AWDA (formerly Union of Health Work Committees - UHWC)

Introduction

AWDA (UHWC) is identified by Fatah as an official PFLP “affiliate” and by a 1993 USAID-engaged audit as the “the PFLP’s health organization.” For more information on AWDA’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Union of Health Work Committees’ Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”

Profile

Country/TerritoryPalestinian Authority
Websitegaza-health.com/en
Founded1985
In their own wordsProvides comprehensive health services through a developmental community and social framework to all sectors of the Palestinian people especially the marginalized and poor ones through its health centers and community programs.

Funding

Activities

  • AWDA activities include holding medical conferences and “Health Days,” and maintaining hospitals, medical center, and cultural centers throughout the Gaza Strip.
  • AWDA itself is a PFLP-affiliated health committee active in Gaza, as identified by USAID and in Palestinian documents. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel.
  • In October 2023, after an Islamic Jihad rocket “misfired” (i.e. detonated in Gaza instead of Israel) and hit the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital parking lot, AWDA published a statement claiming, “the occupation sought to neutralize the health system from work and distance it from its national, humanitarian and health role through the threat of eviction and targeting, in an effort to exacerbate the humanitarian situation and put pressure on the defenseless civilian population in the Gaza Strip, leading to the direct targeting of health facilities and objects, as the targeting operations extended to medical personnel, ambulances, hospitals and health centres, leading to the direct targeting of the Al Ahli Arab Hospital ‘Al-Baptist’ facility, killing more than (500) according to initial estimates, and injuring thousands of unarmed civilians who took shelter in this facility in search of security and safety in light of the procedures and targeting. Criminal” (emphasis added). AWDA ignored videos, images, and intelligence materials concerning this incident.
  • In November 2021, AWDA was a signatory on a statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the statement, “The main task of our institutions and of Palestinian human rights defenders is to work towards an end to the occupation, the dismantling of the apartheid regime and towards the realization of our collective human rights to self-determination and the right of return…We further call on diplomatic missions, parliamentary representatives, and international organizations to reject and condemn the unlawful designation of the six Palestinian CSOs, to pressure the United States to condemn Israel’s designation and call for its rescission.”
  • Signed on the 2005 Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS and helped organize the First Palestinian Conference for the Boycott of Israel (BDS).
  • AWDA has accused Israel of “Urbanicide,” “Genocide,” the “mass killing of civilians,” and called on its partners, including Oxfam, to condemn “Israel’s human rights violations against the Palestinian people.”
  • Mona El-Farra, is a “health development consultant” for the Union of Health Work Committees, and according to American Friends Service Committee’s website, El-Farra also “heads the Rachel Corrie Children’s Center, which is also in Gaza. The center is a project of the Union of Health Work Committees.”
    • In 2015, El Farra was denied a visa by the Israeli authorities to travel to a conference on Palestine in Dublin for “security reasons.”
    • In May 2018, El-Farra participated in the “Palestinian Freedom Conference: Overcoming the Ongoing Nakba,” which discussed how “In late 1947, colonial Zionist paramilitary forces began the process of ethnically cleansing more than 750,000 Palestinians…70 years later…in Palestine a process of ongoing ethnic cleansing via occupation, colonisation, apartheid, and cruel siege continues apace, with no intervention from the international community.”
    • In an interview in 2004, El-Farra explained that AWDA refused USAID funding because it came with the condition that they promise “not [to] give any help or any aid whatsoever for the families of the militiamen, or their relatives, or anyone related to ‘terrorist attacks’” because “we consider it resistance.”

AWDA’s Ties to the PFLP

  • AWDA is identified by Fatah as an official PFLP “affiliate” and by a 1993 USAID-engaged audit as the “the PFLP’s health organization.”
  • As academic scholar Glenn E. Robinson, who also identifies AWDA as a “PFLP-affiliated health committee,” explains “Many-probably most-doctors who joined the AWDA had political leanings similar to the leftist PFLP. As health committees tied to other political factions also existed, it was common for doctors and staff to work with that health group which reflected their politics. Both the providers and, to a lesser degree, the recipients of these medical services were aware of the larger political agenda. The ability to translate medical-and other social-services into a particular political vision was the key to the struggle within the Palestinian community for ideological hegemony” (emphasis added).
  • HWC’s Youth Development Program, “A community, cultural, and social development program that provide services to Jerusalemite youth through ‘Nidal Center,’” was shut down by Israeli authorities from 2009 to 2012 because, in the words of the Jerusalem District Court, it served as “a place of action of the [PFLP] organization.” According to the Jerusalem District Court, “following the closure of the [Center], the PFLP began operating under the guise of the non-profit the Union of Health Work Committees – Jerusalem…on June 9, 2015 at the request of the Minister of Defense the non-profit was an unlawful organization…”
  • AWDA runs the Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza.

AWDA Staff Ties to the PFLP

Partners

Funding to UHWC

DonorAmountYear(s)
Viva Salud€178,4762018
€163,5952017
€176,6352016
Basque Agency for Development Cooperation (Spain)€80,0002019
€200,0002016-2018
€200,0002016-2018
€200,0002017-2018
€200,0002015-2016
Oxfam Solidarité€63,0342016
Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA)N/A2017
NGO Development Center (NDC)$17 million2018-2021
AECID €300,0002020-2021

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