A simple question that proves @UNRWA's worthlessness ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, February 10, 2025

A simple question that proves @UNRWA's worthlessness

Last week, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini tweeted:

The rights of the Palestinians continue to be violated.

Since the war began, people in #Gaza have undergone systematic dehumanization.

Palestinians do matter, including those in Gaza.
Their rights, lives & futures matter.

Human rights cannot be applied selectively.

As the UN Secretary General said: “Peace requires ending the occupation, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, with Gaza as an integral part; a viable and sovereign Palestinian State side-by-side with Israel”.

At @UNRWA, our teams are committed to continue providing critical assistance to #Palestine Refugees who need us most until empowered Palestinian institutions become a lasting & viable alternative.

Let's look at that last sentence a little closer.

UNRWA spends about $133 million a year on services in areas under full Palestinian Authority control. The PA is now over 30 years old. They can and do provide services to all their citizens, which include everyone registered with UNRWA.

The UNRWA recipients who live in the West Bank are not "refugees" by any normal definition. They live within the borders of British Mandate Palestine. They have a government that works on their behalf.

UNRWA runs a hospital in Qalqilya and numerous health clinics. Why? They are a wasteful duplication of administrative overhead from what the PA is already meant to provide.

Same for UNRWA schools. They use the PA curriculum and the PA provides public schools for all citizens. As far as I can tell, they do not refuse services to "refugees."

So why does UNRWA exist in the West Bank? The PA schools and hospitals are empowered, today, to provide all the services, and international aid to UNRWA could easily be directed to the PA to more than make up for any shortfall because of this parallel social services provided by UNRWA today.

By Lazzarini's own standards, UNRWA should have been dismantled in the West Bank back in the 1990s. And by UNRWA's own original mandate, it should not be providing services to people who do not need them anymore. Being a citizen of the "State of Palestine" which is recognized by over a hundred countries certainly qualifies.

But his statement here goes way beyond UNRWA's mandate as stated by the UN. UNRWA's mandate is for it to be a temporary agency. Its UN mandate and funding is renewed every few years, a vestige of the fact that it is not meant to be permanent. The 1949 resolution 302 that created it says "continued assistance for the relief of the Palestine refugees is necessary to prevent conditions of starvation and distress among them and to further conditions of peace and stability, and that constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief."

But the UNRWA website shows that it has expanded its own mandate to exist "pending a just and lasting solution to their plight." That language is not in any UN resolutions on UNRWA that I am aware of.

UNRWA cannot, by definition, change its own mandate without a UN resolution. . But this is what UNRWA has done. And when Lazzarini says UNRWA must exist "until empowered Palestinian institutions become a lasting & viable alternative" he is making up a new mandate again. It is probably illegal, because UNRWA should not be able to go beyond the mandates that create and continue to fund it. Yet this is exactly what it is doing.

UNRWA itself defines whether its services are needed, and it adjusts its own mandate to allow it to continue to exist, instead of following UN resolutions.

The continued existence of UNRWA in the West Bank, and to a large extent Jordan (which also extends citizenship and protection to most of its Palestinian residents) proves that UNRWA has become a parody of what it was created for. By Lazzarini's own words, it should not exist in the West Bank even today.

This is far from the only reason to dismantle UNRWA today. But it is enough of one.