After UNRWA

People are trying to figure out what to do with UNRWA, the troubled United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The organization has long perpetuated the Arab-Israeli conflict, fomenting hatred for Jews in its schools, and promising millions of Arabs that their future is in Israeli towns and villages where grandparents who had wished for the destruction of the Jewish State once lived.

The temporary agency is funded by voluntary contributions from UN member states, so can be dissolved very quickly, as was always intended. The issue at the moment is that the hospitals and schools still need to operate, with or without the existence of UNRWA. The five regions where UNRWA operates – Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – all have different dynamics, politics and infrastructure, and the future will be different for each.

The best solution is for UNRWA to be dissolved and its personnel and infrastructure to be handed to proper authorities: operations in Lebanon and Syria would shift to the UNHCR, the UN Refugee agency; Jordanian operations to the government of Jordan; and operations in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, in a staged process.

Syria and Lebanon to UNHCR

There are approximately 581,000 descendants of 1948 Palestinian Arabs in Syria being cared for by UNRWA in 2022, and another 93,000 people for whom the agency also gives free services. The numbers are 487,000 and 70,000 in Lebanon for refugee descendants and other wards, respectively. All of them have been denied citizenship by their host countries.

These people and the associated infrastructure should be handed over immediately to UNHCR which cares for over 89 million people as of 2022. UNHCR would try to settle the 1.23 million people either in those host countries or find them citizenship elsewhere, just as it does with millions of other stateless people.

Jordan

Jordan was part of the original Palestine Mandate of 1922, and England separated the land east of the Jordan River to become a new country known as Transjordan in 1923. After Transjordan attacked Israel at its founding and illegally seized the eastern part of what remained of Palestine, it illegally annexed that land and renamed itself “Jordan.” It ethnically cleansed all Jews from the region, including eastern Jerusalem, and granted citizenship to everyone in 1954, as they long as they weren’t Jewish (Nationality Law Article 3).

Not surprisingly with such deep history with the land “between the River and the Sea,” roughly half of Jordan is “Palestinian”, approximately 2.6 million people including Queen Rania. These “UNRWA refugees” in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship and have zero need to collect global charity under the false notion that they are stateless and lack self-determination.

The schools and hospitals should be transferred to the government of Jordan’s control immediately. Some countries may want to continue to voluntarily contribute to the Jordanian king for some time to help absorb the hit to the country’s budget, and then slowly wean the king from the global money teat.

West Bank to the Palestinian Authority

Palestinians declared a state in 1988, and most non-western countries have recognized its independence. It is ruled by the Palestinian Authority, which elected a president from the Fatah Party in 2005 and a parliament in 2006 with a majority from Hamas.

The PA operates from the West Bank city of Ramallah and has responsibility for the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank. The Authority is viewed as weak and corrupt by Palestinians and others. It supplies money to terrorists and their families in a program alternatively called a Martyrs’ Fund / Pay-to-Slay program, which is popular amongst Palestinians and detested by civil societies for directly supporting terror. The PA has failed on all fronts, not being able to show the ability to govern internally nor to advance a future of coexistence with the Jewish State.

Alas, it’s much better than the alternative Hamas which has ruled in Gaza since 2007 when it seized control of the region from the PA. Perhaps with greater focus on good governance with western oversight, the PA can be reformed.

Handing the 96 schools and 43 health facilities operating in the West Bank to the PA should happen immediately. Funding for the operations should cover only six to nine months and a cohort of countries led by the United States, which is UNRWA’s principle benefactor, should use the time to stabilize the transition. That includes ensuring that no hatred for Jews or teaching about the destruction of Israel is found anywhere in the facilities or educational materials.

Continued funding for the schools and hospitals after the initial transition period should be captured under the United States Taylor Force Act. Just as the PA is denied getting any US monies as long as it pays terrorist salaries in the Pay-to-Slay program, it would also lose funding that used to come through UNRWA for the schools and hospitals. The historic backdoor circumventing American laws would be sealed closed, and the US and PA would need to work together to ensure that supporting terrorism comes to a definitive end for any monetary support to come to the PA.

Gaza, At Some Point, to the Palestinian Authority

While UNRWA’s West Bank operations should move to the PA immediately, UNRWA in Gaza is a different story. Not only must the PA prove it can absorb the many facilities and cleanse them of their toxic hatred, the PA will be tested as to whether it can take control of Gaza after 17 years of Hamas rule.

Hamas’s complete rule of Gaza since 2007 brought the region complete destruction. It focused all of its energies on building a war infrastructure to destroy the Jewish State next door, rather than build a functioning economy and society. It left the schools and hospitals for the world to fund and run, so cared little about letting them get destroyed while its leaders hid like cowards underground.

Neither Hamas nor the PA can take over the rebuilding of the schools and health care facilities. Over the next several years, another global cohort, perhaps similar to the one easing the UNRWA transition in the West Bank, should be tasked with building institutions anew. Basic humanitarian values and rights must be incorporated into the very foundations to chart a path for a future when the PA may be able to take over Gaza as well as the new former-UNRWA infrastructure.

*UNRWA camp with a keyhole and key on top symbolizing the false promise that through UNRWA, Palestinian Arabs will get to move into homes in Israel*

These actions, if properly executed, should empower and moderate a new Palestinian Authority which can take over Gaza at some point, and ultimately negotiate peace with Israel.

The first step in ending the Arab-Israel conflict is for the United Nations and Saudi Arabia to clearly state that there is NO RIGHT OF RETURN FOR PALESTINIANS TO GO TO GRANDPARENTS’ HOMES IN ISRAEL. Immediately thereafter, the dismantling of UNRWA should commence.

There is a pathway to coexistence, and it must be built on truths and respect which Arabs and Jews fully acknowledge and internalize.