Tel Aviv/New Delhi: UNRWA has failed spectacularly to rehabilitate the Palestinian ‘refugees’, whose numbers have been increasing since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The involvement of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, better known as UNRWA, in Hamas activities is one of the biggest scandals of the current turmoil in West Asia. The latest in this saga is the death of Fatah Sharif Abu Al Amine in Lebanon in an Israeli airstrike last week. The Hamas declared Fatah Sharif of the UNRWA to be its leader in Lebanon. Caught red handed, the UN agency tried a face saver by saying that they had suspended Fatah Sharif earlier this year after coming to know that he was Hamas.
Israel has been complaining about UNRWA’s closeness with the Hamas. Apparently, all of its 13,000-odd workers in Gaza, mostly working in education and health sectors, are affiliated to the Hamas, which used to rule Gaza. The Hamas had outsourced issues like education and health to the UNRWA, the two sectors that the Hamas government should have taken care of. But instead they spent the maximum time fighting Israel. Israelis complain of the UNRWA being at the centre of the radicalization problem of Gaza’s children, because being local Palestinians, they brainwash them against Israel. According to Israel, at least 12 UNRWA workers were part of the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. This has resulted in the UN starting an investigation of the UNRWA, even as several donor countries had pulled funding. Funding has been restored recently except for by the US. Even then, currently the UNRWA faces a deficit of $80 million.
In the meanwhile, Israelis present a case of disbanding the UNRWA.
According to Dr Adi Schwartz, who is a fellow at Jerusalem’s Misgav Institute and co-author of “The War of Return”, there is one agency, the UNRWA for the Palestinians, while another one, UNHCR for the rest of the world. Even then UNRWA has failed spectacularly to rehabilitate the Palestinian “refugees”, whose numbers have been increasing since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Around 600,000-700,000 Palestinian refugees fled to the Arab states post the 1948 war. That number has swelled to 6 million now, with UNRWA saying that they have not been able to rehabilitate them in the last 76 years. Dr Schwartz says this has happened because the Palestinians do not want to be rehabilitated and because UNRWA has been adding to its rolls even those people who should not be called refugees. In fact the UNRWA even has a different definition for refugees. For example, the West Bank is “Palestine” for all intents and purposes. There people live in concrete houses, have jobs, enjoy all the facilities and amenities that the citizens of a country enjoy, but they still hold on to their refugee status, because UNRWA allows that.
In Jordan, all Palestinian refugees have been given Jordanian citizenship. But at least 40% of the Palestinians there, around 2.2 million, are still considered refugees. Worse, many of these people are well settled, with a flourishing income, based all over the world, but even then they carry a refugee card.
In Gaza, 70% of the people are called refugees by UNRWA, thus keeping open the possibility of “returning” to the Jewish state.
According to Dr Schwartz, the Palestinians do not want to be resettled. They are still holding on to the chimera of “right to return” where even if there is a two-state solution, all the 6 million people get to settle in the Jewish state. As a result of which the population in the new state comes to almost 50% Jewish and 50% Palestinian. “It will be a situation prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli,” says Dr Schwartz.
He says that to the Palestinians, the UNRWA has become a symbol of “right to return”.
UNRWA has got $4.5 billion from donor countries between 2014 and 2022. Much of this money goes in paying salaries of teachers and health workers. In Gaza, UNRWA has 13,000 odd teachers and health care workers, most of whom were celebrating as Hamas attacked Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023.
It’s because of all this that the UNRWA must be disbanded, says Dr Schwartz, and the Palestinian ministries in West Bank should take charge of education and health, as UNRWA is not doing anything constructive except for radicalizing the local population and aiding the Hamas.