Ever since Hamas took power over the Gaza Strip in 2007, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the controversial UN aid agency responsible for the welfare of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants – has been a facilitator for Hamas’s military buildup.
By diverting international aid to provide for the civilian needs of Gaza‘s population per Hamas’s guidance, UNRWA enabled the Islamist terror group to divert the majority of its funds to military buildup in the shape of digging tunnels, manufacturing rockets, acquiring drones and sophisticated missiles, and paying and training a large force of jihadi terrorists.
Declassified Israeli intelligence revealed that more than 1,200 UNRWA employees were also active members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Even more outrageous is evidence that 12 agency employees participated in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, which left almost 1,300 people dead, most of them civilians.
Abuse of facilities
Throughout the two-year war, Hamas fighters systematically used the agency’s facilities and infrastructure to support and sustain its military operations against Israel.
Hamas’s underground command posts were exposed directly underneath UNRWA facilities – offices, schools, medical centers, and warehouses – in Gaza City, including a supply of electricity and IT services from the aid agency’s head office to an underground Hamas bunker.
UNRWA schools all across the Gaza Strip were systematically used by Hamas as military staging grounds, weapons production facilities, intelligence collection sites, and hideouts for the terrorist group’s fighters.
All of the aforementioned examples indicate that UNRWA abused its protected status and privileges as a UN agency in order to support Hamas military operations against Israel.
Humanitarian aid
Regarding the distribution of humanitarian aid into Gaza, systemic and widespread corruption of UNRWA staff has been exposed.
They provided Hamas fighters with international humanitarian aid instead of distributing it to the Gazan civilians suffering from the consequences of the war that Hamas deliberately started.
International aid delivered to UNRWA was also sold to vendors in Gaza, who in turn sold the donated humanitarian aid to helpless Palestinian civilians at exorbitant prices.
Long before the October 7 attack against Israel, the agency’s schools have been poisoning the minds of generations of Palestinian youth, systematically glorifying death and martyrdom, indoctrinating them to pursue a genocidal jihad against the Jews, while aspiring to annihilate the State of Israel.
This is evident from UNRWA textbooks, ceremonies, plays, and performances where Gaza children were dressed up as Hamas terrorists abducting and killing Israeli civilians.
Numerous legacy donor states decided to withhold their funding to UNRWA in response to various troubling reports about its undeniable and illegitimate links with Hamas.
Crisis mode
A few weeks ago, recently passed Israeli legislation defining UNRWA as an outlawed entity came into effect. This legislation, long overdue, prohibits any interaction between Israeli officials and agency personnel.
In reality, the Israeli legislation strips UNRWA of most of its legacy functions, since the supply of goods and medicine into the Gaza Strip is controlled by Israel.
The organization that used to run almost every facet of civilian life in Gaza has now been forced to retreat to its last stronghold over the Palestinians – education.
This is why UNRWA has launched a massive lobbying campaign in Washington, and also why its spokespeople and public relations agents are in full crisis mode, desperately trying to convince viewers, politicians, and their supporters that Gazan children need to return to UNRWA schools.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The last place any child should be is in the very hands of the system that produced several generations of eager jihadi foot soldiers – young Arab men who glorify death and yearn for martyrdom as part of a holy war against the Jews.
Irredeemably corrupt
UNRWA has proven itself to be irredeemably corrupt, infiltrated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and part of the reason Hamas was able to recruit tens of thousands of jihad-indoctrinated youth and to sustain itself during two years of fighting.
For days and weeks, Israeli officials failed to present a coherent strategy regarding the removal of the aid agency from Gaza after the war, a void that worried many.
Thankfully, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently provided some much-needed clarity and leadership when he declared that since UNRWA is a subsidiary of Hamas, it cannot have any stake or involvement in the future of the Gaza Strip.
If we desire a deradicalized Gaza, the first organization that has to be removed from power is Hamas. The close second is UNRWA. Neither must have any role in shaping Gaza’s present or future.
Now is the time to invest in a better future for Gaza and the region – and the time to remove UNRWA.
Future generations of Arabs and Jews will thank us.■
Jonathan Conricus is a retired IDF lieutenant colonel and senior fellow at the DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). He served as a combat commander in Lebanon and Gaza and was the IDF’s international spokesman. He is politically unaffiliated.