UNRWA is hurting the Palestinian cause it was designed to help — it’s time for change 

The exchange of ballistic missile and drone volleys between Iran and Israel has calmed, so attention is again shifting to Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement of commitment to facilitate more aid to Gaza. 

President Biden, who recently signed into law a foreign aid package that included $26 billion for Israel, was right to leverage U.S. support for Israel. The passage of the bill preceded the Washington, D.C., memorial for seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen who were killed in an Israeli air strike in early April. 

Allowing more aid is one thing; getting that aid to the intended recipients is another. That is because the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), tasked with delivering the aid, is deeply flawed. 

UNRWA was established in 1950 for Palestinians who either fled or were expelled from Israel in the wake of the 1948 war. Palestinians are the only refugee group to have their own U.N. agency. 

In contrast, there was no such response for the more than 800,000 Jews simultaneously expelled from Arab lands. All others fall under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 

Palestinians’ unique status is based on a technicality: non-statehood. However, one could argue that the State of Palestine has de facto, if not de jure, recognition, with 139 out of 195 countries in the UN General Assembly acknowledging it as an Observer Nation and recognizing its governing body. 

UNRWA’s “unique status” is counterproductive. In contrast to UNHCR, which promotes repatriation, resettlement or assimilation in new communities, UNRWA keeps Palestinians in limbo. Palestinians remain refugees — marginalized and frozen in time. 

Unlike other displaced persons across the globe, Palestinian parents have a unique right to pass down their refugee status to their children from generation to generation. Because of that, 700,000 original Palestinian refugees have swelled to 5.9 million. Roughly half are serviced by UNRWA, despite many having full citizenship in countries such as Jordan.  

Most Palestinians in Gaza were born there and are not considered displaced. The preservation of their refugee status, pending a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is political, as it perpetuates the unrealistic expectation that they will return to the homes they left in 1948 and 1967.  

As documented in a 2015 Brookings Institution report, the risk of radicalization increases with the length of time refugees remain marginalized and disenfranchised. So it’s not surprising that Hamas is firmly embedded in the squalid refugee camps to which Palestinians have been relegated for more than seven decades. 

Reports that a dozen UNRWA aid workers supported or participated in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel is not surprising to those who closely follow these issues. Other UNRWA staff members reportedly cheered the attack, and Hamas tunnels and weapons have been found on or adjacent to the grounds of UNRWA schools and medical facilities. 

The closer you look at UNRWA, the more you realize that the organization’s structure and mission propagate radicalization among both its employees and those it is intended to serve. It perpetuates the very suffering it is meant to alleviate.  

Education is one of UNRWA’s main missions. But UNRWA schools have been cited as a breeding ground for terrorists. As documented by UN Watch, UNRWA hires some teachers who spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, praise Hitler, glorify violence, teach hate, and deny the existence of Israel. These actions are in direct contradiction of the neutrality that is required by the U.N., funded primarily with taxpayer funds from the U.S., UK, Canada and other Western democracies. 

Gaza urgently needs humanitarian support, and UNRWA is the only organization providing it for now. But to fulfill its humanitarian mission and stabilize its funding, UNRWA needs to be restructured.  

That begins with redefining who is a refugee. A bill introduced in the U.S. Congress last February states that, in relation to UNRWA, a Palestinian refugee is “a person who resided, between June 1946 and May 1948, in Mandatory Palestine between 1922 and 1948; was personally displaced as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict; and has not accepted an offer of legal residency status, citizenship, or other permanent adjustment in status in another country or territory.” 

Conforming to the standard definition of “refugee” would greatly reduce the number of people UNRWA must service, allowing host governments to take over responsibilities that are theirs in the first place.

Next, UNRWA schools must cease the teaching of hate. They should be required to teach a standard curriculum based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Teachers also must receive proper training and recognition. Having helped spearhead a pilot program training teachers in the West Bank from 2011 to 2013, I learned that teachers in Palestine receive very little training. However, Bard College, in partnership with Al Quds University in Abu Dis, has created an excellent program for teachers that could be accessed remotely. 

Finally, it is crucial that some of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees replace temporary shelters with permanent homes using available materials. It is not hard to imagine what Gaza could look like if all the construction materials used to build Hamas’s hundreds of miles of tunnels had been used instead to build what Gazans really need. 

In addition, solar power and Israeli technology that converts moisture in the air to clean water, and technology that converts wastewater to irrigation for agriculture, can assure a continuous supply of clean water and food to Gazans. 

It is urgent to take action to shift the plight of Palestinians in Gaza from stagnation, frustration and hopelessness to resettlement, absorption and rebuilding. The U.N. and donor nations can and must take steps to revise UNRWA’s mission and restructure its operations. 

Georgette F. Bennett, Ph.D. is the founder and president of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and founder and chair of the Multifaith Alliance. She is the author of “Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By: How One Woman Confronted the Greatest Humanitarian Crisis of Our Time,” and the co-author with Jerry White of “Religicide: Confronting the Roots of Anti-Religious Violence.”