Biden Administration Failing to Reform U.N.’s Palestinian Refugee Agency
The Trump administration cut off all U.S. funding for UNRWA in 2018, concluding that UNRWA needed to be reformed completely, if not dismantled. With a mandate to care for refugees, providing basic services like health care and education, but not resettle them, UNRWA has perpetuated the problem it exists to deal with. By conferring refugee status on multiple generations of Palestinians—a departure from U.N. practice in other conflicts—an initial refugee population of approximately 750,000 in 1948 has ballooned to 5.7 million. This expansive definition of who is a refugee, coupled with UNRWA’s support for the “right of return,” the Palestinian claim that all these millions of Palestinians have a right to resettle inside Israel, makes the agency a vehicle for prolonging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To boot, UNRWA has also had serious issues of waste, fraud, and abuse.Honest Reporting: EXCLUSIVE: How European Union Funding of West Bank Activities Breaches Int’l Law & Undermines Peace
When the Trump administration zeroed out aid to the U.N. agency in August 2018 after it resisted making changes, a State Department spokesperson announced, “The United States will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation.”
The Biden administration opted to restore funding to the agency before securing structural changes in UNRWA’s mandate or operations—all but ensuring no change would occur. When announcing the decision last April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed U.S. taxpayer money would promote “neutrality, accountability, and transparency.” Since then, the United States has donated or pledged some $416.8 million to UNRWA, including more than $32 million contributed in the wake of the May 2021 Hamas-Israel war.
The Biden administration would likely defend its decision by pointing to the framework for cooperation with the State Department that UNRWA signed on July 14, 2021, in which it committed to stopping incitement against Jews and Israel in its education system and ensuring it does not support or provide assistance to terrorist groups. Days later, the United States announced another $135.8 million for the cash-strapped agency. On December 30, 2021, the State Department pledged an additional $99 million, again stressing the need for UNRWA to focus on “accountability, transparency, neutrality, and stability.”
But America’s return on investment appears to be negative. A report published in January 2022 by the Jerusalem- and London-based watchdog group IMPACT-se shows that UNRWA has continued to distribute teaching materials that glorify and promote violence. (Previous reports from the group, which pre-date the agreement with the Biden State Department, showed the same thing, as did an EU-funded report released in June 2021. Even the UNRWA commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, admitted last September that textbooks distributed by his agency promote anti-Semitism, hatred, and violence.)
UNRWA has frequently hidden behind a claim that it merely uses the curriculum of its “host country.” With this approach, UNRWA has deflected accusations that the Palestinian Authority textbooks it uses in the West Bank and Gaza incite Palestinians to violence, even though UNRWA is under no obligation to use these materials.
The ongoing relevance of the Oslo Accords was more recently reiterated by longtime diplomat Dennis Ross, who served as former US president Bill Clinton’s Middle East envoy when the deals were signed. “These agreements, endorsed by the international community, form the cornerstone of the bilateral peace process until this day and continue to govern the relations between the parties,” Ross wrote in a submission to the International Criminal Court in 2020 [emphasis added].Israel: A Tale of 2 Parallel Universes
But the illegal PA-EU land seizure effort taking place in Area C is, by contrast, making the actualization of the Oslo Accords more difficult as the subversive initiative seeks to, according to the Israeli intelligence report, establish “irreversible facts […] on the ground which have far-reaching implications on a future political agreement.”
The report also stresses that the land takeover is already endangering the lives of Israelis and Palestinians alike:
[…] This Palestinian activity has created a significant constraint on the freedom of movement along the main traffic arteries in the region, while transforming ‘traffic corridors’ from the Oslo era into ‘lanes,’ which are overseen and have come under threat, which might impact the security of the traffic along sections of some of the most important routes […]
For nearly three decades, the European Union has championed a “two-state solution based on the Oslo Accords and on international law,” often warning against perceived Israeli “unilateral departure[s] from the Oslo Accords.” As recently as last year, the European envoy to the United Nations Security Council explicitly invoked the agreements in an attack against alleged unilateral Israeli moves in the West Bank.
And while Europe has paid lip service to the need for direct talks between the two parties based on past agreements, with then-German foreign minister Heiko Maas in May 2021 saying that there is “no alternative to direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians,” Brussels is clearly abetting unilateral steps by the Palestinian Authority.
This, as part of an illegal campaign in Area C of the West Bank that is being funded by European taxpayers and effectively reducing the prospects for a negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
UNFORTUNATELY, Israel seems to exist in two parallel, contradictory worlds.
One universe has been constructed – a false, hackneyed, out-of-date, and threatening universe – that extends from Ramallah to New York, Geneva, and other unfriendly places.
This universe, dominated by so-called Western “progressives” in cahoots with Arab/Islamic radicals, disses rather than embraces the Abraham Accords and is stuck in a time warp where Israel is an evil actor. It is a malign universe where recalcitrant and violent Palestinian leaders are venerated, and admirable Israeli leaders are criminalized. It is a tragic, forlorn universe.
The other universe – real, promising, forward-looking, and stabilizing! – is marked by a peace dynamic that runs from Jerusalem to Dubai, Manama, Rabat, Cairo, and Amman; and from Jerusalem to the most important leaders in the world.
In short, the discourse about Israel in corrupt international institutions and in some aspersive Western campuses and capitals couldn’t be more different than the discourse in Arab capitals and other calm and considered decision-making centers. It’s confrontation versus cooperation, demonization versus solidarity.
It is time for more Western leaders and democratic activists to discover the true, new Middle East, and the real Israel: a force for peace, progress, security, and stability.
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