Most people think UNRWA exists to care for Palestinian refugees until a Palestinian state is created.

Not so.

If that were its purpose, its schools, healthcare, and social services would have gradually been transferred to the Palestinian Authority as Palestinian self-government expanded these past many years, especially in the “West Bank” / East of the 1949 Armistice Lines.

UNRWA’s mission would shrink as Palestinian institutions grew stronger. Instead, UNRWA has remained a permanent parallel system that continues to grow every year.

Unlike every other refugee agency in the world, UNRWA passes refugee status across generations, creating an ever-growing population of registered refugees. That population’s political claim is not to a future Palestinian state, but to a claimed so-called “right of return” to towns in Israel.

That distinction is critical.

A “two-state solution” is based on two peoples exercising self-determination in two states. A mass movement of millions of Arabs who never lived in Israel into Israel would produce 1.5 states for Arabs and 0.5 states for Jews. Further, stripping Israel of its right to determine who gets to enter its country means it doesn’t have basic sovereignty.

While UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres claims that “UNRWA is a stabilizing force” it is precisely the opposite. As he urges the world to fund the immoral project, he lies that the agency is the force for “countering the hopelessness that can fuel insecurity.”

UNRWA has fed the lie that – and demands that it will continue to exist until – 6 million Arabs will move into Israel. Such mission is precisely opposite the goal of an Arab and Jewish state living in coexistence.

At its core, UNRWA is a political organization that negates Israel’s sovereignty, cloaked as a humanitarian organization. If the goal is truly a Palestinian state living alongside Israel, then UNRWA must be closed permanently as well as the discussion of a so-called “right of return” .