Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.

All the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) wanted was to declare the obvious — that the LGBT+ community should be treated equally in UNRWA settings.

But that simple request has triggered an all out culture war between Palestinians and UNRWA.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has harshly criticized UNRWA over a new employee “code of conduct” that defined gender equality as including homosexuals and transsexuals.

The PA has made it crystal clear that there is no such thing as LGBT+ rights in the PA, or even acceptance of the mere existence of an LGBT+ community.

The PA demanded that UNRWA “cancel” the directive, in a showdown that comes despite the fact that the PA is heavily supported by UNRWA’s services.

In its condemnation of the UNRWA stance — as expressed by the PLO Department of Refugee Affairs in a statement — the PA communicated that the LGBT+ “orientations and identities”:

• ​​​​​​“contradict the principles of the Islamic religion and its rituals and the moral principles of the Palestinian society”
• “contradict the human and religious norms and values in general and also the Islamic morals of the Palestinians”
• “contradict our Palestinian people’s social values and the instructions of our religion” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 16, 2023]

Moreover, the PA took great offense at the mere thought that there are LGBT+ people among UNRWA employees or Palestinian refugees.

In the eyes of the PA, this insinuation “constitutes slander and a false libel against the employees and refugees alike.”

In addition to the PA/PLO, the code of conduct also “aroused the rage of the employee associations, the [PA] Parliament (Legislative Council) in the Gaza Strip, and a number of non-governmental organizations,” according to the Palestinian Refugees Portal, a Palestinian website, on Sept. 16, 2023.

According to the same website, the Joint Committee of UNRWA Employee Associations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip says the code of conduct is: “[Part of] UNRWA’s attempts to spread ‘the culture of perversion’ in Palestinian society as one of the principles of equality.” [emphasis added]

The PA’s demand to cancel the UNRWA code of conduct focused on a section on “sexual orientations and gender identity,” which states as follows:

UNRWA views equality between the two sexes in accordance with the views of the UN, and therefore equality between the two sexes is defined as including the colleagues [i.e., UNRWA employees] and beneficiaries [i.e., Palestinian refugees] from among the lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, queers, intersexuals, and those who belong to other sexual groups (LGBTQI+). If this contradicts the local cultural conventions, our conduct must be guided by the standards of conduct of international civil service and the rest of the UN regulations and rules. [emphasis added]

[Palestinian Refugees Portal, Palestinian website, Sept. 16, 2023]

Even while stating that they “respect human rights,” the PA/PLO explicitly demanded that UNRWA erase all reference to “sexual orientations and gender identity that appear in the code of conduct”:

The PLO respects the human principles of human rights that do not contradict the principles of the Islamic religion and its rituals and the moral principles of the Palestinian society. It called on the UNRWA management to remove all the terms that relate to sexual orientations and gender identity that appear in the code of conduct and to erase them.

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 16, 2023]

Palestinian Media Watch has reported on the PA’s anti-LGBT+ stance and how violence against members of the community is on the rise, which can be viewed here.

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.