Originally published by Jewish News Syndicate
The Knesset overwhelmingly passed legislation last year prohibiting the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating on Israeli territory. It also banned every Israeli from cooperating with UNRWA in any way. Despite an outcry from the anti-Israel elements of the international community, the law went into effect at the end of January, and UNRWA was obligated to cease its operations in Israel. Its social services to residents of Jerusalem, for example, were assumed by the municipality, but it has created a vacuum among purveyors of incitement and anti-Israel animus.
The time has come for the United Nations, once and for all, to close down UNRWA entirely. It has not served a useful purpose for many decades, if ever. UNRWA in Jerusalem provided health care and sanitation services, as well as administered some schools—tasks that, according to residents, performed poorly in all respects. Elementary-school education taught little beyond incitement against Israel, and UNRWA routinely sold its supplies on the black market, enriching its employees and impoverishing its clients. As reported in Israel Hayom, only 2.3% of eighth-graders in UNRWA schools were proficient in reading at age-appropriate levels.
Enjoy what you're reading? Subscribe for more!
UNRWA’s failure to provide services pales before its active participation in terror, both inside and outside of Gaza. Estimates are that almost half of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza were active members of Hamas, and dozens of UNRWA workers were identified as among the assailants and torturers of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. A substantial part of the UNRWA annual budget of roughly $2 billion functioned as a grant to Hamas. Terror facilities run by Hamas, including weapons depots and tunnels, were discovered under UNRWA buildings in Gaza, and Hamas has claimed responsibility for repeated acts of terror in Jerusalem in the last several years.
Why does UNRWA still exist? And why must it be permanently shuttered?
UNRWA was founded 75 years ago to deal with the 700,000 Arab refugees who fled their homes during and after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Oddly, another U.N. agency, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was created around the same time to deal with the remainder of the world’s tens of millions of refugees resulting from the wars in that tumultuous decade. Neither agency inquired after the welfare of the 800,000 Jews who were simultaneously driven out of their homes in the Arab world, most of whom resettled in Israel and the West.
More importantly, UNRWA’s singular focus since its origin has been to perpetuate the refugee status of Palestinian Arabs rather than end it through resettlement, which is the objective of UNHCR. This is accomplished in several ways. First, UNRWA redefined “refugee” for its own purposes. According to the UNHCR, refugee status is limited to those individuals who fled a war zone. As soon as they are resettled, they are no longer considered refugees and are beyond UNHCR’s purview.
By contrast, UNRWA contrived its own unique definition of “refugee,” i.e., any descendant of a male who fled the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948. Thus, refugee status for Palestinian Arabs is transmitted from generation to generation, unlike any other refugee group in the world, and so by UNRWA’s (inflated) count, they now number almost 6 million people. Today, 99% of these “refugees” were born and raised in the country where they now reside. UNRWA is subsidizing its fourth generation of refugees, something unprecedented, and which therefore has no natural end to it.
Second, UNRWA makes no effort to find permanent homes for its “refugees” but has maintained them in refugee camps since 1949. While UNHCR seeks to terminate refugee status, UNRWA seeks to immortalize it. As such, for most Palestinians, their refugee status is never lost, and they remain eligible for UNRWA subsidies. In effect, Palestinians are not required to assume responsibility for their own well-being and resettlement, even though they reside mostly in Judea, Samaria and Gaza or in the Arab world among their co-religionists whose language and culture they share. Certainly, residence in Arab countries such as Jordan, Syria or Lebanon for 60 to 75 years should have resulted in the loss of their refugee status. Those countries should assimilate them.
Third, the desire to maintain the refugee status of Palestinian Arabs forever stems from UNRWA’s primary purpose. It perceives its role as integral to the fight for Israel’s destruction and disappearance. It is not just that UNRWA regularly incites against Israel and has participated in acts of terror. UNRWA inculcates a narrative of victimization and permanent grievance that can never be assuaged except by violence against Israel.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he would halt U.S. contributions to UNRWA, as he did in his first term, which then amounted to 17% of the agency’s budget, or $371 million. It is time that UNRWA be shuttered entirely. To incentivize this, Washington should threaten to reduce its contribution to the United Nations itself for the exact amount the international body spends on UNRWA, which is now upward of $2 billion.
It’s time for new thinking and new approaches. In the wake of the Trump initiative to relocate Palestinians in Gaza elsewhere in the Middle East so they can begin new and productive lives, UNRWA becomes even more superfluous.
As long as UNRWA exists and Palestinian Arabs perceive themselves as eternal wards of the world, they will retain their fantasy of destroying Israel. UNRWA will never disband itself; it is one of the world’s foremost boondoggles. Its disbandment by the United Nations can only help promote a better life for Palestinian Arabs and a more peaceful world.
Photo credit: UNRWA UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East by David Scaduto, with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license on Flickr