Australia/Israel Review

The mask is finally off. The UN and its benefactors can stop deceiving the world that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a humanitarian organisation. The Palestinian Authority (PA) itself – UNRWA’s most ardent and interested advocate – has inadvertently admitted the essential role played by UNRWA in the Middle East is political and not humanitarian.

UNRWA’s mission came into the spotlight after the Israeli Knesset passed a law that went into effect on January 30, banning UNRWA from operating within sovereign Israel. In response, the UN, NGOs, and numerous donor countries quickly joined the PA in condemning Israel’s law.

They all complained that UNRWA could no longer fulfil its role. However, there is a complete misunderstanding among UNRWA’s benefactors about what UNRWA’s role really is.

The UN asserted that UNRWA “has provided essential humanitarian services to Palestine refugees.” Human Rights Watch, along with 52 other NGOs, concurred that Israel’s move “threatens… the international humanitarian operation in Gaza.” Foreign ministers of donor countries, including Canada, Australia, France, Germany and the UK, expressed “grave concern” because “UNRWA provides essential and life-saving humanitarian aid.”

Comparing these reactions to those of the PA underscores the vast divide between what much of the world thinks UNRWA is and what its champion – the PA – knows UNRWA is.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesperson for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, sounded the PA’s position: “The newly passed [Israeli] law aims to liquidate the issue of refugees and their right to return and compensation.” Abbas’ office then added: “The presidency decided to act urgently… since the topic of UNRWA is a political topic that is related to the right of return.”

Ahmad Abu Houli, chairman of the PLO Department of Refugee Affairs, concurred that “this [Israeli law] is part of its efforts to eliminate the Palestinian refugees’ cause and their well-rooted right of return… and unilaterally change the criteria for a future political solution.”

The PLO Department for Expatriate Affairs added that Israel’s plan was “to eliminate the refugees’ cause and erase the right of return” [The PA’s responses were all published by WAFA, the official PA news agency].

There is a giant abyss between the world’s “humanitarian” UNRWA and the PA’s political “right of return” UNRWA. The first commandment of Palestinian national identity is that the few thousand Arabs who fled Israel during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and are still alive, together with the 5.9 million residents of UNRWA camps, have a “right of return” to “Interior Palestine” – the PA’s term for the State of Israel.

Even though 99% of them are living in the countries where they were born and raised, UNRWA keeps them registered as “refugees” – stigmatised forever as foreigners in the only country they have ever known.

Israel agrees with the PA’s statements that UNRWA’s unique role was never humanitarian. Indeed, UNRWA’s humanitarian role could easily be filled by others, as in the Israel-Gaza War, wherein only 13% of the aid has been distributed through UNRWA.

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which provides “life-saving assistance, including shelter, food, water, and medical care” in 136 countries, would be the organisation caring for the refugees from Israel’s War of Independence, if their needs were only humanitarian.

However, as the PA has made clear, UNRWA’s distinctive role is political – to perpetuate “the right of return” by branding all newborns as “refugees”, thus denying their right to citizenship and equality in their countries of birth. 

Many insist UNRWA should be closed because of its involvement in Hamas terror, but this is missing the main point. Even if UNRWA would completely distance itself from terrorists and terror, and even if UNRWA education stopped promoting hatred, the organisation that turned 750,000 refugees in 1949 into 5.9 million “refugees” today is a human rights abuser with no right to exist.

PA Prime Minister Muhammad Mustafa recently admitted that the PA’s concern is not to stop the refugees’ suffering by solving their predicament but, rather, the PA’s goal is to perpetuate it.

“The refugee camps are a symbol of our glory,” he said, according to the official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida [Dec. 15, 2024]. “They are a national symbol that we must preserve.” Forcing people to be “preserved” as refugees because of a political agenda is a fundamental abuse of human rights.

Itamar Marcus is Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch. © Palestinian Media Watch (pmw.org), reprinted by permission, all rights reserved.