UNRWA is deeply flawed, but strategic wisdom of banning agency is unclear

Israeli legislation passed on Monday aimed at blocking the operations of the UNRWA Palestinian aid agency has generated widespread international reverberations, with major allies including the US and the UK strongly criticizing the measure as potentially catastrophic for Palestinians in Gaza.

They and others, along with numerous UN officials and agencies, have insisted that UNRWA’s role in distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza and running humanitarian services there means that severely hampering the organization, as the new laws do, could create potentially disastrous humanitarian conditions for the civilian population of the war-battered territory.

Sentiment in Israel is very different, as reflected by the huge majorities with which the Knesset passed the bills, with supporters of the legislation pointing to evidence of Hamas’s infiltration of UNRWA, the participation of some UNRWA members in the October 7 atrocities, and the rampant incitement against Israel and Jews in UNRWA’s vast educational network.

Experts on Israeli policy and international organizations who spoke with The Times of Israel similarly had little positive to say about UNRWA.

But there is nevertheless a divergence of opinion as to whether the new laws are a wise move for Jerusalem to have adopted given the difficult military conflicts it is still deeply engaged in and Israel’s embattled diplomatic standing.

It is also important to note what the laws do and what they do not do.

The legislation

The first part of the legislation, which takes effect in three months, prohibits UNRWA from functioning in sovereign Israeli territory, which under Israeli law includes East Jerusalem, where the agency has a significant presence.

But a second part of the legislation that likewise takes effect in three months also prohibits state agencies from having any contact with UNRWA or its representatives, a clause that critics of the law say will make it extremely difficult for the organization to operate in Gaza.

In addition, it also ostensibly revokes the very basis of UNRWA’s operations in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem by canceling with immediate effect Israel’s 1967 invitation to the agency to work in those areas through a diplomatic exchange of letters at the time.

The new laws come in the wake of numerous revelations of UNRWA complicity in terrorism and incitement to violence and hatred against Israel.

Terror ties

Israel has alleged that dozens of UNRWA officials and staffers directly participated in, and assisted, the October 7 atrocities, and has provided evidence against several of these employees.
UNRWA itself confirmed just last week that Muhammad Abu Attawi, a commander in Hamas’s Nukhba force killed by the IDF in Gaza, who is documented as having murdered civilians in the notorious bomb shelter attack near Re’im on October 7, was one of its staffers.

Israel has also alleged that some 12% percent of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza have ties to terrorist factions.

In February, IDF forces found a subterranean data center — complete with an electrical room, industrial battery power banks and living quarters for Hamas terrorists operating the computer servers — underneath UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza City. The data center was hooked up to the electricity supply in the UNRWA facility above.

And Israel accuses UNRWA of fomenting hatred of Israel and Jews, and of inciting violence against them, alleging that 10% of senior educators belong to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Numerous reports have been issued regarding the extremism and incitement found in UNRWA’s educational curriculum.

Marcus Sheff, CEO of the IMPACT-SE organization, which monitors education curricula around the world for compliance with UNESCO standards on peace, tolerance and nonviolence, said that UNRWA has had a “central, radicalizing influence on generations of Palestinians” and that the curriculum that it teaches educates young Palestinian children “that Jews are liars and fraudsters who spread corruption.”

He also noted that half of Gaza’s schools are run by UNRWA, and that despite the numerous critical reports, the agency “never changed one line of its school curriculum” because of its connection to Hamas.

“If you teach generations of people about violence, and the glorious destiny of being a martyr, don’t be surprised that it happens,” said Sheff.

Addressing the legislation itself, Anne Herzberg, legal adviser to the NGO Monitor organization, which is a frequent and ardent critic of the UN, said it was unclear if the new laws meant that UNRWA would not be able to operate in Gaza at all.

Gaza is not sovereign Israeli territory so the ban on its operations in Israel does not apply, Herzberg noted. The legislation does prohibit Israeli state agencies from having contact with UNRWA, but the organization likely does not need coordination and cooperation with Israel for every aspect of its work in Gaza.

In theory, UNRWA could run its various services without such contact, she noted, adding that the large majority of its employees are local Gazans who do not even need visas from Israel for their work.

Coordinating with Israel

Distributing aid during the ongoing conflict could, however, be far more difficult since such activity relies on coordination with the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories and the IDF to ensure that aid workers are not targeted in military operations.

Israeli officials have also said that other aid agencies, including UN organizations, have a bigger role in aid distribution within Gaza at present than UNRWA, and cite the World Food Program, World Central Kitchen, UNICEF, and others.

Herzberg pointed to the presence of at least 10 other UN agencies in Gaza, alongside dozens of NGOs that she said could help fill the vacuum left by UNRWA.

“To say that UNRWA is the only game in town is complete nonsense,” she said, pointing to the UN Development Program (UNDP), which is present in Gaza, as one organization that could bolster aid distribution in Gaza in the wake of the new laws.

Senior UN officials have rejected this notion, however, insisting that UNRWA is critical to the provision of humanitarian aid and services in Gaza, and averring that it is not possible to substitute the organization with another agency.

“UNRWA is the principal means by which essential assistance is supplied to Palestine refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. There is no alternative to UNRWA,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said on Monday.

In a similar vein, the head of UNRWA in Gaza, Sam Rose, has said it would be impossible for the agency to operate in the territory when the laws come into effect, pointing out that the legislation explicitly removes UNRWA’s diplomatic immunity, meaning that it would not be able to guarantee the safety of its staff.

Rose also contended that other organizations would not be able to fill the breach left by UNRWA, saying that other UN agencies “are not in the business of running health services, or education services.”

Crocodile tears

Herzberg pointed out that Israel’s concerns over UNRWA’s complicity in terrorist activity and what Jerusalem asserts is its harmful impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not new, and have been raised numerous times both before and after October 7.

She said that the UN has known for years that UNRWA needed deep reform, and that donor countries have been “kicking the can down the road” for too long because they didn’t want to deal with the problems.

“These are crocodile tears. The UN has known of problems with UNRWA for a decade, so it’s a bit rich to complain now that UNRWA is irreplaceable,” she said.

“It has been completely infiltrated by Hamas, it has allowed aid to be diverted, it has brainwashed kids in its education system to hate and to violence,” Herzberg asserted.

“The entire aid system in Gaza needs to be overhauled and reformed, but donor governments are lazy and don’t want to deal with the issue.”

US warnings

Shira Efron, a senior director of Policy Research at the Israel Policy Forum think tank, agrees in large part with the assessment of UNRWA as having had a malign influence within Palestinian society, but is nevertheless worried that the new legislation is poorly timed and entails severe risks for Israel.

In particular, Efron referenced a letter sent by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on October 13 in which he called on the ministers to halt the legislation since, he said, it would “devastate” the humanitarian response in Gaza.

Moreover, Blinken pointed out that critical US military support for Israel is conditional on Israel facilitating, and not hindering, the supply of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and asserted that the humanitarian situation in the territory was deteriorating.

The secretary of state also issued a list of demands to be met within 30 days, including enabling at least 350 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza per day.

Since Blinken’s letter, the highest number of aid trucks to enter Gaza was 143, and that was just this Tuesday, with the number entering prior to that routinely falling below 100.

Efron said that halting UNRWA’s operations in Gaza would severely harm the aid distribution effort, and suggested that in so doing Israel could endanger US arms supplies and thereby its own strategic interests.

“This could be a real threat to Israel’s arms supplies. The country is fighting in Gaza, fighting in Lebanon; it’s finished round two in Iran, which could develop into round three; there are threats from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen; while Israel is trying to keep a lid on the West Bank,” said Efron.

“To have this legislation now misses the strategic point. It is a very precarious time, despite Israel’s military achievements,” she added, describing the measure as “populist” and “political” rather than a strategic attempt to deal with the problems arising from UNRWA’s highly problematic activities.

Efron is of the opinion that the cancellation of Israel’s 1967 invitation to UNRWA means that it effectively will not be able to work anywhere in the West Bank and Gaza.

She dismissed claims that UNRWA’s operations could easily be replaced in Gaza by other UN agencies and organizations, insisting that the organization remains “the backbone” of humanitarian operations there, whose logistical and administrative platforms other organizations rely on.

No alternative

In addition, Efron pointed out that the legislation would create difficulties in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that could further destabilize those regions.

UNRWA provides municipal services in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem which would have to come to an end, while it also provides social services, healthcare, and schooling to some 913,000 people across the West Bank that might also be severely curtailed or shuttered as a result of the legislation.

Dismantling UNRWA is a reasonable policy goal, Efron said, but not without having an alternative in place which can take up its functions.

This is something that could be done over the course of a year but not in an immediate timeframe, especially given the current, acute need for its services in Gaza, she noted.