UNRWA - Designed to Fail

For Decades The UN Relief & Works Agency Has Been Sabotaging Ordinary Palestinians

From the outset, UNRWA’s structure and mandate only served to exacerbate and perpetuate Palestinian refugee status and the conflict, leading to generations of Palestinians trapped in a never-ending cycle of suffering, poverty and dependency.

The UN Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) was established in 1949, ostensibly to provide relief and support, exclusively for displaced Palestinian refugees. Unlike the UNHCR, that works tirelessly to resolve refugee crises across the globe, UNRWA was never given a mandate to resettle or integrate Palestinian refugees. It does not resettle Palestine refugees and has no authority to seek lasting durable solutions. 

It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to provide services in education, health, relief & social services, microfinance, and infrastructure & camp improvement, to Palestine refugees, pending a “just and lasting solution to their plight”, whatever that means.

From its foundations, UNRWA was exploited by bad actors in the Arab world's “vendetta” against Israel. Rather than pursuing sustainable solutions, the agency has entrenched Palestinian statelessness, and refugee status, to deliver a “stick” with which to beat the Jewish State.

Wholly Compromised

UNRWA is not merely a failing institution. It is wholly compromised, complicit, and rotten to the core. For decades, the agency has sabotaged ordinary Palestinians, while pandering to their corrupt and terror obsessed leadership. Unlike the UNHCR, which actually helps refugees, UNRWA’s mandate and its actions have perpetuated Palestinian refugee status and suffering.

Ordinary Palestinians have been little more than pawns in a geopolitical struggle, their suffering prolonged by the UN agency charged with their welfare. It is important to understand that UNRWA is also the entity that benefits most from Palestinian lack of status, poverty and dependency.

Solving the Palestinian refugee crisis would mean Palestinians finally taking responsibility for themselves. UNRWA would lose its reason to be! But UNRWA is a multi billion-dollar project. The UN raises a great deal of money from international donors, for schools, hospitals, clinics, and more. The agency retains a great deal of influence, with a captive "clientele" for its services. UNRWA has zero incentive to solve the issue of Palestinian refugees, quite the opposite. In order to survive, UNRWA needs to exacerbate and perpetuate the very suffering it claims to alleviate.

Built to Perpetuate Crisis and Palestinian Suffering

Let’s start with some basic numbers. These are from 2018/19, but the disparities remain. In 2019, the UNHCR, which handled 70.8 million refugees worldwide, operated in 134 countries with 16,803 staff members. It spent approximately $8.6 billion annually, equating to $121 per refugee. In stark contrast, UNRWA managed only 5.4 million Palestinian refugees in just five territories, with a bloated staff of more than 30,000, meaning there is one staff member for every 180 refugees, compared to UNHCR’s one per 4,213 refugees. UNRWA’s budget in 2018 was $1.19 billion, translating to $220 per refugee—nearly double what UNHCR spends per person.

From its inception, UNRWA has played a crucial role in maintaining the unique Palestinian “refugee status” across generations.

Ironically, Palestinians across much of the Arab world are treated as second-class citizens. In Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and other Arab states, they are frequently denied citizenship, restricted from key professions, and marginalized by legal barriers that prevent them from fully integrating into society. Their lack of status means they do not have access to key services in their host countries and are therefore wholly reliant on UNRWA for social, education, healthcare and other services.

The Height of Absurdity

Palestinians are the only people to have a dedicated UN agency solely for their refugee status, UNRWA, while all other refugees fall under the UNHCR. Furthermore, the Palestinians have an additional dedicated UN body, the Division for Palestinian Rights, as well as the distinction of being the only group granted an annual UN Day of Solidarity.

No other refugee population receives such extraordinary attention, reinforcing the perception of Palestinian refugee status as a political, rather than humanitarian issue.

And so, the cycle of victimhood, entitlement, and grievance is meticulously maintained, not to help Palestinians but to serve as a political weapon against Israel. Meanwhile, UNHCR ensures that refugee status ends once an individual gains citizenship in a third country. UNRWA does the opposite, ensuring Palestinians remain refugees even in places like Jordan, where they are full citizens. To emphasise the absurdity of this unique status, celebrity billionaire, super model sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid, both US citizens, are also counted among Palestinian refugees. 

Complicity in Terror

The latest war in Gaza has ripped the mask off UNRWA’s long-standing complicity in terrorism. UNRWA schools, clinics and other facilities have repeatedly been used to store weapons, house terror operatives, and serve as command centres for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). We now know that Israeli hostages were held in UNRWA buildings. UNRWA teachers moonlight as Hamas militants (or vice versa). Its senior officials are knee-deep in the machinery of terror.

Take Fatah Sharif, the Hamas commander in Lebanon, who conveniently, just happened to be the principal of an UNRWA school and the head of UNRWA’s teachers' union. So too in Gaza, the head of the teachers union was Suhail al-Hindi, a member of the  Hamas politburo. There is a litany of evidence of UNRWA teachers and staff openly praising Hitler, calling for the murder Jews, supporting terror, and glorifying martyrdom. 

It is now beyond doubt that UNRWA employees participated directly in the October 7th massacre. To add insult to injury, UNRWA, who denies is now fighting in the US courts, claiming that those UNRWA employees, who participated in the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, are immune from prosecutions as they enjoy UN diplomatic immunity, which has not been waved.  How much more complicit could UNRWA be as it seeks to defend the indefensible?  UNRWA is morally bankrupt and beyond repair!

Hand in Hand with Hamas

UNRWA is not merely complicit in terror, it has been a willing participant in the great con. The agency has willingly trumpeted false narratives, Hamas lies and propaganda. It falsely claims Israel is the main problem in the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gazan civilians. In fact, UNRWA has stood aside and looked the other way as Hamas hijacked aid trucks, commandeered food, medicine, and fuel, ensuring the black market thrived while the people starved.

The agency has enabled Hamas to weaponize suffering, presenting the world with a carefully curated image of victimhood and deprivation, while Hamas uses its ill-gotten aid money to feed its terror machine and perpetuate the fighting, with ordinary Gazans pay a heavy price. Hamas has stolen and resold over $1.5 billion of humanitarian aid meant for ordinary Gazans. It has been the terror organisation’s main source of income over the past fifteen months.

Desperate Pleas

With Israel’s decision to cease cooperation and shut down their operations in Israel, UNRWA executives, including its Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, are now pleading that they are the “only ones” who can help Palestinians and without them, Palestinians will suffer and die. This is the height of chutzpah. This narrative is as cynical as it is self-serving. UNRWA is not a lifeline. It is an obstacle. Rather than fostering self-sufficiency, UNRWA has entrenched dependency, ensuring that Palestinians remain in a state of perpetual hardship.

Its leadership’s plea is less about humanitarian concern and more about preserving their own bureaucratic empire, one that thrives on the very suffering they claim to alleviate. There are several alternatives to UNRWA who would better serve the interests of ordinary Palestinians, such as the UNHRC, WFP, UNICEF along with other NGOs all experienced in not just dealing with such situations.

Denial is not a River in Egypt

Israel has reached the only logical conclusion: UNRWA must go. It cannot be reformed. It cannot be salvaged. It certainly can’t be trusted to play a constructive role in the future of Gaza or the Palestinians. Any country still funding UNRWA is simply, in denial. It is now abundantly clear that these funds end up subsidising terror and extremism, and the ongoing misery and hopelessness of ordinary Palestinians.

UNRWA has been an unmitigated disaster for the very people it’s supposed to benefit. It has made sure that Palestinians remain impoverished, stateless, and wholly dependent. The lives and fate of ordinary Palestinians remain slaves to a conflict perpetuated by the UN agency.  The only ones that benefit from UNRWA are Hamas and other terrorist groups, their operatives working in the agency, along with the Western cheerleaders and bureaucrats who enable them. The sooner UNRWA is dismantled the better for everyone who wants to see a just end to plight of the Palestinians.

For UNRWA, the game is up. It’s time to pull the plug.