David Isaac JNS. See http://tinyurl.com/3nzm8xnf
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has put together a classified report calling for the removal of UNRWA from the Gaza Strip in the long-term, noting that the U.N. relief agency works against Israel’s interests.
The report’s recommendations set out a three-stage process for shrinking
and eventually eliminating UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees, from the Strip: 1) Prepare a case detailing UNRWA’s
cooperation with Hamas; 2) Reduce UNRWA’s field of activity and find
replacement service providers; and 3) Transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to
another entity.
Channel 12, which revealed the existence of the
secret report on Thursday, noted that Israel wants to move slowly, recognizing
that the U.S. sees UNRWA as a positive player in humanitarian efforts in the
Strip. The ministry hopes to gradually build the case for ousting the
organization, linking that goal to discussions on “the day after” Hamas.
Israel must convince the U.S. and the international community of UNRWA’s
unfitness by pulling together research, much of which has already been
performed, on the U.N. group, (Michael co-authored a damning report on UNRWA in
2020). Israel should also highlight what UNRWA’s own people have revealed about
it, he said, noting especially James Lindsay.
James G. Lindsay, an American civil servant, worked with UNRWA from 2000
to 2007, he has called for a close examination of UNRWA’s activities, saying it
doesn’t solve the Palestinian refugee problem, but rather perpetuates it.
Lindsay has pointed out that aside from the fact that UNRWA is the only
U.N. refugee organization dedicated to a single population, the Palestinians,
it defines refugees differently than the United Nation’s Office of the High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which handles all the rest of the world’s
refugees.
“UNHCR does not consider someone a refugee who has acquired citizenship
in another country. In other words, if you have been a refugee but then you
become a citizen, you can no longer be a refugee,” Lindsay told UN Watch in
2019.
“If you can’t be a refugee under those definitions, then a very large
number of UNRWA Palestinian refugees would not be refugees at all. For
instance, in Jordan approximately 90% of the people UNRWA considers Palestine
refugees are citizens of Jordan, and they would not be refugees under the
UNHCR, or the U.N. Convention [Relating to the Status of Refugees] terms,” he
said.
The Palestinian refugee population is the only one that increases each
year. Starting from 700,000 in 1948 it has grown to 5.9 million refugees
registered with UNRWA as of mid-2023.
Said Michael, “The idea that we are still talking about Palestinian
refugees is not reasonable. We’re talking about fifth-generation refugees when
actually they are not refugees at all.”
Controlled by Hamas
The worst aspect of UNRWA is that it’s controlled by Hamas. “All the
workers of UNRWA in the Gaza Strip—something like 13,000—all of them are
approved by Hamas,” he said.
In 2020, 58% of UNRWA’s then-$800 million budget (it has since ballooned
to $1.6 billion) went to education. Michael says education isn’t even part of
its mandate.
The curriculum in UNRWA-run schools has been repeatedly exposed for its
glorification of jihad and antisemitism.
More than 100 of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who carried out
terrorist attacks and murdered Israeli citizens on Oct. 7 were graduates of
UNRWA’s education system, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural
Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found.
In another report,
it found at least 14 teachers and staff at UNRWA schools publicly celebrated
the Hamas massacre and other Hamas attacks on their social media accounts.
Noting that the U.S. is UNRWA’s largest donor, disbursing almost $1
billion in funds to the U.N. agency over the last five years, IMPACT-se head
Marcus Sheff said in early November that taxpayer funds pay for “the production
of inciteful supplementary teaching materials by UNRWA staff,” “textbooks
glorifying violent jihad against Jews” and “the salaries of UNRWA teachers, who
are responsible for teaching them to students. . UNRWA is essentially Hamas’s
educational arm, which is funded by the international community ”
The “Palestinian national consciousness is very ill, sick. During the
three decades under the umbrella of the Oslo process, the hearts and minds of
the Palestinian people were poisoned by the Palestinian Authority, and later on
by Hamas,” he said.