UNRWA To Revamp Procedures For Posing Corpses In Its Facilities

Rafah, August 9 – After activists created a mess at a UN-run school by dragging corpses onto the grounds of the facility to make it look like the IDF had targeted the school itself, the agency that runs the school intends to issue new rules for how Palestinians may use its buildings to libel Israel.

This past Sunday saw an IAF airstrike near a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), in which several Hamas fighters were killed. Bystanders moved the bodies of the fighters within the environs of the school and added the body of a seven-year-old girl for extra melodrama, to showcase what became a symbol of Israeli callousness and brutality in the conflict and elicited a call from the UN Secretary General himself for an investigation of war crimes.  In the process, says UNRWA chief Chris Gunness, blood and other bodily emissions soiled the newly installed basketball court of the school, even though a more run-down area of the facility’s yard was available at the time.

To forestall a recurrence of such damage, Gunness will initiate a protocol under which any positioning of bodies or injured children on UN property must be cleared by his office in advance. Only by following that procedure, says Gunness, can UNRWA keep its facilities in as good a condition as possible.

“The contrast between a pristine building and one pockmarked with shrapnel is a key tool in making Israel look bad,” explained Gunness. “So the maintenance of a dramatic ‘before’ vs. ‘after’ effect carries extra importance.”

The protocol includes built-in advance permission for certain schools and warehouses already exposed in international media as venues for the storage or launching of rockets targeting Israeli towns. However, the vast majority of UNRWA facilities maintain neutrality at least in appearance. Violations of the protocol will result in lower priority for the violators’ relatives to find employment in key UNRWA positions locally, and venues where multiple violations occur will no longer receive approval for the storage of rockets or other weapons.