Hundreds of students and workers of UNRWA, the UN agency for “Palestinian refugees”, demonstrated in Rafah on Wednesday to protest the U.S. aid cut to the agency and to emphasize their adherence to the “right of return”.
The Hamas-affiliated newspaper Felesteen reported that the head of the UNRWA workers' union in Gaza, Amir al-Mishal, said in his speech to the demonstrators that "the people who gathered here came to express their right to return."
He added and that “rights are not received with supplication but must be obtained by force."
Mishal called on the international community to assume its legal, moral and humanitarian responsibility for UNRWA until the return of refugees to their land, homeland and homes.
He praised the Palestinian Arabs who will participate in "peaceful" demonstrations on Friday and in the so-called large-scale “March of the Return”.
Earlier this week, the director of UNRWA operations in Gaza expressed his support for Friday’s anti-Israel march and pledged that the organization’s medical centers will provide care for “Palestinian refugees” who might sustain injuries during the march.
UNRWA is notorious for its anti-Israel activities.
During the 2014 counterterrorism Operation Protective Edge, Hamas rockets were discovered inside a school building run by UNRWA.
Likewise, a booby-trapped UNRWA clinic was detonated, killing three IDF soldiers. Aside from the massive amounts of explosives hidden in the walls of the clinic, it was revealed that it stood on top of dozens of terror tunnels, showing how UNRWA is closely embedded with Hamas.
In September, a Hamas terrorist tunnel was discovered underneath an UNRWA school in Gaza.
The U.S. recently announced it would cut some of its funding to UNRWA, citing a need to undertake a fundamental re-examination of the organization, both in the way it operates and the way it is funded.
Several weeks ago, UNRWA received pledges of $100 million in additional funding from Qatar, Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, New Zealand, Norway, Korea, Mexico, Slovakia, India and France as a means of making up for the aid that was cut by Washington.