UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency administers refugee facilities for five million descendants of Arab refugees of the 1948 war. More than 1,200,000 of these refugee descendants dwell in UNRWA facilities in Gaza, where they have wallowed in “temporary” Gaza refugee camps for 66 years,while UNRWA focuses its energy on the right of Arab refugees to liberate Arab villages which have since been replaced by Israel.

Following the Israel-Gaza summer war, UNRWA has asked the Gaza donors conference for 1.6 billion dollars to rebuild their refugee facilitates in Gaza.

Donors may wish to predicate assistance to UNRWA on 4 reasonable conditions:

1. Audit all funds which flow to UNRWA, which operates on a 1.2 billion USD budget. The lack of a current UNRWA audit allows for wasted resources, duplicity of service and a flow of cash to Gaza based terror groups. The phenomenon of unaccounted millions allocated for humanitarian aid needs to be challenged.

2. Introduce UNHCR standards to UNRWA, to encourage refugee resettlement, which current UNRWA policy does not allow. As UNRWA policy would have it, permanent refugee settlement interferes with the sanctity of the UNRWA promise of the “right of return” to Arab villages that existed before 1948.

3. Cancel the current UNRWA curriculum, which now incorporates principles of Jihad, martyrdom and the right of return – in a UN school system which is supposed to promote the UNRWA slogan of “Peace Starts Here.” An integral part of current UNRWA education in Gaza involves paramilitary training in Gaza based UNRWA schools. UNRWA, as a UN agency, should be required to demonstrate a commitment to the sacred UN principles of peace and reconciliation

4. Dismiss UNRWA employees affiliated with Hamas, in accordance with laws on the books in the US, the EU, Canada, Australia and the UK, each of which have adopted binding legislation which forbids aid to any agency that employs members of a terrorist organization. These laws has been ignored by donor nations to UNRWA for 15 years, even though Hamas overwhelmingly took over the UNRWA trade union in Gaza and the UNRWA Teachers Association in Gaza in successive elections, since 1999.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Previous articleMahmoud Abbas’ position on terror
Next articleIran’s aggressive information campaign
David Bedein
David Bedein
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.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR