David Lammy, the new UK Foreign Secretary, has announced that the government is resuming funding for UNRWA, marking the decision with £21 million in new funding.
In January, the UK suspended funding to UNRWA, the controversial UN body that deals with Palestinian refugees, after allegations that several of its staff were involved in the 7th October terrorist attacks.
A report published by Israeli intelligence revealed that a significant number of UNRWA employees in Gaza serve in the ranks of Hamas and other terror organisations, including military positions. Israel sent UNRWA an official letter with a list of 100 terror operatives.
The report revealed that over 10% of senior UNRWA educators in Gaza (school principals or deputies) were found to be members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Israel shared this information with UNRWA who conducted an investigation into twelve employees that “actively participated” in the 7th October massacre itself.
The subsequent war in Gaza has also raised further concerns about UNRWA staff. Some hostages, who were released from Gaza during a weeklong truce in November, said that they were held in the homes of UNRWA members. The IDF also revealed in February that Hamas hid a large subterranean data center directly under the UNRWA Gaza headquarters building in Gaza City. An entrance to the stronghold was found underneath a nearby UNRWA school.
Israel contends that the problem is not just “a few bad apples”, but rather is a serious terror infiltration that poses a “grave security risk” and “seriously jeopardizes” humanitarian efforts. The report also took issue with the fact that UNRWA does not regard Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
The report states: “As recently as February 2024, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths publicly stated that ‘Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, as you know, it is a political movement.’ Moreover, reforms will not change the basic fact that UNRWA in Gaza is the only UN entity in the world which runs a state-like enterprise employing 13,000 local staff members, managed by a small number of international staff, in an area controlled by a terrorist organization with a genocidal agenda.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tasked an independent panel with assessing whether UNRWA acts in a neutral fashion in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Israel says that neutrality inspections are missing the point.
“A ’neutrality breach’ according to UNRWA’s definition is ‘taking sides in hostilities or engaging in controversies of a political, racial, religious, or ideological nature.’ Infiltration by a terror organization that then exploits UNRWA facilities to further their terror organization’s objectives goes far beyond a mere neutrality breach. It undermines all other humanitarian principles, including humanity, impartiality and independence. UNRWA’s attempt to frame the issue as merely one concerning neutrality is misleading and points to ineffective solutions. Preventing terror infiltration of such massive enterprises requires tools that UN agencies in the field do not have, starting with the ability to define local terrorist organizations as such.”
Lammy told the Commons on Friday, “Humanitarian aid is a moral necessity in the face of such a catastrophe, and it is aid agencies who ensure UK support reaches civilians on the ground.
“UNRWA is absolutely central to these efforts. No other agency can deliver aid at the scale needed.
“It’s already feeding over half of Gaza’s population. It will be vital for future reconstruction, and it provides critical services to Palestinian refugees in the region.”
It now leaves the United States as the only country not to have restored funding to the agency.
What is UNRWA?
UNRWA’s link to Hamas terrorism follows long-standing criticism of UNRWA as a legitimate body serving Palestinian refugees.
Palestinian refugees are the only refugee population that has its own dedicated UN agency. UNRWA does not have a mandate to resettle refugees. Instead, UNRWA and the 30,000 people it employs are responsible for administering humanitarian aid and social welfare to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
The rest of the world’s refugees fall under the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR operates in 130 countries with a staff of 11,000. In addition to providing aid, the UNHCR has resettled 1,015,644 refugees between 2003-2018.
Since 1950, UNHCR has resettled more than 50 million refugees. On the other hand, since 1949, UNRWA has not resettled a single Palestinian refugee. That’s zero. None.
In fact, the number of Palestinian refugees under UNRWA has grown from 600,000 in 1949, to more than 5.9 million in 2023. The fact that the numbers are growing should actually be impossible because a refugee loses their status as a refugee as soon as they become a citizen of another country, but Palestinian refugees are also the only refugees who inherit their refugee status wherever they might be in the world. According to UNRWA, “the descendants of Palestinian refugee males, including legally adopted children” are also classified as “Palestine refugees”.
Support for Palestinian refugees shows they are the most excessively funded in the world. A 2017 report that was given to the UN showed that Palestinian refugees are given four times more money per person than other refugee. And whilst UNHCR has funding for one staff member per 5,948 refugees, UNRWA has one staff member per 191 Palestinian refugees.
Whilst UNHCR reports that only 46% of the world’s child refugees are able to attend school. UNRWA reports that 91.4% of Palestinian child refugees attend school and literacy rates among Palestinians are some of the highest in the world.
So, why are Palestinian refugees being treated differently to all other refugee groups and why is UNRWA not resettling Palestinian refugees?
The reason is because Palestinian refugees claim the “right of return” which is a fictitious claim that Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the land that is now Israel. The Palestinians are kept as “refugees” because Palestinian leaders are using them, with the assistance of the United Nations, as a political pawn against Israel. And the objective is the destruction of Israel.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt from 1956 to 1970, who declared war with Israel during the Six Day War, said this about Palestinian refugees: “If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.”
This phrase has been repeated in some form or other by many Arab leaders throughout the decades. Fatah’s own website stated, “To us, the refugees issue is the winning card which means the end of the Israeli state.” Another Egyptian minister said, “In demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees, the intention is to exterminate the Jewish State.”
Unfortunately, this is the mentality being taught to the Palestinian people. UNRWA does not just keep Palestinians as perpetual “refugees”, they also do it with indoctrination.
Most Palestinian children are educated in an UNRWA run school, and half of UNRWA’s annual budget is spent on education. Therefore the greatest outworking of UNRWA is in education, and there is a reason for that.
Numerous studies into these school have consistently found that the “Right of Return” for Palestinians and “armed struggle” against Israel are core themes within the system. For example, science textbooks teach Newton’s laws of motion with a depiction of a Palestinian terrorist using a slingshot to launch a stone at an Israeli, asking the student to calculate the velocity of the stone. Geography lessons replace the map of Israel with a map of “Palestine”, with all the town, cities and regions renamed into Arabic names. History lessons erase the Jewish history of the land of Israel and instead teach lies and distortion.
Researchers say that “UNRWA, in fact, not only does propagate a non-peaceful line contrary to UN resolutions on the Middle East, and not only does allow the presentation of Israel and its Jewish citizens as illegitimate with heavy layers of demonization. UNRWA also betrays its moral obligation toward the Palestinian children and youths’ human rights and well-being, by letting the PA prepare them for a future war with Israel.”
Even more shocking is that the textbooks which contain these lessons are approved of by the United Nations and are funded by Western governments.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is just another weapon being wielded against Israel in an attempt to destroy the Jewish state. It exploits Palestinian refugees and brainwashes them into hating Israel and even breaks the rules it is supposed to uphold. All of this is accomplished by draining the resources of Israel’s allies, some of whom are too ignorant or compromised to do anything about it.
