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“Major donors to the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) have suspended funding after allegations emerged that around 12 of its tens of thousands of Palestinian employees were suspected of involvement in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel by Hamas…
“A six-page Israeli dossier shared with the United States and reviewed by Reuters says 12 UNRWA staff members took part in the Oct. 7 attacks, including nine who worked as teachers in the agency's schools… The dossier says Israel also has wider evidence that UNRWA has employed 190 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.” Reuters
“The United States said [last] Tuesday that the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees needs to make ‘fundamental changes’ before Washington will resume funding… U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said [last] Tuesday that Washington provides $300-400 million a year. Miller said that in the current fiscal year, which began in October, the U.S. had so far provided about $121 million to UNRWA.” Reuters
The right calls for the defunding and ultimate elimination of the UNRWA.
“The support for terrorism within the agency has been well established for decades. The international bureaucrats in charge have chosen to look away time and time again. Textbooks used in U.N. classrooms glorified terrorism; the teachers did too. UNRWA schools doubled as arms depots and rocket-launch sites. The agency once dismissed its top official in Gaza after Hamas leaders demanded the personnel change…
“Congress needs to pass a blanket prohibition on the use of U.S. funds for any of UNRWA’s operations. It must do this to preempt any future decision to lift the temporary suspension of funding and to set the stage for UNRWA’s eventual elimination…
“UNRWA’s supporters say that cutting the agency out of the picture would leave a gap in humanitarian aid for Gaza. They ignore that much of the assistance entering Gaza is likely snatched by Hamas anyway. Most important, to continue funding UNRWA would maintain America’s de facto culpability in financing terrorism. Other U.N. agencies with a better track record, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S.-dominated World Food Program, should step in.”
The Editors, National Review
“The United Nations has two agencies dedicated to the plight of refugees. One, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, is responsible for the well-being of nearly all the world’s more than 30 million refugees, with a mandate to help them resettle in third countries if they can’t go home…
“The other is UNRWA, which theoretically operates under the umbrella of the high commissioner but is really its own organization. No other group except for Palestinians gets its own permanent agency…
“The changing borders and independence movements of the postwar era produced millions of refugees: Germans, Indians, Pakistanis, Palestinians and Jews, including some 800,000 Jews who were kicked out of Arab countries that had been their homes for centuries. Nearly all found new lives in new countries — except for Palestinians. They have been kept as perpetual refugees.”
Bret Stephens, New York Times
“While UNHCR has a mandate to help find new homes for the refugees within its jurisdiction, UNRWA explicitly does not. That means UNRWA is authorized to provide basic social services, from education to health care, but not seek resettlement for its caseload or even encourage self-sufficiency. Instead, they tend to become permanent dependents of the international community…
“Think about the absurdity of Palestinian refugee camps in a territory from which Israel withdrew in 2005, and which has been governed exclusively by Hamas since 2007… Allowing the status quo with UNRWA to continue on autopilot, or with only superficial tweaks by suddenly nervous UNRWA leaders, is practically guaranteed to perpetuate the conflict.”
David Harris, New York Post
The left calls for funding of the UNRWA to be restored, arguing that it provides essential services.
The left calls for funding of the UNRWA to be restored, arguing that it provides essential services.
“By all currently available accounts, the intelligence report did not find any direct connection between UNRWA leadership and Hamas military activity. The Israeli report, which relies on sophisticated surveillance technology and possibly interrogation, only identifies twelve UNRWA employees out of the twelve thousand working in the Gaza strip. Israel has consistently peddled falsehoods during the conflict, and the same intelligence forces promoting the report failed to protect the Israeli public in the lead-up to the Hamas attack…
“[Critics of the agency such as the NGO UN Watch rely] on the social media posts of several UNRWA employees throughout the organization’s broad operating zone, along with examples of material taught at several UNRWA-run schools… However, these examples do not represent institutional bias at the organization, and UN Watch has consistently failed to find examples of extremism at UNRWA that rise above isolated incidents.”
Tom Bunting, Jacobin Magazine
“UNRWA had the immensely unenviable task of operating in a confined area where a terror organization not only became the government but was engaging in activities that could compromise the safety and integrity of the agency's operations. The agency coordinated with Hamas officials to do its work and conduct its functions, which necessitated having a working relationship with the terror group. And this created a normalcy bias whereby UNRWA staff and much of its management in Gaza attempted to maintain the status quo by minimizing friction and confrontation with Hamas…
“The biggest problem with UNRWA is that it inadvertently allowed Hamas to go on with its disastrous governance of Gaza and enabled the group to neglect its fundamental role as a government to provide for Gazans by relying on the agency instead.”
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, Newsweek
“Let there be no mistake: UNRWA services are absolutely vital to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Think of UNRWA as an omnipresent municipal service provider. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the agency has distributed roughly 100,000 mattresses, 19 million liters of water, 3.1 million diapers, nearly 4.7 million cans of food and $6.2 million worth of medicines. Nearly 1.9 million people — more than the population of the City of Brotherly Love — are currently taking shelter in or near UNRWA facilities.”
Michael Bociurkiw, CNN
“Punishing the entire agency for a small number of people’s actions is neither logical nor conscionable. Just as we would not say that a hospital that employs a doctor who commits a crime should be defunded, similarly it defies common sense and moral duty to divest from a colossal life-saving humanitarian operation in response to allegations against a relatively small set of fringe employees.”
Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC
