no other help existed. Precisely because it is sometimes the sole entity continuing to keep Palestinians alive, Israel targets them and has killed 310 staff members in Gaza.

On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, host Chris Hedges is joined by Mara Kronenfeld, executive director of UNRWA USA. Kronenfeld details the assaults on UNRWA by the Zionist entity, from the brutal bombings of schools and shelters in Gaza to the farcical legal battles waged against it in the United States.

“When there are attempts to eradicate UNRWA in Gaza, it’s not just eradicating the helpers, the key humanitarians… they’re destroying the educators… [and] doing further damage to any commercial activity, the ability for people to pay for those goods and services that are desperately needed by starving people today,” Kronenfeld tells Hedges.

Host: Chris Hedges

Producer: Max Jones

Intro: Diego Ramos

Crew: Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges

Transcript: Diego Ramos

Transcript:

Chris Hedges: Israel has methodically destroyed all institutions that sustain civil society in Gaza. Schools. Universities. Civil administration. Courts. Police precincts. Hospitals. Water treatment plants. Museums. But its most important target in its systematic destruction of civil society and the infrastructure that sustains it is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA.

UNRWA, established in the wake of the 1948 war that saw the creation of Israel, provides basic services to about 5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Israel’s long animus towards UNRWA reached a new intensity following the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7th. Israeli officials accused UNRWA employees of collaborating with Hamas militants in the attack, a charge that led to an internal investigation by the U.N. agency and the dismissal of nine of its 13,000 employees. 

The charge saw the United States and other donor nations suspend funding to UNRWA, although most nations, with the exception of the United States, later resumed contributions. In 2023 the United States provided $371 million to UNRWA, about 30 percent of its annual operating costs.

But Israel was not done. The Israeli parliament or Knesset promulgated two laws in October 2024 to effectively outlaw the U.N. agency. The first law prohibits Israeli officials from having any contact with UNRWA or any individual or agency acting on their behalf. 

The second bars UNRWA from operating any representative office, providing any services or carrying out any activities, directly or indirectly, in Israel. In January UNRWA was banned from Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

UNRWA has not been permitted to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza, including medicines, medical supplies and food, since March 2. UNRWA warehouses in Egypt and Jordan have enough stockpiled food, medicine and hygiene supplies to fill 6,000 trucks.

The war against UNWRA, which has included the killing by Israel of 360 UNWRA workers since the genocide began, has been accompanied by food shortages in Gaza that have resulted in widespread malnutrition and starvation. At least 100 children have succumbed in recent weeks to malnutrition and hunger. 

At the same time, Israel has set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) that uses paltry food packages to lure hungry Palestinians to southern Gaza where they will be held in concentration camps overseen by the Israeli military. 

The chaotic scramble to get a food package from one of four distribution points – UNRWA used to have 400 food hubs – has seen close to 2,000 Palestinians killed and thousands wounded by Israeli soldiers and U.S. mercenaries that run the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Joining me to discuss Israel’s orchestrated starvation, attack on civil society and war on UNRWA is Mara Kronenfeld, Executive Director of UNRWA USA. So Mara, let’s just begin with the importance of UNRWA. And of course, I’ve spent a lot of time in Gaza and the West Bank. 

They run the schools because of, especially in Gaza since the election of Hamas in 2006, the borders have been tightly controlled by Israel. We can’t stress how vital UNRWA is, so just lay out what UNRWA does and then maybe you can amplify a little bit as to why Israel hates the organization so much.

Mara Kronenfeld: Sure, thank you, Chris, and thank you for having me and shedding additional light on this very important topic, especially right now, as you’ve mentioned, watching the killing machine that is GHF in Gaza, and UNRWA really is the moral inverse of GHF. 

So up until these atrocities of these last 22 months, UNRWA essentially operated as the de facto, as you mentioned, Ministry of Education, educating over 60% of young people, kindergarten through ninth grade, de facto Ministry of Health in many aspects because so many of the primary and secondary health clinics were run by UNRWA.

There’s a network of health clinics across Gaza and then a ministry of kind of civil affairs. While UNRWA did not run, did not own the refugee camps, UNRWA was certainly in charge of the civil infrastructure of building out new shelters, repairing shelters that were damaged every time an Israeli bomb was lobbed toward neighborhoods in Gaza.

So UNRWA was almost, alongside the ruling party of Hamas, almost a kind of governmental operation in the breadth of its services and in the depth of its services, how many people that UNRWA served. A good over 60% of the population prior to October 7th were refugees and UNRWA’s mandate, of course, is for refugees.

Now, unfortunately, as we’ve all seen, the entire population of Gaza is refugees. UNRWA performs similar services in East Jerusalem, in the West Bank, in Jordan, in Syria and in Lebanon but Gaza was the place that had and still has the greatest number of UNRWA employees. 

Of the 33,000 employees that have worked at UNRWA across the five field sites that I mentioned, 12-13,000 of them worked in Gaza, and there are still 12,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza today on the ground.

And while what you said is absolutely true, Israel has banned UNRWA, what is not clear to many and one of the things I want to clarify is that UNRWA staff who are Palestinian themselves are still on the ground and still doing a lot of key essential work. 

And I’ll expound on that further as we continue this conversation. But in terms of Israel’s animus toward UNRWA, it has been there a long time.

Certainly Israel didn’t want to be responsible for the food and care and schooling of this population. They kind of begrudgingly let UNRWA, obviously a U.N. agency, do this work with the support of the world community, both via a mandate at the U.N. that was renewed every few years and the support, the bilateral support that came from nations around the world. And as you mentioned, the U.S. being primary among them.

The U.S. has funded UNRWA about $7 billion over the course of UNRWA’s lifetime. And in Gaza, UNRWA has had the longest food operation, basically 76 years of providing food to populations in need, the longest food operation ever on the planet.

So the problem with UNRWA when it comes to Israel is that UNRWA appeared to represent the so-called right of return, whereby refugees would have a right to return to that land they were forcibly displaced from.

And in reality, that right is instituted outside of whether UNRWA exists or not, but UNRWA appeared to people to uphold that right and that is one of the reasons UNRWA has been attacked.

And then I hate to say it, but as we come to today and I’m watching the mass killing of civilians by the Israeli authorities, by the Israeli military and the killing machine that is GHF, it is very clear that UNRWA was disliked for the very fact that it is keeping and has kept and has continued to keep Palestinians alive and while keeping Palestinians alive is this idea that there will be a future sovereign Palestinian state and that is something clearly this Israeli government has absolutely no interest in and is destroying all potential, is attempting to destroy all potential for that future state, both in the absolute destruction of Gaza, as you’ve seen, and now we’re seeing in the invasions in the West Bank and the attempt to bifurcate the West Bank in half.

“[I]t is very clear that UNRWA was disliked for the very fact that it is keeping and has kept and has continued to keep Palestinians alive.”

Chris Hedges: Well, they’ve also attacked UNRWA installations outside of Gaza in East Jerusalem, I think where its headquarters was, correct? And then also I just read in Jenin and in the West Bank.

Mara Kronenfeld: Yes, they are and in East Jerusalem, if you can imagine, even with the Knesset laws, UNRWA was still, UNRWA teachers, the primary operation in East Jerusalem was schools. And UNRWA teachers were still teaching, students were still going there up until a couple of months ago when the army and some municipal actors raided the schools and scared the living hell out of young school kids.

So now these school kids in East Jerusalem are not going to school because yes, they forcibly removed the teachers and the students from the UNRWA schools.

Chris Hedges: The foreign staff had to leave Gaza from UNRWA, although, as you mentioned, you have 12 or 13,000 Palestinian employees who receive salaries. And this is a very important point that’s lost on a lot of people, the economic impact of UNRWA. Perhaps you can explain.

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, UNRWA was essentially the largest employer and is today, I’m sure, because there’s not much of a commercial sector, of course, in Gaza right now. UNRWA was essentially the largest non-governmental employer in Gaza. And yes, a lot of the economy depended on those salaries that UNRWA employees received and their ability to buy goods and services with those salaries.

So when there are attempts to eradicate UNRWA in Gaza, it’s not just eradicating the helpers, the key humanitarians, it’s not just eradicating the educators, the people who have provided a first-rate education to 600,000 students a year with those students graduating with higher, their graduation levels were higher under UNRWA than the public school system by far and at a very cost effective rate.

So they’re destroying the educators, they’re attempting to destroy the helpers, the humanitarians but they’re also doing further damage to any commercial activity, the ability for people to pay for those goods and services that are desperately needed by starving people today. It is one of the only ways in which people in Gaza are getting a regular salary at this moment.

Chris Hedges: And with this assault, the cutting of aid, I mean, after these accusations, which let’s be clear, Israel never provided any evidence to support these accusations, which is fairly common, let’s talk a little bit about what you’re able to do and how effectively Israel has been able to cripple your operations.

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, so these 12,000 staff in Gaza are providing immense support at this time. So no matter how many trucks get in or don’t, and as you mentioned, UNRWA has the equivalent of 6,000 trucks of emergency food aid, of medicine, of hygiene materials.

Mind you, the Israelis have not let sanitary napkins into Gaza for months. There’s a silent epidemic of some 700,000 young women who don’t have access to sanitary napkins. Again, just another detail which is utterly beyond the pale, why sanitary napkins could be dangerous in Gaza right now.

So UNRWA is providing on the ground the primary healthcare because the hospital system in Gaza has been so systematically attacked and nearly destroyed. UNRWA is providing 60% of all medical consultations right now. So those are the doctors and nurses and health workers that are really the frontline of medical care, if you can call it that, right now in Gaza.

And then those workers are also cleaning the toxic waste, essentially, that has accumulated everywhere in Gaza. And this is even more important with the temperatures being so high. We’re seeing waterborne illnesses, people having rashes. So the cleanup of toxic waste is essential. And UNRWA staff are the individuals, the engineers with the knowledge of how to repair the water wells when they’ve been damaged so that the population can get water whenever possible and also run the desalination pumps.

You know, a lot of this work though, I should say, is dependent on fuel and that’s another thing that the Israelis are not letting in and when they’re letting in, only in dribs and drabs. And finally, UNRWA is the front line of trauma support for children, trying to provide any sense of normalcy in what is an indescribable, unbearable situation that I shudder every time I really think about what it would be like to be a child, a parent, anybody in Gaza right now.

Chris Hedges: When the genocide began, one of the things we saw was Israel targeting UNRWA facilities, schools, warehouses. And let’s be clear, Israel bombs individual wells to destroy them. But that was an indication of where we were going. UNRWA and, of course, as I mentioned, 360 employees were killed, many of them in targeted assassinations. So the attacks, the attempt to dismantle UNRWA began almost immediately.

Mara Kronenfeld:Yes, absolutely. And mind you, it is very clear from the sky, at least so I’ve been told, and I certainly believe this, that each U.N. building, each UNRWA building has the blue U.N. flag on the roof of the building. So the Israeli military knew very well what it was targeting and the buildings that it was destroying. And the very even sadder and diabolical aspect of this is it wasn’t just targeting UNRWA itself, although that was a key target.

These buildings that were being bombed from the early days following October 7th were shelters. So the primary buildings that have been destroyed or damaged, heavily damaged, were actually UNRWA schools. Schools that time after time had become shelters in times where Gaza was being bombarded by Israel. And those schools had become safe places during the many different bombing campaigns.

And then Israel effectively destroyed so many of these shelters post-October 2023. And that is one of the reasons we have something which has never happened in Gaza before, which is a vast amount of people, including women and children sleeping on the street.

This is absolutely something that did not take place in Gaza. And it’s made only worse and why people are sleeping in the streets and not even in makeshift camps is another supply that Israel has not allowed in are tents and tent poles. Again, it’s diabolical to force people to be out in the open under such conditions. Just diabolical.

Chris Hedges: Talk about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. You mentioned it. What is it doing it? Of course the United States and Israel argues that this is going to be UNRWA’s replacement.

Mara Kronenfeld: It is, as I said in the beginning, it is the moral and operational inverse of UNRWA. As you mentioned, UNRWA had 400 sites from which they distributed aid to people in need. UNRWA’s aid delivery was based on principles of neutrality, transparency, the dignity of the beneficiaries. 

And UNRWA, the reason there are 400 sites is because the necessity to bring aid to where people are and the knowledge that not everybody, and particularly the most vulnerable in the population can travel to aid sites.

And so one of the biggest problems and really, I believe, intentional operational realities of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was to only have a couple of sites and, as you mentioned, that are in the south very close to the Egyptian border and this meant that the only people who could really travel the nine to twelve kilometers to these sites were those who were young men primarily who were not disabled or elderly.

And then what we’ve seen is those people seeking aid, those desperate people, then being shot at. And shot at not only by people working, the mercenaries, the American mercenaries working at GHF, but by the IDF as well as they queue in lines. You can’t call these lines, these are cages, like animals, and I’ll talk about the modality. You can’t call modality of how they distribute aid. You can’t say distribution. I’ll come to that in a second.

But what I want to go back to is that the people who are not getting this aid, who do not have access to this aid, are the disabled, are the widows who are left to care for their children, are the orphans, are the elderly. So the most needy in Gaza right now are not able to get that aid.

And then when you do, when you are able to make it these 9-12 kilometers starving, beleaguered, you stand in line and then at some point basically somebody says go and and like a real life Squid Games, you have people racing into an open area to be the first to be thrown food at and to gather that and fight other people. 

We’ve heard of people bringing knives to try to be able to get to be the first one to that food and then we’ve also seen, thanks to the brave, brave testimony of Anthony Aguilar, the 25 year Army veteran and former Green Beret, we know that people are being shot at as they try to seek aid.

He mentions war crime after war crime in this setting. He talks about a young boy who came to thank him for being a part of provision of some aid. And then that young boy was shot by the IDF in front of his own eyes. 

So I beg anybody who’s listening who thinks somehow that this killing machine is not happening, please listen to the testimony of Anthony Aguilar. If you have any doubt, please listen.

“[W]e know that people are being shot at as they try to seek aid.”

It is essential testimony and it’s one that I have to say I’ve heard from many sources that our government right now is refusing to hear and even listen to, just pretending it doesn’t exist.

Chris Hedges: Well, it’s just bait. It’s luring people to the south. They want to put them in ringed concentration camps surrounded by security, everyone vetted. And of course, they’re trying to preclude any Hamas or any young militants from entering and separating them from the militants. The aid is often handed out at two in the morning, only for an hour.

What’s the goal? Where do you see this going? And of course, now we are watching Israel call up reservists to occupy and obliterate, erase, destroy Gaza City.

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, well, I can absolutely say it is not humanitarian in its goal. If this was a humanitarian operation, the dignity of the beneficiaries would be front and center. If this was a humanitarian operation, we wouldn’t only be talking about the delivery of food. 

And mind you, we have heard that the food is lentils and rice and things that require water, which in and of themselves, water is hard to get. So these are not necessarily the materials you would be providing a population that has trouble accessing water and that is facing malnutrition and starvation. This wouldn’t be the first thing they should necessarily eat.

If this were a humanitarian operation, it wouldn’t just be food, it would be medicine. It wouldn’t just be food, would be medicine and would be shelter items. If this was a humanitarian operation, trying to corral people into what they’re also called so-called humanitarian cities in the south, there would be plans for education of the children. 

There would be plans outside of simply feeding people. There would be talk about setting up medical clinics. None of that has been part of the GHF plan.

And when you ask about the ultimate goal, you know, the Israeli government, this extremist government, Kahanist government has said the quiet part out loud. They consistently, if only people in the U.S. would listen to their own words, [Bezalel] Smotrich, Minister Smotrich himself said that our goal is to take the population to the south and then hope, make life so horrible for them that they will either leave on their own accord out of Gaza and into Egypt, and/or they would be forcibly displaced, essentially ongoing ethnic cleansing to remove them from Gaza.

They’ve said that out loud. So it’s no surprise to any of us who are paying attention to their own words. And mind you, they’ve also called Gaza’s children animals, children of darkness, snakes, that there are no innocent children. It should not be surprising to any of us what GHF, this Israel and U.S.-backed GHF is doing given the words of Israeli leaders themselves.

Chris Hedges: And the response of the international community and the UN.

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, UNRWA has been very clear. Most of the U.N. has been very clear that this is not how humanitarian aid is done. This is really, you know, the war crimes that somebody like Anthony Aguilar has witnessed that many, I hate to even focus on him because how many Palestinians have been saying this but have not been believed.

But I think it’s really important to note that this is a new era. If we’re talking about for-profit aid distribution, we’re talking about weaponized aid distribution, actually before that even weaponized hunger on purpose, starvation of a population to make them so weak and terrified and beleaguered that the hope is, from the Israeli side, that they leave.

This is really new and this is something that unfortunately could be modeled in Sudan, it could be taken to other places. And we’re seeing kind of the end of an international, of an idea that even in war there are rules and a kind of post-World War II ideology that even in war there are rules, that there is an understanding of international human rights and rule of law.

So generally the international community has been against this. But you know, Chris, I don’t know what else to say except to call it a kind of evil rope-a-dope. It’s trying to talk about aid to get people on board. So now you have this kind of, you have the GHF saying, Hey, don’t you want to help people? Meanwhile, they can create the very conditions in which people are suffering and being killed. So it’s just an evil rope-a-dope.

And now we have other humanitarian organizations having to make a decision: do I do the moral and the right thing, which is not give any credence to this organization or work anywhere near them, or do I do what they may think is the moral thing and just flood the zone, even if it means working with such an entity as GHF? I think that’s what some of the international community are contending with at this very moment.

Chris Hedges: Does UNRWA have any stockpiles of food left in Gaza?

Mara Kronenfeld: They have very little. I do know that some of the aid that is in those, that’s 6,000 trucks worth of aid, some of it is getting in through partners from what I understand. So there is some aid getting in, but it’s a drop in the bucket.

We need 500 to 600 trucks a day just to handle the basic needs of the population, let alone whatever commercial needs and things that would lower the price of basic goods right now, which are flour, $22 a kilo, just unaffordable to anyone there.

Chris Hedges: And let’s talk about the international community. You’ve had noises made, [UK Prime Minister Keir] Starmer than others, about recognizing a Palestinian state, but nobody cuts off the weapons to Israel.

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, as UNRWA, my focus really, and as UNRWA USA I should say, is really on the humanitarian side. So really our role has not been on the political side. And so I can’t comment from that perspective, but as an individual, just putting my personal hat on, it does, you’ve asked a very important question. And it’s a question I ask myself every day.

And yeah, that’s all I can say. I have the same question, Chris.

Chris Hedges: And the attacks are relentless. They haven’t stopped. And now you’re facing these lawsuits that are being brought by Zionists, accusing the organization of, I mean, you can give the details, of essentially being Hamas front or something. Explain what they’re doing.

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, so we, in about, I believe January of 2024 or February, maybe we’re served a lawsuit. And the lawsuit is by survivors or family members of October 7th who are I guess have American citizenship and it’s a totally frivolous lawsuit. It’s part of a history of bringing frivolous lawsuits against those organizations supporting Palestinians or Palestinian rights.

Center for Constitutional Rights has done a whole expose on the attempt to silence Palestinian support and civil society supporting Palestine through lawfare, through a really deliberate attempt to bring frivolous claims. This is one of them. And the claim was somehow that because UNRWA USA gave funds to UNRWA that we somehow knowingly gave funds to Hamas.

I mean, it’s utterly ridiculous and luckily, the judge in the Delaware District Court saw the ridiculousness of it and threw out the lawsuit.

Chris Hedges: Well, give me some examples, because you had mentioned to me before in the courtroom what they were saying. I mean, it was absurd.

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, there was absurdities. I think in this setting, and I’m not a lawyer, I should say, but in this setting, in a civil liability, you’re not arguing the facts, you’re arguing within the four corners of the lawsuit, is there enough there? And you’re looking at precedents and other things.

So essentially in that setting, they could kind of say what they want. And so imagine, and mind you, I have to just preface that I mean, this shouldn’t matter at all, but just to give you some color, I happen to be Jewish. 

My lawyer, one of our lawyers is Jewish. And then we have this beautiful community of Methodists who are supporting Palestine who had worked with me in different times come to the gallery at the courthouse to give moral support at this time.

So this beautiful crowd of people from so many different walks of life. So I felt all this support in the courtroom, which is amazing. But the plaintiff’s lawyer said, the judge asked, so you’re saying that UNRWA is basically Hamas and something crazy, I mean, absurd, that UNRWA contributed in building of tunnels, which is just fantastically false.

And she said, yeah. And the judge said you’re telling me that UNRWA USA knew about this. She’s like, yes. And the judge said, you’re suggesting there’s evidence like emails and she said, yes, I believe that there are emails that UNRWA USA wrote to UNRWA talking about Hamas tunnels. 

I mean, this is utterly false, fanciful, ridiculous. It’s an example of the kind of propaganda that we don’t see that’s going around all different places, talking about UNRWA.

And I think this year, actually, sorry, 2024, at the end of the year, the Israeli government was paying for hasbara, propaganda, on billboards, basically putting a picture of an UNRWA staff member and then putting like a Hamas green bandana on them and basically saying UNRWA is Hamas.

I mean it’s so shocking and putting Google ads. Google allowed the government of Israel to pay for ads, to put propaganda against a U.N. organization. I mean, what world are we living in? It’s just shocking the kind of propaganda lies, things that could be said that billboard companies will let on their billboards, that Google will let go in a paid ad by a government.

Imagine they let the Russian government pay for ads with propaganda about the Ukraine. It’s just shocking what has been allowed to happen with, again, like you said, no evidence.

Chris Hedges: And they’re suing for damages. They want money. They want to extract money.

Mara Kronenfeld: They want money, although we don’t have. All our money goes to people in need. So we don’t have any money. Sorry guys, we got no money. But it’s also to gum up your work, right? And to wear you down. And I will say it is exhausting. So bravo to those who… it is exhausting.

We are having to focus on fighting frivolous lawsuits while our exclusive focus should be on saving lives and raising the funds to save lives. Mind you, we don’t stop for a minute, but it is to wear us down, to scare us.

Chris Hedges: Well, the Delaware judge threw it out and they immediately launched another one, didn’t they?

Mara Kronenfeld: There’s another lawsuit with exactly the same argument. So it’s going to go nowhere. And one of the lawyers is the same lawyer, there’s a lawyer who’s on both cases. So yes, they’re definitely linked. So, just more lawyers time, more of my time, of our board’s time.

But you also have some of the most amazing lawyers who are doing what’s right, who know what propaganda is, who know the ultimate goals of plaintiffs like these to wear us down, to try to get us out of business, to scare us out of business.

And when your work is on the side of the angels, when you’re doing transparent work for all to see, when you’re keeping people alive who are being mowed down, that’s what keeps you going, doing the right thing, the ethical thing, the true thing.

You don’t step away from this essential work in the middle of a human-made famine, a genocide. There’s no way you can stop this work when civilians are being killed en masse.

Chris Hedges: You’re an Arabic speaker, you have long experience in the region. This has to have taken an emotional toll. What has been the effect of all of this on, not just on you, but on everyone who does this kind of work?

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, I mean, whatever we feel, of course, is nothing. There’s no comparison to what people are facing on the ground. I think we’ve had a front seat, certainly not like, again, like those in Gaza, but we are day in and day out seeing the atrocities.

And I think what keeps me going is, like I said, knowing our work is on the side of the angels and absolutely essential. And that idea that my grandfather escaped Nazi Germany and his sister’s family was murdered by the Nazis. And he said never again. And he meant for anybody, no matter what religion or background. And that’s why I do the work I do today.

And if I didn’t do this work, I would be going against everything I was taught by my grandfather and also my parents in terms of doing right in the world. But I think that I can’t crumble and the reason I can’t crumble is my colleague Hani Almadhoun, who runs our fundraising efforts, our senior director of fundraising, he’s had 180, I think it’s more close to 200, family members killed in Gaza. Two of his brothers were targeted and killed.

And he keeps getting up every day doing this important work. He keeps fundraising not only for UNRWA USA, but for the Gaza Soup Kitchen, which feeds tens of thousands of people in the north of Gaza. His parents are on the front line of that, keeping a community alive. Every day he hears of a cousin injured. He had just had a cousin who was killed trying to seek aid at GHF.

He keeps getting up and doing his work and maintaining a strength of character and a calm that nobody else, I would not be capable if I was faced with those same conditions. So if Hani’s not crumbling, there’s no way I’m gonna. So we keep on keeping on and just hope to God there’s a ceasefire, the killing stops and morality prevails and humanity prevails.

Chris Hedges: And if people want to donate to UNRWA U.S. or the [Gaza] Soup Kitchen, how do they do that?

Mara Kronenfeld: Yeah, so you can donate at unrwausa.org/donate. We absolutely could use all contributions and we get the money out the door. That’s why we have no money because we get it out the door as soon as possible. And something that has given mAe hope, just in all this darkness, the most beautiful thing outside of the staff we have, which are amazing and our board, is 160,000, actually it’s now 170,000, I just checked before the call, 171,000 donors, new donors since October of 2023.

And these are Americans, 95 percent of them Americans from every state in this country from every economic background, every religious background. The average donation is about $280. So most of this is grassroots. Of course, we have very many people of means supporting as well with six-figure donations. Really, the American people have stepped up while our government has stepped down. 

Our government froze funding to UNRWA. And through the American people, we’ve been able to send $68 million to provide relief in Gaza since October of 2024.

So any contribution we are grateful for and we will continue to get this in the hands of those, again, who are providing medical aid on the ground, getting water to people in need, cleaning up waste and the toxic waste in the streets and being the front line of trauma care for Gaza’s children. So we’re really grateful for your support.

And yes, Hani will definitely take support at the Gaza Soup Kitchen as well. And because of that support, they’ve been able to buy these astronomically priced fruit and vegetables, flour, whatever’s available. They can spend the $50 for flour or whatnot and feed at least some of those folks in the settings where they’re able to do their soup kitchens, mostly in the north of Gaza.

Chris Hedges: And do you know the link for that?

Mara Kronenfeld: I actually don’t but look up Gaza Soup Kitchen, I don’t know the link. Our link is unrwausa.org/donate.

Chris Hedges: Great. Thank you, Mara. And I want to thank Diego [Ramos], Victor [Padilla], Sofia [Menemenlis], Thomas [Hedges], and Max [Jones], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR.  He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

This article is from Scheerpost. 

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