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UNWRA
supplies have been discovered inside Hamas terror tunnels.
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As Operation Protective Edge enters its third week, we have now seen
four incidents in the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas
that have focused attention on UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works
Agency), the internationally funded welfare organization for Palestinian
"refugees."
The most recent saw three IDF soldiers killed
in an explosion at a booby-trapped UNRWA clinic that was located at the
opening of a terror tunnel.
Earlier in the week, UNRWA discovered
rockets hidden in three of its schools in Gaza. Hamas or some other
faction had been using the schools while they were closed for the summer;
the one available photo shows rockets piled in the back of a classroom,
covered with a blanket.
UNRWA properly condemned the act, as did UN Secretary General Ban Ki
Moon who expressed "outrage and regret" at the discovery. But
lacking its own munitions disposal capability, UNRWA the apparently
returned the rockets to local authorities, presumably Hamas. It later
expressed alarm that the other batch had mysteriously gone missing. After
being ridiculed for this, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness has now stated
that his organization will rely on UN mine disposal experts for future
assistance.
One can almost sympathize with UNRWA. Its schools have long been a
primary mechanism for teaching the Palestinian narrative of displacement,
resentment, and resistance against Israel. But it is doubtful that its
international employees like Gunness took the logic to its predictable
end and expected schools to actually be used by the
"resistance", that is, Hamas, for patently illegal and deadly
purposes.
But in a third incident UNRWA's see-no-evil mentality had tragic,
indeed deadly, consequences. A school in the Gaza neighborhood of Bet
Hanoun where refugees from the fighting had fled was apparently used as a
Hamas firing position. The details are unclear except that an explosion killed
at least 16 children.
Instantly UNRWA blamed Israel for the deaths. But an Israeli
investigation suggests it was a Hamas rocket that fell short, and a just
released video shows an Israeli mortar round striking an empty courtyard.
Even UNRWA has changed its tune slightly and now claims it does not know
who was responsible.
The loss of life is tragic and regrettable, and may or may not have
been avoidable. But it is a measure of UNRWA's reflexive anti-Israel bias
and instinct to protect itself that it tweeted first and investigated
later. The narrative of Israel's unnecessary and violent attack was
created and repeated by a world press that cannot see Hamas' human
shields, rockets, or tunnels.
Only here and there do reporters let slip that Hamas officials were
seen using hospitals as headquarters, that rockets are being stored in
mosques and fired from residential neighborhoods and schoolyards, and
that Hamas supporters intimidate reporters into silence, beating and even
executing critics as "collaborators." There is little wonder
the press refuses to question UNRWA more deeply.
UNRWA learned long ago to wave the bloody shirt, proclaim its formal
neutrality, and act as unofficial Palestinian spokesmen with the
imprimatur of the United Nations. As Hamas' tunnels are being discovered
to lead into everyday Gaza residences, however, it is becoming impossible
to assert that UNRWA saw nothing and knew nothing. What is clear is that
it did nothing until it absolutely had to.
These incidents are the latest illustration of the full integration of
UNRWA into Palestinian society. It is the internationally funded
education, health, and welfare department, the legal department, and the
public relations department, for Palestinian society—in competition with,
and often more influential than, the Palestinian Authority. Before the
current crisis is over it will undoubtedly launch yet another emergency
appeal to expands its role even further.
It is worth emphasizing just how unprecedented the situation really
is. On the one hand, there is a United Nations organization created in
1949 for refugee relief providing an ever-increasing range of services to
the third or fourth generation of refugee descendants some 65 years
later, is utterly unprecedented. And on the other, those third and fourth
generation descendants still demand to be regarded as refugees and
supported by the international community, while being still forbidden to
resettle in the Arab countries where they have lived for decades (except
for Jordan). All this is expected to continue until the Palestinians'
preferred resolution to the conflict is realized—namely, the end of
Israel and their return to a world that no longer exists.
In any post-conflict reconstruction plan for the demilitarization of
Gaza and its rebuilding, international donors will be well advised to
phase out UNRWA and channel funds to legitimate Palestinian
institutions, with an eye to ending more than sixty years of Palestinian
welfare dependence. In the meantime, UNRWA should be vigilant about who
uses its schools during the summer months, and we should be vigilant
about its political claims.
Alexander Joffe is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow of the Middle East
Forum. Asaf Romirowsky is an adjunct fellow at the Middle East
Forum. Romirowsky and Joffe are co-authors of Religion, Politics, and
the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief.
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