The relief agency in Gaza, financed in part by the U.S., has become a patron of Palestinian grievance.
On Wednesday, as a truce held between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon briefed the U.N. General Assembly. “The senseless cycle of suffering” must end, he said, asking: “Do we have to continue like this: build, destroy, and build, and destroy?”
For answers, the secretary-general would do well to look at the U.N.’s own main agency in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, better known as Unrwa. Bankrolled chiefly by the United States and the European Commission, with headquarters split among Gaza, Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, the agency is one of the U.N.’s most perverse, destructive creations. In Gaza it essentially functions as Hamas’s handmaiden.
During the clashes of recent weeks as Israel sought to stop rocket attacks by Hamas and to destroy the organization’s terror tunnels, Unrwa has loomed large on the public stage—with a pronounced Palestinian tilt. Its commissioner-general, Pierre Krahenbuhl, has publicly condemned Israel, accusing the Israelis of “serious violation of international law.” On Al Jazeera television, the agency’s spokesman, Christopher Gunness, has wept for the Palestinians.