Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)

Introduction

The Union of Agricultural Work Committee (UAWC) is identified by Fatah as an official “affiliate” and by USAID-engaged audit as the “agricultural arm” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the USEUCanada, and Israel. UAWC is also highly active in promoting BDS campaigns and utilizing inflammatory rhetoric. For more information on UAWC’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Union of Agricultural Work Committees Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”

 

Profile

Country/TerritoryPalestinian Authority
Websitehttp://uawc-pal.org/
Founded1986
In their own wordsA “non-profit organization by a group of volunteers and agronomists” in response to what it calls “the vulnerable socio-political circumstance of farmers that resulted from occupation policies in confiscating lands and water in the early eighties and therefore directly harmed the interests of farmers and Palestinians.”

Funding

  • The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) has not published any financial data, donor information, or sources of funding on its website since 2014, reflecting a complete lack of transparency and accountability.
  • While UAWC claims to “reject normalization and political conditional funding,” its donors include numerous governments and international aid organizations.
  • Donors include European Union, France, Netherlands, Spain (AECID), Norwegian People’s Aid, Medico, Grassroots International, Oxfam Solidarité, and the United Nations. (See table below for further funding information.)
  • In 2021-2025, the European Union is granting €3.4 million to UAWC for a project to “Build[] Economic Resilience in Gaza” with the Ma’an Development Center and Oxfam Novib.
  • The government of Canada claimed (October 2020) that “While Canadian-funded projects with experienced international and Canadian partner organizations have included UAWC as a sub-implementer in the past, we do not currently fund the organization, directly or indirectly.” However, Canada funds a $15.6 million project (2016-2022) with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that lists UAWC as an implementing partner.
  • In 2017-2020, Denmark provided DKK 87,084,557 in 2017-2020 to the UN-FAO. According to FOA, implementing partners include UAWC.
  • In 2017-2021, the Netherlands (Representative Office in Ramallah) granted $11.3 million to UAWC to “implement the second phase of the Land and Water Resource Management program.”
    • On July 20, 2020, the Dutch government announced that it was suspending funding to UAWC over links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). During a parliamentary debate, Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Development Minister Sigrid Kaag acknowledged that an internal government audit concluded that Dutch funds were used to pay the salaries of two UAWC employees who were also members of the PFLP terror organization and then arrested for murder. (See more below.)
    • In January 2022, the Dutch Foreign Minister announced that the Netherlands will cease all funding to UAWC. According to the Minister, the investigation determined that UAWC had 34 employees with ties to the PFLP in 2007-2020, 12 holding leadership positions in the terrorist group concurrent to their employment at UAWC. In reporting to parliament, Ministers de Brujin and Knapen added that “the large number of board members of UAWC with a dual mandate is particularly worrying.”
  • In 2017-2021, UAWC and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) were implementing partners on a €3.7 million project funded by the European Union for “Reform and Development of Markets, Value Chains and Producers’ Organizations.”1
  • In 2020-2024, UAWC is receiving NOK 70.4 million from Norway via Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) for a project titled “Civil Society influence for reduced inequality in Palestine.”
    • In a letter sent to NGO Monitor, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that “To date, we have not uncovered conclusive information that the Union of Agricultural Works Committee (UAWC), as an organization, is involved in or supports acts of terrorism.
  • In 2019-2021, France provided funding for a €650,000 project with UAWC as a local partner. Several governmental and sub-governmental bodies provide funding for the project, including AFD ( €232,000),  the Rhone Mediterranean Corsica water agency (€203,440), Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur région (€100,000), and the municipality of Les Mées (€2,000).
  • In 2019-2021, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) provides UAWC with €400,000 for “Improving the economic situation of vulnerable farmers.”
  • In 2023, UAWC received $351,730 from the UN-OCHA occupied Palestinian territory Humanitarian Fund for “Emergency support for affected vulnerable farmers through the rehabilitation of their agricultural facilities.”

Activities

  • The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) describes itself as a “non-profit organization by a group of volunteers and agronomists” in response to what it calls “the vulnerable socio-political circumstance of farmers that resulted from occupation policies in confiscating lands and water in the early eighties and therefore directly harmed the interests of farmers and Palestinians.”
  • According to its website, in its early years UAWC “focused on struggling with the Israeli Occupation’s procedures that marginalized agriculture and destroyed the infrastructure of Palestinian agriculture… During the current Intifada (from the beginning of this century) and after the deterioration of the economic circumstance of the majority of Palestinians and mainly farmers, a change occurred on the nature of the Union’s programs as emergency projects became the bulk of its work.”
  • Aims to bring about a “Palestinian society that is food secured enjoys social justice, holds on its land and lives in a democratic Free Palestinian State, enjoys sovereignty over his resources; where farmers both male and female, contribute effectively in all aspects of life.”
  • In January 2020, Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), of which UAWC is a member, vehemently opposed a new clause in European Union grant contracts with Palestinian NGOs that prohibits grantees from working with and funding organizations and individuals designated on the EU’s terror lists. According to media reports, PNGO claimed that Palestinian terrorist organizations are “political parties.”

UAWC Ties to the PFLP

  • UAWC is identified by Fatah as an official PFLP “affiliate,” and by USAID as the “agricultural arm” of the PFLP. According to academic scholar Glenn E. Robinson, UAWC was founded in 1986 by “agronomists loosely affiliated with the PFLP.” For more information on UAWC’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Union of Agricultural Work Committees Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”
  • On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared UAWC a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.”
  • According to the Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin, UAWC “was established by the PFLP; is controlled by senior PFLP operatives; makes its assets available to the PFLP; and acts in coordination with and to advance the interests of the PFLP (including active involvement in PFLP political activity).”
  • In July 2020, Dutch government announced that it was suspending funding to UAWC over links to the PFLP. An internal government audit concluded that Dutch funds were used to pay the salaries of two UAWC employees who were also members of the PFLP terror organization and then arrested for murder.
  • In May 2019, Samer Arbid and Abdel Razeq Farraj attended a memorial event organized by the PFLP. It centered on PFLP political bureau member Rabah Muhanna, who, according to information posted by the PFLP, “contributed to the establishment” of several PFLP-affiliated NGOs. The hall was decorated with PFLP paraphernalia. (See more on Arbid and Razeq Farraj below.)
  • In June 2018, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express shut down online credit card donations for UAWC due to its ties to the PFLP.
  • In 2012, World Vision Australia suspended activities with UAWC due to its alleged ties to the PFLP.
  • In 2010, UAWC organized “a solidarity day with the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmed Saadat…” The “solidarity day” featured Muhammad Bakri, executive director of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees in Gaza, and celebrated “the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi” (an attack perpetrated by the PFLP).

UAWC Staff Ties to the PFLP

Concerning Rhetoric by Staff Members Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas Massacre

  • On October 13, UAWC’s head of the Gaza Fisherman Committee Zakaria Bakr posted on Facebook, “We are living through an action of ethnic cleansing and genocide accompanied by stravation and severing all capabilities of life from water to electricity and fuel…what we are living through is more powerful and stronger than the holocaust which the Zionists talk about…”
    • On October 7, Bakr posted on Facebook, “Complete the history and change the geography, it is the great October, October of victories.”
  • On October 13, UAWC Project Coordinator Moayyad Bsharat posted on Facebook, “What is required today from the [Palestinian] Authority is simple, really simple, that it responses, in an assertive fashion on the countries that support the Zionist terror and make it clear for them what the position of the Palestinian people is about self-determination by all means available…We Palestinian are facing a mechanism of Zionist terror and its western supporting tools. Our Arab Palestinian people shall have victory no matter the time it will take” (emphasis added).
    • On October 11, Bsharat posted on Facebook, “Is there anything more beautiful than traveling by air from Lebanese airspace to Israel airspace with a glider?! [i.e. addressing the threat posed by Hezobllah to Israel] May Allah be pleased with them. #Gone_be_the_humiliation [a shi’ite phrase said in times of waging war].”
  • On October 10, UAWC’s Director of Advocacy Saad el-Din Ziada posted on Facebook, “Do not hesitate in supporting the resistance, even by praising. It is our right and the protector of our dignity and dreams.”
  • On October 7, UAWC Project Coordinator Houssam Abuabdou posted on Facebook, “October 7 has witnessed the power and will of a great people.”

Political Advocacy

  • UAWC rhetoric includes accusations of “ethnic cleansing,” “collective punishment,” and “apartheid,” as well as supporting a Palestinian “right of return.”
  • Utilizes highly biased and demonizing rhetoric, accusing the “Israel occupation forces” of “continuing its brutal and immoral offensive [2014] war on Gaza” and an ongoing “policy of collective punishment in disregard for the international law and humanitarian law… in violation of the principles of necessity, proportionality and distinction.”
  • UAWC omits Palestinian terrorism and Hamas rocket fire aimed at Israeli civilians, promoting views based solely on the Palestinian narrative of victimization.
  • In November 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack, UAWC was a signatory on a letter to Third States calling to “Recognise Israel’s colonial settlement enterprise as one policy designed to maintain an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, and  address the root causes of Palestinian dispossession and domination, and the undermining of the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people, inherent in Zionist settler colonialism,” and to “Recognise Israel’s judicial system as part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, and provide full cooperation to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC and the UN ongoing Commission of Inquiry, to ensure justice and accountability.”
  • In October 2023, UAWC was a signatory on a statement demanding that the “EU leadership must put an end to its double standards and complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.” According to UAWC, “For violence to end, European leaders must address and eradicate the root causes of the ongoing violence, namely, Israel’s seven-decade long settler-colonial enterprise and oppression of the Palestinian people…The EU must intervene to ensure that Israel dismantles its discriminatory apartheid regime, including by rescinding all discriminatory laws and facilitating the right of return and to self-determination of the Palestinian people…The resounding silence of the EU leadership on Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza and their blind support for Israel signals that the EU is green-lighting, enabling and encouraging Israel’s military actions, which already may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and incitement to commit genocide.”
  • In October 2023, UAWC was a signatory on a letter to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan to “Issue Arrest Warrants, Investigate Israeli Crimes and Intervene to Deter Incitement to Commit Genocide in Gaza.”
  • In May 2023, following comments by the EU Commission President celebrating Israel’s Independence Day, UAWC was a signatory on a statement accusing the president of “using racist anti-Palestinian tropes and denying Palestinian history and the atrocities of the Nakba.”
  • In January 2023, UAWC Project Coordinator Moayyad Bsharat shared a picture from the funeral of terrorists killed in a firefight in Jenin and wrote, “These are painful endings for us, but beautiful for them. To heaven [they go], the nine moons will light our night and our stray paths.”
  • In November 2022, UAWC was a signatory on a letter to the ICC Prosecutor to “Urgently expedite his investigation into the Situation of Palestine, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” 
  • In September 2022, UAWC was a signatory on a joint statement urging the US government to condemn the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs, including UAWC, as terrorist organizations. According to the letter, “Our organizations do vital human rights and humanitarian work that is necessary due to Israel’s decades-long belligerent occupation of Palestinian land that is actively and robustly supported by your administration.” The letter also called for the US to “End complicity and financial and diplomatic support to the Israeli apartheid regime.”
  • In May 2022, UAWC was a signatory on a flagrantly antisemitic report submitted to the UN HRC’s Commission of Inquiry against Israel. The submission called to “Recognise and Address Zionist Settler Colonialism and Apartheid as the Root Causes of Israel’s Ongoing Violations.” The submission presented a blatantly false historical account that denied Israel’s right to exist, categorized Israel’s very existence as illegal, and labeled Zionism as a form of racism.
  • In May 2022, UAWC was a signatory on a petition titled “The Return Appeal” calling on the United Nations to “take all necessary steps and measures for immediately holding the occupation’s state accountable for all the crimes, the latter has so far committed against the Palestinian people, within strict legal means that would not allow the occupation’s criminals to evade interrogation or possible trials.”
  • In February 2022, UAWC participated in an EU-funded conference titled ”Shrinking Civic Space for Palestinian Civil Society Organizations: Local and International Policies” that included a workshop “focused on the strategies and mechanisms needed to combat counter-terrorism policies, regulations, and policies (sic)” (emphasis added).
  • In April 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, UAWC published a statement calling to “end and isolate the Israeli killing machine, to expose and stop the field executions of civilians in Gaza, people of the world today must stop the hand of the ugly capitalism extended in the region through the occupying state, the greatest tool in the region and force it to end its occupation of Palestine.” UAWC ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
  • In January 2018, as a member of Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network- Friends of Earth Palestine (PENGON), released statement on the occasion of Land Day accusing Israel of “Zionist expansionism and massive Israeli land grabs,” and stated that “Apartheid, which is what we live under, is the atrocious conglomeration of colonialism, racism, denial of self-determination, and expulsion..”
  • In November 2017, UAWC was a signatory on a call to support “A World Without Walls,” drawing comparisons between “Israel’s apartheid wall on Palestinian land to the US wall of Shame on indigenous land at the border with Mexico.”
  • In September 2017, as a member of PENGON, UAWC was a signatory on a call to restaurant chefs to “Take Apartheid off the Menu” and cancel their participation in the Tel Aviv “Round Tables Tour” as it “uses the time-honored tradition of sharing culinary experiences as a means for whitewashing widespread violation of Palestinian fundamental rights, including the right to food.”
  • On September 1, 2016, UAWC signed a letter to the Italian Association of Farmers asking them to “rethink their sponsorship and participation” in the Israeli Watec Conference due to its “role in the grave violations of human rights and water rights” and compliance with “water apartheid.”
  • In November 2015, UAWC wrote a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urging the UN to take “action against Israel’s systematic policy of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and the discrimination against Palestinians in occupied Palestinian land in 1948. We urge the United Nations to finally acknowledge the systematic killing and injuring of Palestinian civilian as a war crime and a crime against humanity.”
  • In September 2014, UAWC signed on an appeal to the Union of European Football Associations to “exclude the bid of the Israeli Football Association (IFA) for Jerusalem to host UEFA …given Israel’s recent war crimes against the people of Gaza and the on-going occupation and persistent human rights violations against Palestinians, including in the field of sports.”
  • According to its 2012 annual report, “UAWC staff and its volunteers and agricultural committees carried out a number of anti-occupation public events in the West Bank and Gaza in 2012” including: “Palestinian reconciliation and its impact on the agricultural reality”; “the anniversary of the Nakba”; “the land is ours”; “organizing field visits for delegations and foreign solidarity activists.”

BDS Activities

  • In November 2023, UAWC was a signatory on a statement urging states to issue a “Two-Way Arms Embargo on Israel,” demanding that “The US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and other States that authorise the continued transfer of arms, and other forms of military support to Israel to immediately bring an end to such transfers…and immediately halt the provision of any materiel, equipment or other commodity that may foreseeably be used in the commission of serious international law violations including international crimes.” 
  • In September 2022, UAWC was a signatory on a letter to the European Union to “review its decision to revive the Association Council Meeting, stop the recently signed gas deal and review its bilateral cooperation programmes.” According to the call, “Instead of allowing Israel to entrench its colonial enterprise and apartheid regime, rewarding it with further economic cooperation and trade of harmful military equipment and technologies, the EU and its Member States have an obligation, and interest, to hold Israel accountable and put an end to impunity.”
  • In May 2020, UAWC was a signatory on a statement calling to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspend free-trade agreements with Israel,” and “Ensure that individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid are brought to justice.”
  • In 2018-2019, UAWC lobbied in support of the discriminatory UN blacklist of businesses supposedly operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel.
  • In May 2020, UAWC was a signatory on a statement calling for “Immediate targeted sanctions to stop Israel’s annexation and apartheid.” The statement further called for “A ban on arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspension of trade and cooperation agreements with Israel,” and “Investigation and prosecution of individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid.”
  • In November 2019, PNGO, of which UAWC is a member, signed a statement calling for the “international community to immediately impose sanctions on the State of Israel and illegal Israeli settlements” and “implement domestic legislation to prohibit and criminalize the import of illegal settlement goods and services into their territory.”
  • In May 2019, UAWC was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke a joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic.
  • Signed (together with AddameerBADILAl-Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Democracy & Conflict Resolution) on a Joint Call to Action: July 2014 – Month against the Apartheid Wall stating: “….it is time for a ‘legal intifada’, an intensified popular struggle and more boycotts, divestment and sanctions….We ask you to expand and deepen the global BDS movement for justice…”
  • In February 2013, UAWC organized protests of Palestinian farmers as part of a “day of action” to “support boycotts of Israeli agricultural corporations.”
  • In May 2012, UAWC signed on a call to supermarket chains to implement a “ban on trade with all companies that export from illegal Israeli settlements as a minimal form of ending complicity in Israel’s occupation and apartheid.”
  • In May 2005, signed a petition calling for the academic boycott of Israel as a means to “isolate Apartheid Israel…forging effective solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, self-determination and sovereignty.”
  • Signatory to the 2005 “Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS” which calls for an end to Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” and promotes the right of “Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.”

Partners

  • Member of Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network- Friends of Earth Palestine (PENGON).
    • In January 2018, on the occasion of Land Day, PENGON accused Israel of “Zionist expansionism and massive Israeli land grabs,” and stated that “Apartheid, which is what we live under, is the atrocious conglomeration of colonialism, racism, denial of self-determination, and expulsion.”
    • In March 2018, PENGON published an article about the EU’s energy projects with Israel, stating that “The EU has a legal duty of non-recognition, including the duty to give no aid or assistance in the maintenance of the unlawful situation created by Israel in the OPT with these serious violations.  EU purchases of Israeli gas would enable substantial revenues to be used in Israel’s militarisation and de facto annexationist policies of the occupied Palestinian territory and appropriation and exploitation of its natural resources.”
  • Member of the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), which was instrumental in producing many of the preparatory documents for the Durban 2001 conference including the document calling for embargoes on Israel.
    • In January 2020, PNGO vehemently opposed a new clause in European Union grant contracts with Palestinian NGOs that prohibits grantees from working with and funding organizations and individuals designated on the EU’s terror lists. According to media reports, PNGO claimed that Palestinian terrorist organizations are “political parties.”
    • In April 2017, PNGO called on the international community not to “use aid to undermine legitimate Palestinian resistance.” According to PNGO, “We reject all de-legitimization or criminalization of lawful Palestinian resistance, whether in form of allegations of terrorism, anti-semitism or otherwise… We call on all governments and aid providers to respect our right to lawful resistance, support Palestinian human rights defenders, and ensure equal, impartial and transparent access to funding for all.”
    • In March 2016, as a member of Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), PNGO stated that “Israel’s current government, its most racist ever, has dropped all pretences of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘democracy’. This has helped to expose Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid to world public opinion like never before.”

Funding to UAWC

GovernmentDonorYear(s)Amount
CanadaUN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)2016-2022$15,597,190
DenmarkUN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)2017-2020DKK 87,084,557
European UnionEuropean Union2017-2021€3.7 million
2011-2017€18.3 million
FranceAFD (France)2019-2021€232,000
Rhone Mediterranean Corsica water agency 2019-2021€203,440
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur région 2019-2021€100,000
Municipality of Les Mées2019-2021€2,000
GermanyMedico International2017N/A
ItalyAssociazione Di Cooperazione E Solidarieta (Italy)2018-2021€527,102
Organizzazione Per Lo Sviluppo Globale Di Comunita’ In Paesi Extraeuropei Onlus 2018-2020€241,471
NetherlandsRepresentative Office in Ramallah (NRO)2019€1.67 million
2018€2.58 million
2017€3.81 million
NorwayNorwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs2020-2024NOK 70.4 million
Norwegian People’s Aid2018NOK 13,155,986
2017NOK 13,398,655
2016NOK 12,355,023
SpainAECID 2019-2021 €400,000
Belgium Oxfam Solidarité2018€25,848
2017€260,154
Solidaridad Internacional Andalucia2018€445,778
Grassroots International2017N/A
United NationsUN OCHA2018$400,000
2017$248,941
2017$230,585

All Articles about Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)

Further Reading