Australia/Israel Review

The announcement of a Hamas-Israel ceasefire agreement was a huge early success for the incoming Trump Administration as much as a final achievement for the outgoing Biden team – especially given the President-elect’s warning that there would be “hell to pay” if the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip were not released before he took office. But following his inauguration, Trump will now face an early diplomatic showdown over another hot-button Middle East issue: the fate of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the controversial body tasked with providing aid and services to Palestinian refugees. 

The resettlement difference

UNRWA was established by a UN General Assembly resolution in December 1949 to provide “direct relief and work programmes” for the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the just-ended regional war, which Arab states and local Palestinian militias had launched to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state authorised by the UN two years earlier. Originally, the “displaced” included Arabs and Jews; although Israel soon took care of the latter, no Arab state wanted responsibility for the 700,000 Arabs. 

In its early years, UNRWA’s mandate included resettlement as an objective, but this provision was deleted by the late 1950s under pressure from Arab states. Ever since, UNRWA has operated on the principle that Palestinian descendants of those original refugees are refugees too, with the “right of return” to present-day Israel – even generations after their original displacement, and regardless of whether they started a new life elsewhere or became citizens of another country. In practice, this means UNRWA now counts some 5.9 million Palestinians as registered refugees, though only one-third still live in refugee camps, mostly in Gaza. This inherited refugee status plays a huge role in perpetuating the mentality of victimhood that partly drives the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

It is important to underscore how differently UNRWA operates from the body established to address the fate of all other refugees across the world, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Beyond providing emergency relief, UNHCR’s core mission includes promoting the resettlement and integration of refugees into countries where they have sought refuge. For the past seven decades, however, UNRWA’s mission has been the exact opposite – to oppose their resettlement and integration. Indeed, there is an inherent contradiction in support for UNRWA (given its anti-resettlement posture) and support for a two-state solution (or any negotiated resolution) to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Providing relief to millions of Palestinians based on the argument that their rightful home lies inside Israel is deeply counterproductive to the search for peace. 

In line with this posture, UNRWA long ago shed its identity as an impartial provider of emergency relief to become a Palestinian advocacy agency – and a sometimes hostile one at that. For example, according to numerous independent assessments, UNRWA schools that serve hundreds of thousands of children have often taught curricula suffused with anti-Israel, even antisemitic, messages that have no place in UN institutions.

Under the first Trump Administration, these problems were enough to convince the US government – traditionally the world’s largest contributor to UNRWA – that the agency was “irredeemably flawed”. US support was therefore suspended in 2018 – only to be restored in 2021 by the Biden Administration, which promised to seek substantial reforms. Yet UNRWA’s fundamentally problematic mandate is controlled by the UN General Assembly, where an automatic anti-Israel majority makes reforming said mandate a Sisyphean task. The Biden team evidently believed that UNRWA’s provision of basic services (especially in impoverished Gaza) was so vital that it was worth swallowing the mandate problem. 

UNRWA in the Hamas-Israel war

On October 7, 2023, another major UNRWA problem emerged in all its ugliness – the participation of agency personnel in the heinous Hamas assault that left more than 1,200 dead in Israel, thousands wounded, and 250 taken hostage. 

UNRWA acknowledges that at least nine of its staff likely took part in the attack, but their punishment was apparently limited to termination of their work contracts. 

This horrific discovery was only the tip of the iceberg. Over the course of the war, it became clear that Hamas terrorists were operating with impunity inside, near, or beneath numerous UNRWA facilities, storing weapons, assembling rockets, and organising their forces in the agency’s schools, shelters, hospitals, and clinics. The idea that UNRWA’s 30,000 officials and staff – nearly all of whom are Palestinian – were ignorant of this activity strains credulity. Indeed, numerous wartime reports emerged of UNRWA staff supporting, assisting, or even serving as officials of Hamas.

That is when Israel had enough. Even Israel’s military – which had long held its nose at UNRWA’s virulently anti-Israel advocacy and defended the agency’s operational role as a necessary evil – joined the chorus of condemnation. Last October, the Israeli Parliament voted overwhelmingly to pass two laws that will come into effect on Jan. 30: a ban on UNRWA operations in sovereign Israeli territory and the severing of all Israeli ties with the agency. This includes cancellation of a post-1967 agreement that allowed UNRWA to operate freely in what was then newly occupied territory. 

The territorial ban will have relatively little practical impact, since UNRWA operates only seven schools inside Israel (mainly in Jerusalem), and the state can pick up the slack. But the severing of ties has more significant implications. 

The problem lies mainly in Gaza, not UNRWA’s other areas of operation. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority runs an autonomous administration under Israeli security control and, despite endemic problems with service delivery, seems capable of taking over the agency’s responsibilities. In neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, UNRWA operations will not be directly affected by the new Israeli legislation. In war-torn Gaza, however, Israel – along with Egypt – has principal responsibility for the entry and distribution of food and medical aid, much of which is distributed to residents by UNRWA. (It is important to note that all outside parties only bear these responsibilities because Hamas has been grossly derelict in providing for the people of Gaza.) Hence, implementing Israel’s new policy of severing ties with UNRWA could worsen an already terrible humanitarian situation.

A Win-Win for Trump

In recent weeks, with Israel’s Jan. 30 legislative deadline looming, the Biden Administration reportedly approached other UN agencies operating in Gaza – including UNHCR, the World Food Program (WFP), the World Health Organisation, and others – to gauge their ability to take over UNRWA’s tasks. They all said no, insisting that only UNRWA can do the job. In response to Israel’s new laws, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared, “There is no alternative to UNRWA,” while Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s Commissioner-General, said “UNRWA is not replaceable.” In other words, the UN system essentially said it would rather Gazans starve than be complicit in sidelining UNRWA. 

Since then, voices within the US State Department have called on Israel not to implement its new laws. With Trump now President, however, that is precisely the wrong approach. The political winds are all blowing in the opposite direction – with Trump having already cut off UNRWA funding once, his likely inclination to cut it off again will only be reinforced by the complicity of agency personnel in the horrors of the past 15 months. There is no way his first major initiative in the Middle East will be to twist Israel’s arm to save UNRWA. 

To the contrary, the new Administration’s path of least resistance will be to cut off US support to UNRWA and let Israel manage the fallout of the new laws. Yet the record of Trump’s previous UNRWA cutoff is that donors in Europe and elsewhere filled in much of the gap, and the agency carried on unreformed. 

A more ambitious US approach could score a win-win achievement that advances American interests in Middle East peace whilst saving millions of taxpayer dollars. Namely, Washington could take advantage of Israel’s new laws to create an alternative support mechanism that eases UNRWA out of Gaza. This would entail raising the stakes with other specialised UN agencies operating in the area. Instead of politely asking them if they can assume UNRWA’s job in Gaza, the Trump Administration should put them on notice that continued US funding of their own global operations is contingent on them taking over those tasks. Only such a dramatic step is likely to produce results. 

Specifically, President Trump should do the following: 

• Announce the suspension of all US support to UNRWA. 
• Authorise his new UN ambassador to threaten specialised agencies with an across-the-board funding cut of 40% if they refuse to assume UNRWA’s Gaza responsibilities (matching the percentage of UNRWA’s budget that Washington currently provides). 

For example, the United States is the largest donor to the WFP, providing 46% of its 2024 budget of US$9.67 billion, and to UNHCR, providing around 44% of its US$4.7 billion budget. (In comparison, UNRWA’s budget is under US$1.5 billion.) Faced with losing a large chunk of this aid, these agencies would no doubt discover that they are suddenly quite capable of doing UNRWA’s job – especially since the countries that made up the agency’s multi-million dollar shortfall in 2018 are unlikely to fill a multi-billion dollar shortfall today. 

To be sure, this shift would not be a panacea, since these agencies would likely still rely on many of the same local Gaza staff that currently fill UNRWA’s ranks. Substituting one set of UN agencies for another also does nothing to advance the important objective of building effective, responsible, non-Hamas Palestinian self-governance. Yet switching from UNRWA to a combination of WFP, UNHCR, and other specialised agencies would be more than just a shuffling of deck chairs. Having UN bodies provide needed services outside UNRWA’s highly politicised mandate would be a significant step toward ending the agency’s grip on the Palestinian refugee issue, thereby boosting the long-term prospects for peace. 

And what if the UN agencies refuse Trump’s request? In that case, Israel would be left responsible for the provision and distribution of aid and services after Jan. 30 (the default alternative embedded in the logic of its anti-UNRWA legislation), and Washington would need to back these efforts, recognising that Israel would be hard-pressed to fulfil all of UNRWA’s current functions by itself. 

There would be daily real-life consequences for Palestinian civilians, who would suffer needlessly if UN officials continue to prioritise allegiance to UNRWA over the fate of the people the agency was designed to serve. To ease this problem, Washington could direct some of the money it cuts from UN agencies to a special humanitarian support fund for Gazans. For example, zeroing out US support to UNRWA and cutting 40% from just two agencies (WFP and UNHCR) would yield nearly US$3 billion per year in windfall savings. 

In sum, President Trump has an immediate opportunity to fix a huge obstacle to Arab-Israel peace. The most straightforward route is to cut UNRWA funding and move on to other issues, but that would result in other complications for Washington while doing nothing to eliminate the agency’s pernicious effects on the longer-term pursuit of peace. A much better approach is to leverage US support for other UN agencies to create a practical alternative to UNRWA. Let’s hope he takes it. 

Dr Robert Satloff is the Segal Executive Director and Howard P. Berkowitz Chair in US Middle East Policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. © Washington Institute (www.washingtoninstitute.org), reprinted by permission, all rights reserved.