Education and Identity: The Role of UNRWA's Education Programmes in the Reconstruction of Palestinian Nationalism

Studies of specialized agencies of the United Nations in general and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in particular focus overwhelmingly on the humanitarian activities and bureaucratic structure of these institutions. Relatively understudied and less understood in the literature on UNRWA is the impact the institution has had on the ongoing reconstruction of Palestinian national identity over the last six decades. UNRWA unintentionally—and despite its humanitarian mandate—played a political role in its five areas of operation: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza. This study focuses on how UNRWA's support of, and provision for, education in schools and camps in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and elsewhere helped in the continuation of reconstructing Palestinian nationalism and identity. In UNRWA schools, Palestinian students interacted with one another in ways that inadvertently preserved and cultivated an identity of nation and self among Palestinians amidst war and social dislocation. The main factor that had the unintended consequence of reconstructing Palestinian nationalism in the last six decades has been the use by UNRWA schools of extracurricular activities that reinvented many elements of Palestinian identity and nationalism (e.g. songs, plays, music, paintings, poetry). This article speaks to how UNRWA schools have been providing opportunities for Palestinian youth to articulate and enact Palestinian identity.