OPINION:
The pogrom of Oct. 7 should have changed many conceptions we previously held about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
This unconscionable and inhuman massacre shattered numerous illusions and even sacred cows.
One of them is the role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA.
It was clear to those of us who work for peace and a better future for the region that UNRWA has long ceased playing a constructive role but had long moved to playing a highly destructive one.
Recent revelations have shown that at least 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the butchering and kidnapping of Israelis, 10% of its staff in Gaza are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and about half of the agency’s employees in the Gaza Strip have at least one close relative with ties to the terrorist groups.
This is in addition to the well-known fact that UNRWA schools have long incited against Israel and Jews and have significantly reduced the chance of peace.
Without seeking any further evidence, it should be clear that UNRWA is not building a better future for anyone in the region.
Especially now that over a dozen countries have recently frozen or suspended their funding for UNRWA because of these latest damning revelations, we need to rethink the future of the agency.
UNRWA was formed in 1949, ostensibly to provide aid, relief and human development for Palestinian refugees, or in truth, any Arab who was a resident of Mandatory Palestine between “the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948.”
It was the first United Nations refugee agency and predated the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the refugee agency for all other refugees worldwide known as UNHCR, by one year.
Not only did UNRWA predate UNHCR, but it also created a privileged position and separate criteria and conditions for Palestinian refugees above all other refugees.
While UNHCR, which operates in 130 countries, has 11,000 employees worldwide, UNRWA has 30,000. According to a 2017 study conducted by the Abba Eban Institute of International Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, a Palestinian refugee receives a budget four times as large as a Syrian, Ukrainian or African refugee does.
Most problematically, while UNHCR seeks durable solutions for refugees under its purview, including resettlement, UNRWA has never found durable solution for a single Palestinian refugee. In fact, it makes the situation worse by allowing refugee status to be passed down from generation to generation, ad infinitum, even if they hold citizenship of another country.
It looks, as some have accused as if UNRWA was built merely to perpetuate the conflict and hold the Palestinian refugees themselves in a perpetual state of helplessness, anger and victimhood.
With all of this in mind, we must find a new direction and creative solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, one that is not stuck in 1949.
The most obvious answer is to fold UNRWA into UNHCR.
There can be no justification in 2024 for having two separate U.N. refugee agencies with different budgets, criteria, justification and staff.
A Palestinian refugee should be treated the same way as any other, and durable solutions should be found to solve the challenge rather than perpetuate it.
One way, after the Palestinian refugees come under the UNHCR mantle, is to ensure that eventually, the Palestinians who fall under the globally used refugee mandate will be given more responsibility over the development infrastructure and to build a sustainable model that helps progress wider Palestinian society.
Obviously, after decades of incitement and indoctrination, this will not be immediate, but it is something that can be built in a reasonable amount of time with the assistance of the international community in concert with moderate Arab states.
They could use the ample resources they have been given to become an example of a new Palestinian society that places the interests of progress and development above those of hate and violence.
The Palestinians can build a new robust and progressive polity that builds an education, social welfare and public infrastructure free of the constraints of waging a never-ending conflict with their neighbors.
This can then become an example to the world that it is ready to end the over 100-year Palestinian war against Jewish sovereignty in its indigenous and ancestral homeland.
It can become a bridgehead toward a more peaceful, secure and prosperous future for all the people of the region. It just needs international political will.
The pulling of funding of UNRWA by prominent members of the international community suggests a recognition that there is a problem, but now we need to realize that allowing some window dressing firings and empty promises by UNRWA officials is not going to move the needle.
UNRWA cannot be reformed; it must be dissolved into UNHCR. And eventually, the keys for progress and development must be handed to a new, more responsible local Palestinian leadership free of the chains of the past and the conflict.
This is the program for the end of UNRWA and, hopefully, the beginning of the resolution of the conflict.
• Robert Singer is chairman of the Center for Jewish Impact and the former CEO of the World Jewish Congress.
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