U.N. Relief and Works Agency is an inseparable arm of Hamas

OPINION:

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Since last year’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, no U.N. agency has garnered as many headlines as UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

The U.N. agency, created in 1949, had one primary purpose — to resettle purported Arab Palestinian refugees and their descendants, created in the wake of the Arab states’ failure to annihilate the nascent state of Israel following its establishment in 1948.

Seventy-five years later, what does UNRWA have to show for it? Not a single refugee resettled. Instead, its raison d’etre and the root problem of its very existence has become to perpetuate the conflict by actively refusing to resettle Arab Palestinians, in contradiction of its very mandate, and offering them nothing but a false hope of a nonexistent “right of return” to flooding Israel en masse and destroying the Jewish state.

In essence, UNRWA has become the drug of choice for Arab Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, to refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist and make the compromises necessary for establishing peace. For years, we have witnessed whistleblowers threatened and pushed out of the organization and the Middle East. At the same time, UNRWA functionaries like former spokesman Chris Gunness cried on camera about the plight of the organization and its indispensable mission. Lies and corruption have been built into UNRWA’s fabric from the start.

Fast-forward to January this year, when explosive allegations were revealed about UNRWA staff, including teachers and social workers, being actively and systematically involved in carrying out the massacre, torture and abductions of Oct. 7.

There are some who would defend UNRWA to the hilt, claiming that such atrocities were committed by a few bad apples. The fact of the matter is it is not merely a few bad apples; the entire organization is rotten to the core and infested with terror and antisemitism.

In the latest intelligence figures released, 2,135 UNRWA employees were revealed as members of Hamas, representing 17% of the agency’s workforce in Gaza, of whom at least 400 were active fighters.

It is simply unfathomable that the UNRWA commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, did not know that almost 20% of his staff in Gaza were active members of Hamas. He just chose to turn a blind eye.

Today, there are still many who have expressed shock at the revelations about UNRWA’s complicity in the Oct. 7 attacks. One should be about as shocked as you would be to hear the Earth is round.

For years, we have been warning U.N. officials, lawmakers, diplomats and the press that UNRWA had become an inseparable arm of Hamas and a systematic incubator of hate, incitement and terror. Both Congress and the European Parliament have repeatedly called out the agency for antisemitic material in its school curriculum. UNRWA teachers have engaged in widespread glorification of violence, and U.N. facilities have previously been used both to hide Hamas rockets and as a launch pad to fire them at Israel.

As far back as 2004, then-UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said, “Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don’t see that as a crime.” Therein lies the crux of the problem that UNRWA sees it as perfectly acceptable to have on its payroll individuals who engage in mass slaughter, rape and abductions.

Notable graduates of the UNRWA school system include Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, the former Hamas chief who attended UNRWA secondary school in Khan Younis and graduated at the top of his class.

There is no denying that civilians in Gaza are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance as a result of the actions Hamas undertook on Oct. 7 and its ongoing siphoning of aid and the use of civilians as human shields.

But such aid cannot go through UNRWA when the agency has shown it is no more than a subsidiary of Hamas that masquerades as a relief organization.

First of all, there is already a U.N. agency, the U.N. Refugee Agency, that is required to assist and repatriate refugees around the world. It cannot be such that the Palestinians have an agency devoted solely to them, whereas refugees from other war-torn zones have one combined. If the U.N. Refugee Agency can assist refugees from Ukraine and Sudan, surely it can do so for those in Gaza as well.

Food and aid could be delivered through the World Food Program, already the world’s largest humanitarian organization devoted to delivering food for people recovering from conflict. Agencies like the Red Cross, UNICEF and the World Health Organization can provide essential medical services while operating hospitals and clinics in conflict zones. Bodies like the U.N. Human Settlements Program and the International Organization for Migration can help provide shelter and housing.

This is in addition to the numerous nongovernmental organizations already performing crucial humanitarian work that are not compromised by terror in the manner that UNRWA has become.

In addition to making UNRWA obsolete and building the groundwork for peaceful coexistence, any future policy on Gaza must also banish once and for all the myth of a Palestinian “right of return” or the differential criteria whereby descendants of Palestinians are afforded refugee status in perpetuity.

The United States, which has contributed $300 million to $400 million annually in funding to UNRWA, has taken the lead in suspending funding, at least through 2025. It should make this suspension permanent and the take the lead in dissolving UNRWA altogether.

The most recent allegations of UNRWA’s active complicity in the Oct. 7 attack and abductions by Hamas have provided irrefutable evidence that UNRWA is irredeemably flawed. Enough is enough. We must discard the notion that UNRWA is a force for good. UNRWA is the problem; it cannot be part of any solution.

• Arsen Ostrovsky is a human rights lawyer and CEO of the International Legal Forum. You can follow him on ‘X’ at: @Ostrov_A. Asaf Romirowsky is the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA).