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The U.S. Should Permanently Stop All Funding to UNRWA

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch and Rikki Zagelbaum - Since 1950, the U.S. has donated almost $7.5 billion to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). However, 77 years after its creation, not even one "Palestine refugee" has been permanently resettled under the agency's watch. On the contrary, UNRWA's registry has swollen from 711,000 people in 1950 to nearly six million today. This increase underscores how UNRWA has sustained, rather than diminished, a protracted situation that should have ended decades ago. UNRWA was never meant to be permanent. When the UN General Assembly created the agency in 1949, the "Palestine refugees" were only a small fraction of the tens of millions worldwide still receiving UN aid after World War II. The agency was supposed to close within two years, expecting that the refugees displaced after Israel's 1948 War of Independence would be resettled through other channels. Unlike the UN's broader global agency for refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNRWA does not have a mandate to resettle refugees. The Arab League endorsed the agency only on the condition that resettlement remain off-limits, viewing the Palestinian refugees as political pawns and leverage to continue their fight against Israel. An April 23, 2025, report by the Israeli government found that out of the 12,521 UNRWA employees active in Gaza during 2023-2024, 1,462 (about 12%) were identified as members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), or related terrorist factions. In addition, of the 546 principals and deputy-principals in UNRWA education facilities, at least 80 (15%) are members of terrorist organizations. While UNRWA professes to be a humanitarian organization, its true goal is to perpetuate the notion that the "Palestine refugees" will, one day, demographically flood and democratically destroy Israel. That is why UNRWA refuses to remove from its registry millions of people who hold foreign citizenship and residency, and who, by any other refugee concept, would no longer be considered refugees. The very existence of UNRWA is contrary to U.S. interests and the goal of finding a viable solution to the Palestinian rejection of Israel's right to exist. It only perpetuates the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Maurice Hirsch, former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria, is director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center, where Rikki Zagelbaum, a writer in New York, is an intern.
2025-08-03 00:00:00
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