Israel’s Laws Aimed at Terrorist-Infested UNRWA Draws the UN’s Ire

Israel’s Knesset voted overwhelmingly (92-10) in late October to approve two bills directed at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The legislation delayed its implementation for ninety days. The laws will prevent UNRWA from operating within Israel itself and bar Israeli authorities from having any contact with UNRWA. No other UN agency is affected.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon explained the reason that the Knesset felt compelled to take this drastic action against UNRWA:

“UNRWA has failed its mission. It has been overrun by Hamas and is unfit to continue in its function as a humanitarian agency. UNRWA employees gleefully participated in the October 7^th massacre and the UN has failed to contain UNRWA’s terrorism problem, despite Israel’s supply of evidence.”

UNRWA’s “terrorism problem” includes the fact that Hamas has regularly used UNRWA facilities, especially schools, to hide their weapons and rocket launchers. UNRWA’s “terrorism problem” is also proven by credible evidence that hundreds of UNRWA staff have been affiliated with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

UNRWA itself admitted that a top Hamas commander who was subsequently killed in Lebanon had been one of its employees. And not just any employee. This terrorist was the principal of an UNRWA school and the head of Lebanon’s UNRWA Teachers Union. UNRWA finally got around to suspending him for just three months for violating “agency protocols" after information belatedly came to its attention of the UNRWA employee’s ties to Hamas. The UNRWA teachers’ union protested the suspension, indicating support for the employee’s Hamas affiliation among teachers in UNRWA schools where Hamas propaganda is “taught.”

Moreover, the vast majority of UNRWA staffers in Gaza have declared their support for Hamas, even if they themselves are not members of Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist organizations.

In short, UNRWA is far from a neutral humanitarian UN agency legitimately performing its responsibilities pursuant to its official mandate. It has become a cesspool of hatred towards the Jewish state of Israel and an enabler of Palestinian terrorists.

Nevertheless, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and other senior UN officials have condemned Israel’s legislation, which detached Israel from this cesspool, as a violation of international law. They have claimed that the legislation, once implemented, would violate Israel’s obligations under the UN Charter and the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations adopted by the General Assembly in 1946 ("Convention").

Secretary General Guterres said, “I call on Israel to act consistently with its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations and its other obligations under international law, including under international humanitarian law and those concerning privileges and immunities of the United Nations. National legislation cannot alter those obligations.”

With all due respect, Secretary General Guterres is wrong in this case. Every country has both the right and the duty that are inherent in the fundamental principle of national sovereignty to protect the lives and well-being of its citizens. UNRWA has recklessly endangered the lives and well-being of Israeli citizens by allowing Hamas to infiltrate its ranks with staff members who have participated in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens. UNRWA has also allowed Hamas to poison the minds of Palestinian children in UNRWA schools with hate-filled anti-Semitic propaganda that has incited Palestinian youths to attack Israeli citizens.

The head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, not surprisingly lashed out at Israel and its new laws. He posted on X that “This is the latest in the ongoing campaign to discredit UNRWA and delegitimize its role towards providing human-development assistance and services to #Palestine Refugees.”

Sorry, Mr. Lazzarini. UNRWA has discredited itself and has forfeited the “privileges and immunities” accorded to the UN and its officials pursuant to the UN Charter and the Convention.

Despite repeated entreaties from Israel, accompanied by substantial evidence of wrongdoing, UNRWA’s leadership has allowed its staff to engage for decades in supporting the agenda of terrorists committed to destroying the Jewish state without any real consequences for their actions. Only very recently – after UNRWA staff members’ participation in the terrorists’ horrific October 7^th massacres, rapes, and kidnappings on Israeli soil came to light- has UNRWA’s leadership perfunctorily addressed the terrorists’ infiltration of its ranks.

For too long, UNRWA’s senior officials have at minimum looked the other way while Hamas has hidden weaponry and even a central command center in or under UNRWA facilities. These officials have thereby violated Article V (21) of the Convention by failing “to prevent the occurrence of any abuse in connection with the privileges, immunities and facilities” that UNRWA had been granted as a UN agency.

None of these truths stopped the UN Security Council and General Assembly from piling on against Israel’s legislation that was designed to protect its people from UNRWA’s abuses.

The Security Council, for example, issued a press statement on October 30^th, stating in part:

“The Members of the Security Council expressed their grave concern over legislation adopted by the Israeli Knesset. In this regard, they urged the Israeli Government to abide by its international obligations, respect the privileges and immunities of UNRWA and live up to its responsibility to allow and facilitate full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian assistance in all its forms into and throughout the entire Gaza strip, including the provision of sorely needed basic services to the civilian population.”

The Biden administration went along with issuing this statement, putting further daylight between the United States and its closest ally in the Middle East. “Implementing the legislation risks catastrophe for the more than 3 million Palestinians who rely on UNRWA for essential services, including health care, and primary and secondary education,” the Biden-Harris State Department said.

Fortunately, President-elect Trump is waiting in the wings to repair the U.S.-Israeli relationship and to put the anti-America, anti-Israel UN globalists in their place.

Israel’s laws aimed at curbing its dealings with UNRWA also came under fire at a meeting of the UN General Assembly. This Israel-bashing meeting was convened to discuss Israel’s laws and their impact on UNRWA’s activities.

General Assembly President Philemon Yang said at the meeting that Israel’s legislation “constitutes an intolerable affront to the authority of this assembly, an affront to international law and, most importantly, an affront to the human dignity of innocent Palestinian civilians.”

On the contrary, UNRWA has evolved into an intolerable affront to the UN’s stated fundamental humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence.

UNRWA started out with a limited, clearly defined mission when it was established shortly after the creation of the United Nations itself, pursuant to UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 1949. It began its operations on May 1, 1950 to provide “direct relief and works programmes” for registered Palestinian refugees. UNRWA initially defined “Palestinian refugees” as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 war.” The number of Palestinians said to be displaced at the time was approximately 700,000.

Coupled with good faith efforts to resettle these refugees in neighboring countries willing to receive and integrate them into the host countries’ societies, UNRWA should have completed its mission and shut down long ago. But more than seven decades later UNRWA is still around. That is because UNRWA did not try to resettle the Palestinians who left their homes so that they could begin living decent lives in their adopted countries. And it is because UNRWA redefined “refugees” in a manner that diverges from the standard definition used at the UN and around the world to apply to all non-Palestinian refugees. As a result, UNRWA currently assumes responsibility for nearly six million registered Palestinian so-called “refugees.” It has become one of the larger UN agencies with a yearly budget that currently exceeds $800 million.

An article that appeared in Foreign Policy several years ago explained the grossly expansive definition of “refugees” which has been customized especially for Palestinians:

“In 1965, UNRWA changed the eligibility requirements to be a Palestinian refugee to include third-generation descendants, and in 1982, it extended it again, to include all descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, regardless of whether they had been granted citizenship elsewhere. This classification process is inconsistent with how all other refugees in the world are classified, including the definition used by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the laws concerning refugees in the United States.”

“UNRWA, moreover, is the only refugee agency in the world whose purpose is not to resettle refugees and help them go on with their lives. UNRWA spends more to do less, while perpetuating a problem it was created to help solve. This situation, which does little to advance the interests of actual refugees and much to expand a bloated UNRWA bureaucracy, needs to be addressed.”

Jordan is the one Arab country that has granted citizenship to most of the two million Palestinians who entered and are now living in that country. Yet these Jordanian citizens are still classified as Palestinian “refugees” for UNRWA’s purposes, illustrating how UNRWA’s main objective is to remain self-perpetuating.

Israel’s laws are aimed only at the bloated UN agency that Hamas terrorists have succeeded in infiltrating. Israel continues to work with other UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Health Organization, and the World Food Program. These agencies can join together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to form an interdisciplinary team to take over UNRWA’s operations in Gaza after their employees are suitably vetted. UNHCR has served for decades as the UN refugee agency for all refugees around the world except for the Palestinians. It is long past the time that the Palestinians claiming refugee status are brought under UNCHR’s umbrella and treated according to UNCHR’s refugee eligibility rules that apply to everyone else.

As Israeli Ambassador Danon said in response to the UN Security Council’s statement on UNRWA, “Israel will continue to cooperate with UN organs that are actually interested in providing humanitarian aid to Gazans rather than providing aid to Hamas terrorists.” The UN’s leadership should use the 90-day delay before Israel’s laws are implemented to devise a workable alternative to its hopelessly compromised United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.