UNRWA is the problem, not the solution

UNRWA, the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was a fatally flawed organization at its inception 75 years ago, and since then has become one of the most tangible expressions of the UN’s anti-Israel bias.

With the start of the war in October 2023 and the subsequent harm caused to both Israelis and Palestinians by Hamas’ infiltration of UNRWA in Gaza, the situation has only become more acute. Yet too many in the international community have chosen to ignore this suffering, remaining entrenched in the unsubstantiated position that there are no viable alternatives to this aberrant agency.

Although Israel’s warnings that UNRWA is tainted by terrorism have been dismissed for years, after its personnel participated in the Oct. 7 massacre, killing and kidnapping Israelis, the overlap between Hamas and UNRWA became undeniable. Very quickly it became patently obvious to anyone willing to look that large numbers of UNRWA staff members also function as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operatives and commanders.

Israel has provided extensive information about the agency’s staffers involved in terrorism, including a list of 100 Hamas members compiled to demonstrate the scope of UNRWA’s infiltration. Additional evidence uncovered by Israel contained the names of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists embedded in UNRWA’s school system as principals and teachers. Examples include that of Naji Abu Aziz, a school principal and Hamas operative involved in military manufacturing, as well as Ahmad al-Khatib, who was a deputy principal at an UNRWA school while also serving Hamas as a ground combat expert and a squad commander in its Qassam Brigades.

Unfortunately, this very specific and credible data were largely ignored by UNRWA and to date, no meaningful actions or effective countermeasures have been implemented.

Similarly, the United Nations has not taken any significant action to mitigate Hamas’ ongoing exploitation of UNRWA facilities in Gaza for terrorist purposes, despite the grave danger posed to both Palestinian civilians and Israeli forces.

Terrorists routinely operate in what should be neutral sites, including medical facilities, using them as command centers and to launch attacks. Educational facilities have become havens for terrorists and their missiles. Infrastructure such as terror tunnels and shafts to underground arms caches are located within, or in close proximity to, UNRWA premises. A particularly egregious example would be February’s discovery of a major Hamas data center located directly beneath UNRWA’s main headquarters in Gaza.

It is no coincidence that Hamas personnel are embedded in UNRWA to an almost unprecedented degree. This terrorist organization’s survival strategy is predicated on creating enough international pressure on Israel to force it to stop defending itself.

Hamas is well aware that by deliberately endangering Palestinian civilians in UNRWA sites and camouflaging terrorists as UNRWA employees, it can guarantee that international outrage will be generated. Indeed, among the Hamas documents captured by Israel was one that describes schools as “the best obstacles to protect the resistance” (Hamas’ code word for its terrorist forces).

Following the UN’s refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, let alone act to rectify the situation, Israeli lawmakers from across the political spectrum joined together to pass the Law to Cease UNRWA Operations, which will ban the agency from operating from Israeli territory.

This certainly does not mean that Israel will stop humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip once the law comes into effect. Israel remains committed to complying with its obligations under international law, and from the start of the war has facilitated the entry of more than 1.1 million tons of humanitarian goods (despite much of that aid being stolen by Hamas).

Cooperation with various UN bodies and international organizations that are not compromised by terror will continue. Already the vast majority of the humanitarian aid to Gaza is provided by the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) and other groups, whereas UNRWA only supplies a small fraction of that aid.

Those who claim that there are no alternatives to UNRWA in Gaza ignore the fact that reliance on a population-specific organization is an anomaly, not the norm. Across the globe, in times of conflict and natural disaster, relief operations are conducted by the standard UN bodies and international groups. For instance, since the conflict began in April 2023, the WFP has supported nearly 10 million people in Sudan, which the UN defines as suffering from “the world’s largest hunger crisis.”

This anomaly is not the product of any unique Palestinian needs that cannot be met by the usual professional organizations. Assistance to all of the world’s more than 30 million refugees falls under the mandate of the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. All of them, that is, except for Palestinians.

While the goal of the UNHCR is to find long-term solutions for refugees, UNRWA deliberately and artificially perpetuates the status of Palestinians as refugees. In sharp contrast to standard procedure, Palestinian refugee status is automatically inherited at birth, irrespective of the individual’s situation, meaning that second, third and fourth generation descendants of those who fled Israel in 1948 are considered refugees even if they were born in areas under Palestinian control or live in other countries where their great-grandparents had settled.

Beyond endlessly preserving the Palestinians’ status as refugees for political purposes, UNRWA enflames the conflict and allows generation after generation of Palestinian children to be indoctrinated in its schools to hate Jews and love jihad.

When a turning point in history is reached, it is reasonable to assume that long-standing assumptions will be reexamined and changes made to institutions that are incompatible with the new reality. However, in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre, the UN chose not to change UNRWA.

Clearly, it is past time to replace UNRWA – which has done less to help the Palestinians than to perpetuate the conflict – with organizations that are not rife with terrorists and terrorist enablers.

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Ilan Fluss is the Ambassador of Israel to the Philippines.