UNRWA’s Jihad against Israel (Part One) Andrew Harrod
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/unrwas-jihad-against-israel-part-one
Congressional Republicans have recently introduced legislation to reenact President Donald Trump’s cutoff of American aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Closing UNRWA and ending a decades-long, multigenerational “refugee” status for over five million Arabs is long overdue, as documented in the 2014 book Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict—UNRWA Policies Reconsidered.
The book’s author, David Bedein, director of the Center for Near East Policy Research in Jerusalem, provided a detailed, damning indictment of UNRWA. Founded in the wake of Israel’s 1948-1949 War of Independence, UNRWA had the mission of providing for Arabs who lost their homes in the territory that became Israel. Various estimates of their number ran between 540,000 and 750,000.
“When UNRWA launched its operations on May 1, 1950, it was thought that, since the refugee situation would soon be resolved, UNRWA would have a limited life span,” Bedein wrote. Yet ever since UNRWA’s mandate has been “renewed every three years by the UN General Assembly.” As a later article will analyze in detail, the key to UNRWA’s longevity lies in UNRWA’s refusal to apply ordinary resettlement processes to these refugees and their multiplying “refugee” descendants. Rather, UNRWA insists that they “return” to modern Israel.
UNRWA is anomalous in other ways, for it demonstrates an inordinate global attention to Palestinian refugees. As Bedein wrote, “UNRWA remains the only UN organization dedicated to handling exactly one ethnic group of refugees.” Thus, UNRWA “stands in sharp contrast to” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who “works on behalf of all refugees in the world.”
Compared to UNHCR, UNRWA has outsized resources. UNRWA’s wards represent 17 percent of refugees worldwide, but UNRWA’s budget is more than one third of UNHCR’s resources allotted for the all the globe’s other refugees. Accordingly, UNRWA has 29,000 staff members compared to UNHCR’s 7,200, a “ratio of one staff member per 161 and 2,100 refugees, respectively,” Bedein noted.
UNRWA provides more extensive services in its 59 camps across Gaza, Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank than UNHCR. “While UNRWA provides education and healthcare, UNHCR usually expects countries of refuge to assist,” Bedein noted. UNRWA also “duplicates services and funds those who have qualified for services from other locations,” especially “in Jordan, where Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants are Jordanian citizens.”
UNRWA services have also attracted fraud from the beginning. Already in 1950, UNRWA had registered 962,000 alleged refugees, a number far larger than any realistic calculation of Arab refugees during Israel’s War of Independence. Moreover, UNRWA’s loose definitions encompass anyone as a refugee who fled what became Israel in 1948-1949 after having lived there merely “during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948.”
Additionally, some registered with UNRWA “have a predilection for falsifying data regarding births and deaths,” Bedein noted. Meanwhile, “UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen acknowledged in 2001 that UNRWA does not require refugee identity cards for distribution of services.” Elsewhere around the “world—North America, Europe, Arab nations—there are persons who are on UNRWA’s rolls and carry the agency’s ID card.”
UNRWA aid has made “camps” a misnomer for UNRWA dwellings, Bedein noted:
UN camps have for the most part evolved into urban neighborhoods with two-and three-story stone-block houses. While overcrowded, UNRWA homes now provide electricity, running water, sewage, and phone lines, along with modern appliances. In some instances, international donations have permitted the construction of what amounts to modern apartment houses; some have been refined to the point of luxury.
Almost all UNRWA staff are registered with UNRWA as refugees, but evidence indicates that they have little interest in solving UNRWA’s refugee problem, Bedein observed:
UNRWA is perceived as sustaining its own interest in continuing its work; the refugees are not convinced (nor is there reason why they should be) that UNRWA has a vested interest in solving their problem. After all, if the refugee problem is solved, 29,000 Palestinian refugees could lose their UNRWA jobs.
Americans have particular reasons to consider UNRWA’s faults, as the United States has been UNRWA’s largest donor, providing some 30 percent of UNRWA’s budget (currently $1.5 billion), followed by the European Union. More troubling than UNRWA’s bloat and mismanagement, the organization effectively pursues the demographic destruction of Israel, as a subsequent article will discuss.
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