On May 29, 2024, the Israeli parliament designated UNRWA as a terrorist organization, passing a preliminary reading with a 42-6 majority. Consequently, Israel will cease its ties with the UN organization.
During a meeting with ambassadors to the UN in his office in Jerusalem in January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "It is time for the international community and the United Nations to realize that UNRWA's mission must end." UNRWA is a temporary organization that unfortunately has now lasted for 75 years and its dangers now heavily outweigh its benefits.
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UNRWA supplies fuel for Gaza across the Rafah crossing
(Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh/File Photo)
Now, new research by Israel’s Defense and Security Forum’s research department reveals the true identity of the UN agency with the innocent appeal.
The parliamentary bill's passage is driven by substantial evidence of UNRWA's involvement with Hamas. Senior Israeli security people have said time and again that UNRWA has been serving Hamas’ interests. This includes the discovery of Hamas tunnels beneath UNRWA schools and collaboration between UNRWA employees and Hamas during the October 7 attacks. A UN inquiry investigating allegations against 12 UNRWA employees implicated in the October 7 massacre, resulted in the termination of 10 contracts, while two employees were confirmed dead.
The allegations against staffers with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees prompted Western countries to freeze funds vital for the body, including the U.S., the agency’s biggest donor. Prior to the funding freeze, the United States, the EU, Canada, Japan and Australia contributed 99% of UNRWA’s annual budget of over $1.6 billion. The United States was UNRWA’s top donor, contributing $340 million annually, but in March 2024 banned all U.S. funding to UNRWA until at least 2025 due to neutrality concerns. When President Joe Biden initially resumed funding the agency, his administration insisted that UNRWA was committed to neutrality but that clearly did not transpire.
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UNRWA staff member seen participating in the October 7 Hamas atrocities
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
The purported neutrality of UNRWA has been demystified time and again. UNRWA is the only UN refugee agency to have become enmeshed in the politics of the people they are supposed to support. The Palestinians are not merely a passive group of dependent refugees but highly conscious refugee communities with political leadership structures and armed sections engaged in warfare. UNRWA spokespeople tweet accusations, voice hollow defenses of its practices. UNRWA is without question a well-defined political mechanism instead of a humanitarian entity.
UNRWA stands out as an agency that has abused its diplomatic immunity to transform itself into a vehicle for Arab propaganda and incitement to violence. Israel has been warning for years,” Foreign Minister Katz said in January. UNRWA perpetuates the refugee issue, obstructs peace, and serves as a civilian arm of Hamas in Gaza. Not only has UNRWA failed to resolve the refugee problem but it sustains the problem.
UNRWA began providing assistance to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon in May 1950. Over the course of its long history, UNRWA has rarely been the subject of comprehensive external evaluation. For several decades UNRWA has been engaging in an act of bureaucratic self-aggrandisement, inflating refugee numbers of those in its care, ensuring the growth of its budget. UNRWA wants the world to see Palestinians as refugees who must be sustained as welfare cases by the international community. This condition is central to Palestinian culture and identity.
UNRWA’s job is to keep Palestinian refugees in suspended animation—in camps with low living standards—until a formal peace settlement is reached and recognized by the UN General Assembly. The suffering of these millions is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward terrorism and intransigence. Because UNRWA’s mandate does not include resettlement, Palestinian refugees remain stuck in refugee camps in Judea and Samaria, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt without country or nationality status.
IDF STRIKES UNWRA SCHOOL SHELTERING TERRORISTS
(ILTV)
Worse, UNRWA has ensured that the refugee issue only grows larger by automatically registering descendants of the original refugees from the war as refugees themselves in perpetuity. UNRWA does nothing to fight for the right of Lebanese and Syrian-born Arabs to citizenship. Instead, it keeps them in a discriminated-against state in Syria and Lebanon, where their basic human rights are denied, just so they can keep the conflict alive. The organization for Palestinian “refugees” has been exposed repeatedly as one of the single most important sources for prolonging the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The reason why Israel for all the years, despite its many criticisms, did not push hard for dismantling UNRWA, and in fact even cooperated with UNRWA on many occasions, is because UNRWA does provide essential humanitarian services. Because, of course, the Palestinian refugees need support.
Jennifer TealeToday, UNRWA runs over 700 schools in the five territories. It has 140 primary healthcare, provides emergency food support; runs microfinance programs; rehabilitates houses and infrastructure in refugee camps; and employs over 30,000 people (13,000 in Gaza), the vast majority of them Palestinians.
However, UNRWA has ceased to be a humanitarian agency and instead has become a deeply entrenched political advocacy tool for the Palestinians. Israel wants a phased-out exit of UNRWA in Gaza to avoid a worsened humanitarian shock on the ground.
Any agency replacing UNRWA would likely end up employing former UNRWA staff, who already have expertise and experience, rather than being able to find or train thousands of new workers in a crisis situation which is why Prime Minister Netanyahu indicated that his administration "looks forward to the existence of an objective and useful body that provides aid," saying that Gaza "needs this body that is not so firmly fixed on fulfilling Hamas’ objectives."