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The dilemmas surrounding UNRWA funding

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The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is the current hot topic for commentators. Last Tuesday, during an impromptu televised statement on Iran, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley threatened to cut UNRWA funding, explaining that US President Donald Trump “doesn’t want to give any additional funding until the Palestinians agree to come back to the negotiation table”.

On Thursday, Israel’s Channel 2 News reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is privately urging the US not to cut the funding to the Palestinians with the report claiming that: Netanyahu “wants to steer between the desire to publicly back [US President Donald] Trump and to prevent a disaster in Gaza”. According to the report, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and IDF also support this view.

This contrasts with Netanyahu’s position at yesterday’s weekly cabinet meeting in which he proposed that funding to UNRWA should be redirected to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN body responsible for all other refugees in the world. This contrast reflects two competing components about UNRWA.

UNRWA is a hindrance to peace

On the one hand, the organisation hinders a two-state solution. According to Einat Wilf, UNRWA perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by providing support for the Palestinians maximalist delusion of a full “return” into Israel within the Green Line – a position far at odds with the paradigm of “two states for two people”.

Indeed, UNRWA’s definition of what constitutes “a refugee” is problematic. Contrary to the definition of refugees according to the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNWRA –not only counts those who lost home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 war but also their descendants, meaning five to six million Palestinian “refugees” rely on UNRWA support for healthcare, social services and education, even those who live under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. This also allows those countries which host 4th and 5th generation Palestinians to treat them as second-class. For example in Lebanon Palestinians cannot own businesses and are banned from most decent-paying professions, including medicine and law.

UNRWA has also allowed Hamas to govern the Gaza Strip with minimal civilian responsibilities. By not having to grapple with so many Gazans’ basic needs, Hamas has been much freer to redirect resources to tunnel construction and rocket manufacture, and all other aspects of its military mechanism.

UNRWA is not without its accountability problems either. Recent reports suggest that UNRWA’s registered refugees in 12 refugee camps and about 150 informal Palestinian communities in Lebanon is almost 300,000 higher than the consensus carried out by the government’s Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee in the first census of Palestinians.

UNRWA is necessary for stability

At the same time, UNRWA may be necessary to maintain stability on the ground. Peter Lerner, the IDF’s former Spokesperson, has been a strong advocate of this position. In a Ha’aretz article, Lerner argues that UNRWA is not solely about providing support to refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. In the West Bank and Gaza, according to UNRWA there are 2,158,277 registered refugees in the West Bank and Gaza. The organisation supports and administers 363 schools serving 311,071 pupils, 65 health facilities with over 5.2 million patient visits last year, 134,404 recipients of a social safety net. Many of these Palestinians are the poorest in Palestinian society, where extremism is often more prominent. Weakening this population may lead to more extremism and violence, and close the spaces and political capital necessary for peace.

What impact would a cut in US funding to UNRWA be?

The US provides three channels of financial support to the Palestinians. The first is $363m through USAID, the conduit by which the State Department provides aid to countries across the world, which totalled 39 per cent of all foreign aid to the PA in 2016; the second is the economic support for law and order in the PA a total of $36m (for security forces), which totalled 9.2 per cent of the PA budget in 2016; and the third is through UNRWA $368m, which totalled 29 per cent of total UNRWA pledges in 2016 (the next highest are EU with $160m and Saudi with $150m – the UK are fifth largest with $73m) .

The idea of cutting Palestinian funding is not new. US Congress is considering legislation that would significantly cut funding to the Palestinians through the USAID channel if Palestinians continue to pay convicted terrorist salaries and benefits to their families. (The PA pays approximately $300 million [or 20 per cent of its annual foreign aid] every year to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails, which continues after they are released, as well as to the families of dead terrorists and other Palestinians who died fighting against Israel.)

Netanyahu’s proposal to gradually redirect UNRWA funding to the UNHRC is designed to achieve three goals: to prevent funds from perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem instead of solving it; to ensure that the fund ultimately ends up being used for their intended humanitarian purpose; and to avert a humanitarian crisis at Israel’s doorstep. From a practical position this idea significantly reduces the number of Palestinian refugees eligible for UN assistance and possible force host countries to start looking at better ways of implementing Palestinians into their workforce.

However, from an ideological perspective it is unclear if this idea will reduce or remove the Palestinian peoples’ desire to return to their home country. As Lara Friedman wrote in 2012, “Palestinians who consider themselves refugees don’t do so simply because UNRWA, or anyone else, gives them permission to do so. They do so because this is their personal experience and their personal narrative. Forcing the UN to re-define millions of them to no longer officially qualify as refugees won’t change that self-definition, and it won’t make the issue easier to solve in the future.”

As long as there is a need for UNRWA, and the body continues to be reluctant at calls for reform, it is unlikely that this debate will be resolved. Yet if the Trump administration does decide to pull its funding to the Palestinians, it would be wise to come up with a plan B as to who would fill the financial vacuum, so as to avoid another potential crisis.

Samuel Nurding is Research Analyst at BICOM.