By Steve Kramer
KFAR SABA, Israel — Israel, which has been fighting Hamas in Gaza for more than a year, is finally willing to drastically reduce the power of the Jew-hating United Nations in this conflict. The UN’s “creature” in the fight against Israel is UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. This organization was established by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1949, ostensibly “to carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestine refugees. The UN’s real intention is to destroy Israel.
“The concept of UNRWA is to keep Palestinians dependent, living in refugee camps generation after generation, while using its young men as foot soldiers to fight Israel. Winding down the camps and having the people live normal lives and believe in two states and peace could have potentially resulted in peace. However, the UNRWA mandate was never to embrace peace, two states, and coexistence.”
UNRWA puts Palestinian Arabs and their descendants permanently in ‘refugee camps’, instead of relocating them. It is essential to know that no other refugees, except the Palestinian Arabs, were placed in such limbo. The General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate, most recently extending it until June 30, 2026.
Of all of the world’s displaced populations, only the Palestinian Arabs rely on a unique UN agency for its sustenance.
In 1948-49, after Israel’s War of Independence, about 650-750,000 Palestinian Arabs were resettled beyond the Armistice/Green Line west of the Jordan River and in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. (It was insisted on and agreed that the Armistice Line was not to be considered a border.) The small number of Arab refugees still alive and their descendants now number more than 5.5 million. This figure doesn’t include misnamed “refugees” who are now citizens of other countries. UNWRA has done more to prolong the never-ending battle against Israel than to help the 1948/67 refugees, most of whom have died or resettled long ago in other countries.
In contrast, all the world’s other refugees are served by the UNHCR – Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees – operating in 136 countries. It fulfills the refugees’ right to reach safety and swiftly helps them find a place to call home so they can rebuild their lives. The UNHCR most definitely does not extend refugee status to descendants of those displaced people. Its job is to resettle people needing new homes, unlike UNWRA, which perpetuates the misery of the Palestinian Arabs while blaming Israel.
How can roughly 700,000 refugees from 1948/67 grow to 6 million in 76 years? It’s only possible because UNWRA, unlike the UNHCR, counts the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of their ancestors as “refugees”, regardless of where they currently live or their citizenship status. Today there are approximately 5.4 million Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank) and Gaza. It is projected that this population will increase to 9.4 million by mid-century, a 75% increase.
How does UNWRA cooperate with the terrorists? Its more than 30,000 employees, many of whom have been revealed as Hamas terrorists, live among the “civilians.” Hamas embedded itself in, and under, UNWRA schools and hospitals, resulting in mass destruction of those institutions. Many weapons caches or tunnel entrances were discovered in, or under Gazan homes. So-called regular schools and “summer camps” promote hatred for Jews and Israel and elevate the destruction of Israel as the ideal. To become a “martyr for Palestine” is promoted as the highest aspiration.
Here’s a link showing many examples of this.
The UNWRA mission is not to gain citizenship for those under its “care,: but to educate them from the cradle to hate Israel and Jews. It’s not how to educate themselves for a better life, but to turn them into killing machines to eradicate the hated Jews. There is no goal for a State of Palestine. The goal is only to eradicate Israel.
The billions of dollars given to UNWRA by member states do not reach ordinary Gazans. For example, the steel and concrete for much needed residences have been utilized for tunnel building, a project larger than New York’s subway system. Much of the huge inflow of grants from the UN, other organizations, and various countries ends up in the pockets of local Hamas leaders. Even more is skimmed off by the top leaders living in luxury in Qatar and other countries. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the intended recipients suffer. The electricity, fuel, food and water which Israel is forced to distribute is mainly stolen by Hamas. Hamas then sells much of the donated goods and services at exorbitant prices to the Gazan people. Yahya Sinwar’s wife fled the tunnels carrying a $32,000 Birkin handbag. In 2023, the US was reported as UNRWA’s largest donor, with $218 million, compared to a total of $16 million from all Arab countries.
Israel does have the power to prevent UNRWA from operating in territory under its sovereign or military control, but up to now hasn’t used it. “Israel had long argued that the organization incited against Israel and Jews and helped ensure that there would be a permanent and ever-expanding group of Palestinian refugees. Prior to October 7, 2023, many security officials had held that UNRWA’s provision of humanitarian services provided an important element of stabilization in the region. … [Now] Israel and the IDF have come to believe that UNRWA is so intertwined with Hamas that it cannot be a neutral service provider.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu and many Knesset members have long called for the UN to eliminate UNRWA to no avail. Finally, on Monday, October 28 the Knesset passed a law banning the UN. Palestinian refugee agency from operating in Israel: “Despite widespread international opposition, lawmakers voted overwhelming on Monday evening to approve two bills essentially barring the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants from operating in Israel, and severely curtailing its activities in Gaza and the West Bank.” Nevertheless, UNWRA will still have a reduced role in Gaza.
It’s doubtful that this legislation will be carried out in full, due to pressure from the US and others. The West is so stuck on the Palestinian Arab problem, which it blames on Israel, that it will put unyielding pressure on it to reduce the laws’ effects. The most significant Western countries are so bent on minimizing Israel’s power, or eliminating it altogether, that the Palestinian Arabs get a free pass to continue their war to destroy Israel. Despite this 100-year war of terror against the indigenous Jews’ reestablishment of a state in their homeland, it is Israel which is continuously singled out as the cause of unrest in the Middle East.
Will the UN ever cease to confront Israel? Will it ever be done with “Palestinian” refugees, whose numbers increase annually? So far, it looks like this might continue indefinitely. The recent legislation the Knesset passed against UNWRA will probably be emasculated, but hopefully the brouhaha around it will educate many people about this costly, Jew-hating organization which should never have been established. If UNWRA were to disappear, the Palestinian Arab “refugee” problem would also end. However, even if it continued, it could be handled under the aegis of the UNHCR, which knows how to reduce the number of refugees worldwide, not add to it.
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Steve Kramer is an American Israeli freelance writer based in Kfar Saba, Israel.
UNRWA considers not only Arabs who fled pre-state Israel in 1947-1949 as refugees, but also their descendants in perpetuity, regardless of their naturalization elsewhere, leading to a massive increase in that category’s numbers. All other refugees are handled by the UNHCR agency, which does not recognize the descendants of refugees as such, and revokes the title of anyone who is naturalized abroad.