Binyamin Netanyahu says it’s time to pull the plug on UNRWA

In her few short months as UN ambassador Haley has campaigned in a wide variety of national and international forums to cure the UN of decades of anti-Israel bias and obsession.

Gabriela Shalev Israel’s ambassador to the UN from 2008 to 2010 called the UN the “global center of efforts to delegitimize Israel” in a conference call with the foreign press timed to coincide with Haley’s arrival. Her depiction was evident last week when UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also new on the job chose the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War to denounce what he called “50 years of Israeli occupation.”

Shalev currently a law professor at Ono Academic College in Kiryat Ono a suburb of Tel Aviv told Mishpacha it is too early both to despair over Guterres and to hold out great expectations for Haley.

“I don’t think anyone can expect to move a heavy ship like the UN in a few months ” Shalev said. “She [Haley] has proven within a very short time to be a great friend of Israel. Guterres is a European and like many other Europeans doesn’t see this week as 50 years of liberation but 50 years of occupation.”

What Guterres doesn’t and will probably never admit is that a sizable contingent of Palestinians live under occupation by the UN not by Israel.

The world body responsible for resettling displaced persons is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Of the 65 million people worldwide the UNHCR counted as “forcibly displaced” in 2015 21 million are refugees. The agency takes care of 16 million of them and has done a creditable job of relocation over the decades.

However the UN set up a separate sister agency the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) specifically to attend to the Palestinians. The original UNRWA definition of a Palestinian refugee was one whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1 1946 to May 15 1948 and who lost both his home and livelihood due to the 1948 War of Independence. The last census of the Arab population in Mandatory Palestine in 1945 found 756 000 permanent Arab residents. By subsequently expanding its definition of a Palestinian refugee to include all descendants of those male Palestinian refugees including adopted children UNRWA now counts 5.2 million Palestinians as displaced by the 1948 war. The Palestinians have demanded the “right of return” for all those millions during peace negotiations with Israel.

Today the West Bank is home to 775 000 Arabs who qualify under the expanded guidelines. About three-quarters of them live in cities and villages Israel ceded to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords while about 166 000 live in 19 refugee camps administered by UNRWA. Some are indeed squalid refugee camps while others look no different than the old neglected neighborhoods in and around Meah Shearim whose residents can’t afford to refurbish their properties.

In Gaza the status of Palestinian refugees is more extreme. There some 526 000 people live in refugee camps most of which are in far worse condition than their West Bank counterparts.

On Sunday Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that he suggested to Haley the time had come for the UN to end the charade. “I regret that UNRWA to a large degree by its very existence perpetuates — and does not solve — the Palestinian refugee problem. Therefore the time has come to disband UNRWA and integrate it into the UNHCR ” Netanyahu said.

Surely Netanyahu’s goal is to end the mandate of UNRWA whose only mission is to serve the Palestinian people. That mission has long been an irritant to Israel as it singles out the Palestinians — among all nations of the world — for special treatment. But whether the UNHCR would be any less biased than UNRWA is an open question. UNRWA already employs a “neutrality team” whose job description allows them to drop in unannounced on any UNRWA facility to ensure for instance that there are no murals of suicide bombers pamphlets encouraging violence or other material that could compromise the organization’s humanitarian mandate. But they have no security forces to enforce “neutrality ” and their cooperation with Israeli security forces is spotty.

Since a mandate to run things differently is lacking it is far from clear that shuffling the responsibility for Palestinian refugees from one UN agency to another would solve anything.

Under international law refugees maintain their status until their situation is resolved in one of three ways: they go back to their native country they are given permission to stay where they are or they are taken in by a third country.

While the UNHCR resettled 107 100 refugees worldwide in 2015 alone they would likely find themselves stymied by inertia. UNRWA itself has been handcuffed by a longstanding UN General Assembly resolution that prevents the resettlement of West Bank refugees. In fact it calls any such resettlement a violation of their inalienable “right of return ” even though under any final status agreement there is wall-to-wall consensus in Israel that the right of return is a nonstarter.

That same resolution also calls on Israel to refrain from any action that might lead to the removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and from the destruction of their camps. Years ago when UNRWA lent its backing to an Israeli plan to invest in infrastructure and permanent housing for refugees Arab nations scuttled it because they know Palestinian refugees are a giant thorn in Israel’s side.

Nikki Haley is back in the US now. If her trip proves anything it’s that a fresh pair of eyes at the UN can reinvigorate the quest for creative solutions. But unless the UN is willing to take a long hard look at itself in the mirror the organization’s claims that they have the best interests of the Palestinians in their hearts is nothing less than hypocritical. (Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 664)