JERUSALEM — Israel‘s Parliament recently passed a law that bans the United Nations Relief and Works Agency from operating inside the country, including East Jerusalem. A second law, also passed in October, categorizes the aid organization as a “terror group,” which would make it illegal for Israeli officials and state agencies to interact with UNRWA officials.
That’s assuming the government implements the law at the end of January 2025. Without Israeli entry permits and coordination with the Israeli military, UNRWA cannot work effectively in Gaza or the West Bank.
UNRWA, which was created in 1949 to care for Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Middle
East war, called the legislation “outrageous and reprehensible.” If implemented, “the ban will
sever essential lifelines — healthcare, mental health counseling, food assistance, water, education,
and more,” the aid organization said. The governments of several nations warned of
“devastating consequences” and urged Israel to abide by its international obligations and “keep
the reserve privileges and immunities of UNRWA untouched.”
The Knesset vote followed a year of deliberations and mounting evidence that UNRWA ignored Hamas’s construction of a tunnel right under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters and knowingly employed terrorists, often in UNRWA’s school system.
Two recent independent investigations appear to bolster Israel’s claims about UNRWA schools and their role in indoctrinating impressionable students.
An investigation conducted by the New York Times published on Dec. 8 found that “at least 24” people employed by UNRWA in 24 schools were members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or another militant group. The majority were principals or deputy principals, and the rest were school counselors, according to records discovered by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza and reviewed by the outlet.
“The seized records – coupled with interviews of current and former UNRWA employees, residents, and former students in Gaza – offer the most detailed evidence yet of the extent of Hamas’s presence inside UNRWA schools. In several cases, educators remained employed by UNRWA even after Israel provided written warnings that they were militants,” the outlet said.
The fact that the head of Hamas in Lebanon was a school principal and a former head of UNRWA’s teachers’ union in Lebanon only reinforces Israel’s contentions, the outlet noted.
The outlet’s findings reinforced much of what UN Watch, a watchdog NGO that monitors all activities at the United Nations, has been reporting for years, based on what UNRWA employees publish on social media, in chat groups, and on the internet. It shares its findings with the U.N., Israel, and other nations.
In a video interview obtained by UN Watch, a boy named Muhanad says he learned about the Palestinian Right of Return in school and “that we need to return to our land, that the occupation needs to leave our land.” When asked whether his teachers taught him about the Israeli occupation, Muhanad replies, “Yes, that they occupied us in 1948.” The solution for Jerusalem “is to liberate it and expel the Jews from it,” he says.
Aya, another UNRWA student, says she was taught “that we don’t like Israel,” that Palestinians will “shoot” Israelis, and that the martyrs are “big heroes.” She hopes to become a martyr one day.
“We’ve been documenting UNRWA teachers routinely celebrating bloody terrorist attacks and glorifying Hitler. They do this on Facebook,” UN Watch Director Hillel Neuer told the Washington Examiner. “If your school principal is a Hamas leader, that’s what you’re going to learn.”
Like Hamas, Neuer said, “The goal of UNRWA is to dismantle Israel. UNRWA must be replaced.” He rejected claims by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the organization is irreplaceable.
“Whenever there is a crisis anywhere else in the world, UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency
assisting all non-Palestinian refugees goes in, the World Health Organization or UNICEF go in, and care for millions of refugees. The notion that international agencies cannot go in and help in a very small piece of land like Gaza is absurd,” Neuer maintained.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, does not deny UNRWA’s flaws but believes it cannot be replaced immediately.
“I recognize entirely that there are a variety of problems with UNRWA,” said Alkhatib, a Palestinian who emigrated from Gaza to the U.S. many years ago. “UNRWA allowed Hamas to abdicate its responsibility for caring for the people of Gaza. UNRWA got comfortable coordinating with Hamas, they talked through Hamas, they didn’t build up firewalls. Hamas used and exploited UNRWA.”
Even so, Alkhatib said, Israel must not prevent UNRWA from operating without a viable backup plan. Even if Israel were to somehow secure the cooperation of other large aid organizations by the end of January, he said, much of the burden once shouldered by UNRWA would fall on Israel, especially the IDF.
“I am all for ending UNRWA’s monopoly over humanitarian aid and service deliveries and preventing it from having an oversized role. The goal must be to breed Palestinian self-sufficiency,” he said, adding that as soon as there is a capable non-Hamas government in Gaza, “it should provide these services.”
If Alkhatib and Neuer agree on one thing, it is that UNRWA perpetuates Palestinians’ status as refugees.
“I think that in the minds of Palestinians, UNRWA is a kind of guarantor of the Right of Return to what today is Israel, which the organization deems sacred and necessary,” Alkhatib said.
In Jordan, where 2 million people of Palestinian descent have been granted citizenship, “why does UNRWA call them refugees?” Neuer asked. “Why does UNRWA call Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza, which it says is Palestinian land, refugees?
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While UNHCR’s role is to resettle refugees, “the point of UNRWA is to perpetuate war,” Neuer said.
Michele Chabin is an Israel-based journalist. Her work has appeared in, among other outlets, Cosmopolitan, the Forward, Religion News Service, SCIENCE, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and the Washington Post.
