Published in the Jerusalem Post, 9 May 2024
On January 26, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s head, stated: "The Israeli authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on October 7." Shortly afterward UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres clarified that 12 UNRWA employees had been identified, of whom nine had been fired, one was dead, and the identities of the other two were still being confirmed.
More than a dozen
countries, including the US, immediately suspended their funding of the agency,
causing a financial shortfall of about $450 million.
A few days later Guterres set up two separate investigations. A review team, led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, was tasked with assessing how far UNRWA adheres to the principles of neutrality in its operations, while UN’s top watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight (OIOS), would investigate the veracity of Israel’s claims against the 12 UNRWA staff members. Israel later provided the UN with detailed allegations about seven more UNRWA staffers.
On April 22 the
Colonna-led review issued its report into UNRWA’s “neutrality” in carrying out
its functions. The report identified no less than 50 aspects of the
agency’s operations where it fell short, and recommended changes in each
case. Guterres immediately accepted all 50 recommendations, and announced
that UNRWA “will establish an action plan to implement the
recommendations contained in the final report.”
Although it was no part
of the Colonna team’s brief to comment on the OIOS investigation into Israel’s
charges against UNRWA staff, they thought it appropriate to include the
following in their 54-page report: “Israel made public claims that a significant
number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations. However,
Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”
Inevitably the world’s
media leapt upon this nugget, to the virtual exclusion of everything else in
the report. The headlines were a classic exercise in schadenfreude:
”Israel failed to support its claims about UNRWA staff”; “Israel has yet to
produce evidence for claims against UNRWA”; “Report finds ‘No Evidence’ in key
dossier”; “Israel hasn’t offered evidence tying many UN workers to Hamas,” and
so forth, and so on. But all were premature in their assumptions..
On April 26 UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric provided the media with the first authentic information on the investigation ordered by Guterres into Israel’s charges against UNRWA personnel. He explained that the 12 UNRWA staffers named originally by Israel had been augmented later by seven more – five in March and two in April. Of the 19 allegations, one case had been closed for lack of evidence, while four others had been suspended for insufficient evidence. So now the UN investigators are looking into allegations against 14 members of UNRWA’s staff.
Dujarric told reporters
that OIOS investigators had already met with Israeli authorities and would
visit again in May. They had, however, given no indication of when their
investigation would be completed.
“These discussions are
continuing,” he said.
So the suggestion in the
Colonna review that Israel cannot substantiate its allegations against named
UNRWA staff is belied by the fact that the OIOS investigation is very much
ongoing. What the Colonna report does reveal, however, is that UNRWA is
an organization flawed in its operations by 50 examples of bias, and it would
not require many guesses to determine against whom the bias is directed.
Shakespeare was adept in
inventing insults. Somewhere in his play King Lear he has one
character roundly condemning another in these terms: “Thou whoreson Z.
Thou unnecessary letter…” “Unnecessary” is a label that could well be
applied to UNRWA.
Around the time the
State of Israel came into being, something over half the non-Jewish population
of what was called “Palestine” at the time, some 750,000 people, left their
homes – some on advice, some from fear of the forthcoming conflict, some during
the fierce exchanges.
After the armistice, the
UN set up a body to assist them – UNRWA. It began its
work in May 1950. Seven months later the UN established the Office of the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), excluding Palestinian refugees from
its remit. Ever since, to their disadvantage, Palestinians have been
treated differently from all other refugees in the world. One reason is
that from the start UNRWA totally ignored a key aspect of its remit.
The 1949 UN General
Assembly resolution that established UNRWA called for the alleviation of
distress among Palestine refugees and stated, crucially, that: “constructive
measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination
of international assistance for relief.” In other words, the new agency’s
mission was intended to be temporary, as the refugees under its wing were
resettled.
Resettlement never
occurred. On the contrary, UNRWA’s policy was to perpetuate the Palestinians’
refugee status. It decided to regard as refugees all the “descendants of
Palestine refugees”– children, grandchildren and great grandchildren in perpetuity. The
effect? The number of Palestinians registered by UNRWA as refugees, in
camps scattered around the region, has mushroomed from around 750,000 to 5.9
million at the last count, and is growing exponentially year on year. Its
expanding client base is, of course, used by UNRWA to justify an ever-larger
staff and an ever-increasing budget. By 2024 the “temporary” UNRWA had
been transformed into a bloated international bureaucracy with a staff in
excess of 30,000 and an annual budget of around $2.2 billion.
Worse than that, nearly 6 million people had been converted into permanent charity-dependent clients, with no incentive to become part of productive economically independent communities where those able to work have well-paid jobs, and the population thrives on earned incomes not handouts.
While UNHCR, the main UN
agency dealing with refugees, concentrates on resettling them,
facilitating their voluntary repatriation or their local
integration, UNRWA maintains in their refugee status decade after
decade an ever-expanding client base.
There is every good
reason to reform the present situation. Though of course the services UNRWA
currently provides are essential, there is absolutely no need for that flawed
organization to run them. It should be dissolved, and its functions
absorbed into an enlarged UNHCR, an efficient well-run organization. UNHCR
is a global body dedicated to supporting people who have fled their homes
because of conflict or persecution. It protects their rights and
crucially, unlike UNRWA, does not perpetuate their refugee status but helps
them rebuild their lives. It has a positive agenda. The unnecessary UNRWA
is based on a negative philosophy.
All this, vital though it is, was of course well beyond the scope of the Colonna report.
Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 7 May 2024:https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-800162
https://mpc-journal.org/unrwa-probe-ignores-the-basic-issue/
