Report touts UN agency’s efforts
Review of UNRWA’s political neutrality proposes organizational changes to ease Israel’s concern
Israel has been rebuffed in its ongoing battle to bring down the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Its larger fight against the aid organization, though, continues, with the highest of stakes and against the backdrop of six months of war in Gaza.
UNRWA, as the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East is known, employs some 32,000 people in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. It provides education, health and other services in 58 refugee camps for Palestinians.
UNRWA is not a new target of Israeli criticism. But as the war in Gaza unfolds, Israel is now demanding that the aid agency be shut down.
Israeli allegations this year prompted two UN investigations into the agency.
One was an administrative review into UNRWA’s efforts to remain politically neutral. Led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, it reported back Monday.
A second, ongoing investigation is examining the specifics of an explosive charge by Israel that 12 UNRWA workers actively participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 and saw more than 200 others taken hostage, and which sparked the Israeli military effort that has killed 34,000 people in Gaza, according to health officials in the territory.
Another 30 personnel stole or looted from Israeli homes, or assisted in the handling of hostages, Israel has alleged, while asserting that nearly 1,500 employees have ties to Hamas or Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza.
UNRWA immediately fired 10 of the 12 employees who were named by Israel. The other two were reportedly killed in Gaza.
Sixteen countries, including Canada, suspended payments to UNRWA worth $450 million (U.S.) after the allegations were made. Most, including Canada, have resumed funding, though the United States has not.
“Israel made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations,” said Monday’s report. “However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”
The report said that UNRWA has shared lists of its staff members with host countries, including Israel, since 2011 but Israeli authorities had never expressed any security concerns. Israel said that it wasn’t until March that the staff lists contained Palestinian identification numbers, which allowed them to conduct more thorough investigations.
Despite the parallel probes, UN Secretary General António Guterres has remained supportive of UNRWA’s personnel and its mission, calling for countries to provide “active support” for the agency and describing it as “a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region.”
Monday’s report praised UNRWA while offering areas for improvement.
It said that the agency already “possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities.” But it proposed organizational changes that could prevent its staff, its schools and its operations from being politicized — a gargantuan task, given the raging conflict in Gaza.
Don’t think for a moment, however, that this will end the feud between UNRWA and Israel.
Israel and many of its supporters think that UNRWA cannot be dismantled too soon. They have described it as an institution that has overstayed its welcome in the Middle East — a body that claims neutrality but repeatedly sides with those it serves, the Palestinians.
Most often cited by groups such as UN Watch, which describes itself as holding the UN accountable to its founding principles, and IMPACTse, an education advocacy group whose work analyzes teaching methods, primarily in Islamic countries, is the curriculum taught to young Palestinians in UNRWArun schools.
A November report from IMPACT-se resurfaced the years-old complaint that material taught to young students encourages antisemitism, glorifies terrorism and violence and promotes “the erasure, demonization, and delegitimization of Israel.”
Defending itself against such allegations, UNRWA has explained repeatedly that its schools teach the curriculum provided by education officials in the host country.
“UNRWA has zero tolerance for hate speech and incitement to discrimination, or violence,” it said in February in response to the Israeli government’s intensified criticisms.
The problem — just like in the war against Hamas — is that Israel’s plan to neutralize its enemies has not resulted in fully formed alternative plans.
There has been no proposal about who will govern Gaza beyond an administration made up of “local officials” if or when the Israeli Defense Forces eliminates Hamas on the battlefield, as it has pledged to do.
And there has been no alternative body proposed for the delivery of life-saving assistance to 5.9 million refugees — some two million of whom are in Gaza — or vital education to more than 540,000 children if or when UNRWA is forced out of business.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told UN ambassadors in January that UNRWA had been “totally infiltrated” by Hamas.
“I think it’s time that the international community and the UN itself understand that UNRWA’s mission has to end,” he said. “We need to get other UN agencies and other aid agencies replacing UNRWA if we’re going to solve the problem of Gaza as we intend to do.”
A senior Israeli official later clarified that UNRWA could only be dismantled after the war had concluded. Doing so too early would be a recipe for a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
A fight to defund UNRWA is underway in Canada, too.
Earlier this month, the Centre for Israeli and Jewish Affairs announced that the Canadian families of Hamas’s Oct. 7 victims, which include Ben Mizrachi, Judih Weinstein Haggai, Adi Vital-Kaploun and Alexandre Look, had filed an application for a judicial review of Canada’s decision to resume funding for UNRWA, which came after an interim report that found UNRWA “has in place a significant number of mechanisms and procedures” to ensure it remains neutral.
The challenge, led by lawyers Lawrence Greenspon and Jillian Siskind, is based in part on what they argue are UNRWA’s “well-documented links to Hamas” and the contention that Canadian money being used to help a designated terror group is a violation of anti-terrorism laws.
Colonna wrote in her report that the agency remains “pivotal” for the provision of humanitarian aid — supplies needed to prevent deaths from a famine prompted by the Israeli blockade and restrictions on land shipments.
“Israel made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations, however, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.
FORMER FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER
CATHERINE COLONNA IN REPORT ON UNRWA