A bill submitted for a vote on Monday by opposition and coalition MKs Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beitenu), Ron Katz (Yesh Atid), and Dan Iloz (Likud), will sever the ties between Israel and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and a notification to that effect will be sent to the UN. Also, any contact between Israeli officials and individuals with UNRWA will be prohibited by law.
UNRWA will be able to continue its activities in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, but without any assistance whatsoever from Israel on any logistical level, its operation will be difficult, to say the least, and lead to the termination of its presence east of the Jordan River.
Before we continue with the panicked response worldwide at the prospect of UNRWA’s disappearance, and before we detail the reasons for Israel’s aggressive move against an agency whose 12 employees participated in the October 7 atrocities, let’s explain why removing UNRWA from the map will be a cause for celebration for “Palestinian” Arabs.
To clarify, I use the double quotes because the notion of “Palestinian Arabs” is an offshoot of the 1920s Zionist enterprise in Eretz Israel, and an attempt to make up out of whole cloth a nation that has no common history, no common language, no literature to speak of, and no substance other than hating Jews.
The UN has two very different agencies dealing with the recurring problem of displaced people during and following wars. There’s the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees and ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another state, with the option to either return home voluntarily, integrate into the asylum country, or resettle in a third country.
“Palestinian” refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip, Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem are covered by UNRWA. Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA does not resettle “Palestinian” refugees away from their camps, erected in 1949, and has no authority to seek lasting durable solutions for them. This is because UNRWA was established to perpetuate the “Palestinian” refugee until such day when they would all return to their homes inside the Jewish State – and inevitably destroy it from within.
Some 95% of the “Palestinian” refugees were born where they live so the term “refugee” hardly applies to them. The people who left Israel during the 1948-49 war are mostly dead, and the ones who aren’t were infants back then. But all of them are deprived of the chance to better their lives by seeking a better life in countries that vie for new migrants. Instead, they are forced to stay put and be governed by terrorist thugs who operate in cahoots with UNRWA.
Take UNRWA out of the equation, give every PA Arab the amount the agency collects in his name from various charities, and watch him resettle away from the dreadful camps and restart his life.
Listen to these shocking numbers – around 500,000 UNRWA students have participated in Hamas summer camps over the past decade!
UNRWA = Hamas! pic.twitter.com/B1IQJHmScn
— Im Tirtzu (@IMTIzionism) October 27, 2024
DON’T CONFUSE THEM WITH THE FACTS
But the bill, which seems obvious to Israelis, is arousing great outrage in the world, to the point of threatening to take measures against Israel, which raises concern among Israeli unelected officials about the consequences of passing the bill.
According to the Guardian, the UK’s Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer, stated that Israel’s reputation as a democracy would be “deeply harmed” if the Knesset passed the UNRWA bill this week.
How so? Falconer explained that such a move at a time when the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip was catastrophic and getting worse, would “neither be in Israel’s interest nor realistic.”
Seven European foreign ministers, including Falconer, spoke out against the Knesset-wide bill, saying: “It is crucial that UNRWA and other UN organizations be fully able to deliver humanitarian aid and their assistance to those who need it most, fulfilling their mandates effectively.”
Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin delivered an ultimatum to the Israeli government with extensive references to the UNRWA bill and a call to put it on hold, even if it meant that the Netanyahu government would quash a Knesset legislation. Fox News reported that the US Ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, contacted Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman, and, Benny Gantz urging them to delay the vote.
But the problem with UNRWA is not so much related to its soup kitchen skills, as it is to its being in bed with one of the cruelest terrorist groups in the world.
Mohammad Abu Itiwi was an UNRWA employee and a Hamas Nukhba commander who led the slaughter of civilians at the bomb shelter in Re’im, and the kidnapping of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Or Levy and Eliya Cohen. pic.twitter.com/z0wetG1yV6
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) October 24, 2024
On January 18, the sky fell on UNRWA Chief Philippe Lazzarini. In a meeting with an Israeli senior official at a hotel in Tel Aviv, he was presented with a piece of paper with the names of 12 UNRWA employees, with proof that they were part of the October 7 massacre.
Lazzarini flew to the UN Headquarters in New York to inform his bosses, and ten days later, the scandal exploded with many donor countries freezing their UNRWA funding. Since then, it seems that not a week has gone by without the IDF and the Shin Bet uncovering civilian buildings and facilities belonging to UNRWA which had been taken over by Hamas which used them to promote its murderous aims; or members of Hamas exposed as having UNRWA jobs. At one point it was established that an UNRWA social worker kidnapped the body of the late Jonathan Samerano to Gaza, after Samerano, who fled the Nova party to Kibbutz Be’eri, was murdered.
Facing such a contrast between how Israelis across the board feel about UNRWA and the Mad Hatter version of the agency’s role held by world leaders, the Prime Minister must now choose between two earthquakes: one which would gravely harm Israel’s status abroad should the bill is allowed to pass; and one that could potentially bring down his government if the bill is halted.
Stay tuned.
