A secret mission by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa) has successfully rescued millions of documents chronicling generations of Palestinian refugee trauma from Gaza and East Jerusalem. The 10-month operation, completed in early 2025, faced significant dangers and logistical challenges, including Israeli bombardment and political pressure.
Operation Overview
The operation began after the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza. Unrwa officials realized that the agency's archives, containing original registration cards, birth, marriage, and death certificates dating back to 1948, were at risk of destruction. The documents were stored in Unrwa's compound in Gaza City and its offices in East Jerusalem.
Rescue from Gaza
In the first stage, a small team of Unrwa officials made three trips into the evacuated Gaza City compound, driving rented pickup trucks to retrieve documents. They transported the archives to a food warehouse in Rafah, near the Egyptian border. To avoid Israeli seizure, Unrwa staff with international passports carried the documents out of Gaza unobserved, claiming they were carrying paperwork. The documents were then collated in Egypt and transported to Jordan via military planes.
Rescue from East Jerusalem
Simultaneously, Unrwa's East Jerusalem compound faced arson attacks and protests, prompting the need to secure those archives as well. Staff members secretly transferred the documents over several months to Unrwa offices in Jordan. In January 2025, new Israeli laws barred Unrwa from operating in Israel and Israeli-occupied territories.
Significance of the Archives
Roger Hearn, a senior Unrwa official who oversaw the operation, stated that the destruction of the archives would have been catastrophic. "If there is ever a just and durable solution to this conflict, then this is the only evidence people can use to show there were once Palestinians living in a particular place," he said. The documents provide crucial evidence of Palestinian displacement during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, including testimonies of forced flight and property loss.
Digitization Efforts
In Amman, Jordan, Unrwa launched a digitization project funded primarily by Luxembourg. Over 50 staff members worked in a cramped basement to scan millions of documents, including postcard-sized refugee registration cards. So far, nearly 30 million documents have been digitized, with the goal of providing every Palestinian refugee with their family tree and supporting documents. The project also aims to build maps showing displacement patterns from 1948.
Expert Perspectives
Dr. Anne Irfan, a historian at University College London, described the archives as a vital record of Palestinian national history. "The Palestinians are a stateless people and without a fully unified national archive, so the Unrwa archive has a particular significance for them," she said. The digitized archives open up multiple avenues of inquiry into the refugee experience and Middle Eastern politics over the last 80 years.
