Not a day goes by when you do not see yet another news story about the genuine suffering of the descendants of Arab refugees who continue to wallow in the misery of the ​UNRWA refugee facilities that were established as” temporary”dwellings for the Arabs who left Israel during the 1948 war…67 years ago​

The plight ​of the people of the UNRWA ​refugee facilities in Gaza further deteriorated after ​ the ​exchange of ​Gaza missile attacks and the subsequent Israeli military incursion occurred last summer.

UNRWA expected that a flow of funds would flow ​unabated ​ to their refugee facilitiss in the wake ​of the the summer war

However, donor nations have instead slowed down ai​d to UNRWA in Gaza.

Why?​ Because ​donors now ask for accountability while social workers and health professionals who work in UNRWA facilities report ​ report the mass disappearance of food and medical supplies donated from western countries.

Nations that fund the same programs of health, education and welfare now express concern or double, triple and quadruple allocations for the same humanitarian programs that donors are funding, leaving an abundance of cash that also seems to disappear in the UNRWA facilities in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas, defined by donor nations such as EU, the US, Canada, the UK and Australia as an FTO, a foreign terrorist organization, continues to dominate the workers and teachers unions of UNRWA in Gaza,.

​In addition, Hamas provide military training in their schools in Gaza, to prepare children as young as 12 to ready themselves to liberate all of Palestine by force of arms under the slogan of the “right of return” to Arab villages in Israel which existed before the 1948 war.

​These factors do not provide a conducive atmosphere for accountable humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza.

So what can be done to ​facilitate a flow of donations​ for the people who dwell in UNRWA Gaza facilities?

​There are five reasonable conditions that donor nations can request of UNRWA, in order to streamline humanitarian aid that will reach the source: the people in need:​

  1. An audit of all funds allocated to UNRWA​, so that there will be full accountability of funds allocated by 38 nations​
  2. Demand that UNRWA not use the ​current ​”right of return by force of arms” curriculum​ in the UNRWA schools.​
  3. ​Ask that ​ UNRWA fire personnel affiliated with Hamas
  4. ​Cease ​ military training of children in the UNRWA schools
  5. Initiate programs that will enable UNRWA residents to be resettled in permanent homes, for the first time since 1948

When these conditions are met, humanitarian funds will and should flow to Gaza.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Previous articleMuch Ado at the Qusayr Site? A Syrian Nuclear Snapshot
Next articleRabbi David Saperstein was sworn in on Friday, February 20 as the new US Ambassador for Religious Freedom
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.