Insightful thread on UNWRA, provides much context on why it needs to exist and why certain groups don’t want it to… written by Mouin Rabbani
THREAD: What is UNRWA (Part I)? The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East, commonly known by the acronym UNRWA, is the UN agency that currently provides humanitarian relief and services to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon,
and the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem). It has an interesting history.
UNRWA came into existence after the first attempt to implement a two-state settlement in 1948 ended in catastrophe. This attempt was initiated by the United Nations by way UN General Assembly Resolution 181(II) of 29 November 1947 recommending the partition of Palestine.
Beginning in December 1947, throughout the 1948-1949 Palestine War, and until the early 1950s, the vast majority of Palestinians living in those regions of the British Mandate of Palestine that became the state of Israel were ethnically cleansed
(i.e. expelled and prevented from returning), dispossessed (i.e. their lands, homes, assets, and possessions summarily seized), and transformed into stateless refugees.
As the scale of the political and humanitarian disaster produced by the UN’s partition of Palestine became painfully apparent, the world body in May 1948 appointed Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte as “United Nations Mediator in Palestine”. He was the UN’s first ever such envoy.
Bernadotte had previously distinguished himself when, as vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross during the final months of WWII, he negotiated the release of tens of thousands of inmates from Nazi concentration camps with Heinrich Himmler,
head of the SS and a main architect of the Holocaust. Himmler was motivated by the delusional idea that he could succeed Hitler, secure a separate peace with the US and Britain, and avoid Germany’s defeat at the hands of the Soviet Union. Needless to say, it came to nothing.
In Palestine Bernadotte initially got off to a good start, brokering two Arab-Israeli truce agreements in quick succession. He then, as required by his mandate, began proposing solutions to the conflict.
These included the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes and – as envisaged by the UN’s partition resolution – placing Jerusalem under international administration.
(Historical footnote: it was UNGA 181’s designation of Jerusalem as a “corpus separatum” to be placed under an international regime, as opposed to its incorporation into either the proposed Arab or Jewish states,
that forms the basis for the international community’s refusal to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the city or maintain diplomatic missions in any part of it. While the world additionally rejects Israel’s illegal 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem as “null and void”,
it also does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over West Jerusalem, which Israel conquered in 1948. Similarly, with the exception of Britain and Pakistan, states refused to recognize Jordanian sovereignty over East Jerusalem between before 1967.
Here too of course US policy stands in direct contradiction to that of the international community, including its closest allies, and remains in explicit violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. These include UNSC 478 of 1980,
which calls upon “states that have diplomatic missions in Jerusalem to withdraw such missions from the Holy City”. Note that the resolution states “Jerusalem”, not “East Jerusalem”.)
Returning to Bernadotte, his proposals for a resolution of the conflict cost him his life. On 17 September 1948, while driving through Jerusalem, he was assassinated by gunmen dispatched by Lehi (aka Stern Gang),
a Zionist militia so fanatical that it in 1941 proposed a formal alliance with Nazi Germany on the basis of what it stated were shared ideological principles.
The Lehi triumvirate that ordered Bernadotte’s assassination included Yitzhak Shamir (née Yezernitsky), a self-proclaimed “terrorist” who was also wanted as one by the British Mandate authorities.
Rather than being imprisoned or extradited, Shamir would later be elected speaker of Israel’s parliament, serve as its foreign minister for six years, and then a further seven as prime minister. Indeed, Israel never tried or convicted anyone for the murder.
That may also explain why it has never apologised to either Sweden or the UN for Bernadotte’s killing.
Guela Cohen, self-styled “woman of violence”, would decades later recount the bloodcurdling threats she directed at Bernadotte over Lehi’s clandestine radio station, pointedly informing Donald Macintyre of The Independent that she regretted nothing.
Her husband, Emanuel Hanegbi, was according to Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, also involved in ordering the assassination. Their son, Tzahi Hanegbi, made his name in the early 1980s when, as president of the student union at Hebrew University,
he organised violent assaults on Palestinian students. His violent racism proved sufficiently popular that he was subsequently elected head of the National Union of Israeli Students. Today Hanegbi fils is Prime Minister Binyamnin Netanyahu’s National Security Advisor.
Bernadotte was succeeded by his deputy, the US diplomat Ralph Bunche, who was charged with negotiating the 1949 Arab-Israeli Armistice Agreements. At the same time the UN General Assembly in December 1948 adopted Resolution 194 (III).
This resolution, which has been consistently re-confirmed by the General Assembly since 1948, is best known for setting forth the refugees’ right of return and right to compensation. It states in relevant part:
“Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return
and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
That same resolution also established the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP). Composed of France, Turkey, and the United States, the UNCCP’s role was to resolve the cataclysmic impasse created by the UN’s partition delusion.
In addition to finding a political resolution, its mandate included, in the paragraph after the one quoted above, the “repatriation, resettlement, and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation”.
This was to be achieved in close coordination with a recently-established agency known as United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees (UNRPR), which had been established a month earlier in response to the horrific humanitarian situation produced by the Nakba.
Over the next year Israel rejected multiple initiatives, whether formulated by the UNCCP, the US, or anyone else, that included the full or partial repatriation of Palestinian refugees.
The United States during the late 1940s and 1950s submitted a number of such proposals in the context of initiatives to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. In those days Washington often feared the conflict could serve as a conduit for Soviet influence in the Middle East.
Israel’s rejectionism in part explains why the Security Council declined to recommend Israel’s first two applications to join the UN to the General Assembly. Its third application, in May 1949, was approved by the latter,
but – unusually – the relevant resolution (UNGA 273) went beyond standard wording and specifically mentioned “implementation” of UNGA 181 (the partition resolution designating Jerusalem as a city under international administration)
and UNGA 194 (which codifies the refugees’ right of return). Many have on this basis argued that Israel’s UN membership was conditional on the fulfilment of these resolutions, which has of course never happened.
Because the UN and its member states were unwilling to compel Israel to implement the obligations it had accepted, the UNCCP – which continues to exist to this day with the same composition but has been starved of funds – in 1949 proposed
the establishment of a "United Nations agency designed to continue [the] relief activities [of UNRPR] and initiate job-creation projects". An additional factor was that relief agencies active in the region,
such as the Quakers who had distinguished themselves with extraordinary humanity in the Gaza Strip during the late 1940s, were indicating that their capacity to continue providing relief services was rapidly diminishing.
UNRWA was duly established in December 1949, and commenced operations on 1 May 1950. Israel, by this time a UN member state, along with the US and Europeans voted for UNRWA’s creation.
In fact the UNCCP recommendation to establish UNRWA was primarily inspired by the recommendations of Gordon R. Clapp, Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, who conducted a study known as the Economic Survey Mission at the request of UNCCP.
More on Clapp and his recommendations later. Several observations are in order about UNRWA:
First, like UNRPR it provided assistance to “Palestine” rather than “Palestinian” refugees. “Palestine refugees” are defined by UNRWA as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948,
and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Among those receiving assistance were Israeli citizens, non-Palestinian Arabs, and others displaced by the Palestine War, provided they met the above criteria.
In 1967 UNRWA began providing services to the new influx of Palestinian refugees into Jordan, although many had already been receiving assistance since 1950.
Second, UNRWA only operates in states and territories where it is authorized to do so by the relevant authorities. Initially these comprised the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip, Israel, Jordan (which at that time also ruled the West Bank), Lebanon, and Syria.
UNRWA operated within Israel until 1952, when the Israeli government informed the Agency that it was taking over its responsibilities. (A large proportion of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, who were expelled from their towns and villages but not from the new state,
met UNRWA’s criteria for assistance).
Third, UNRWA does not provide services to Palestinian refugees who do not reside within its area of operations. Palestinian refugees in Iraq, for example, who faced persecution in that country after the 2003 US occupation and were in many cases forced from their homes,
were assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) rather than UNRWA. Palestinian refugees forced out of Kuwait in 1991 similarly had no access to UNRWA services unless they were able to enter its area of operations.
The same principle holds true for Palestinian refugees in Egypt, the Gulf states, Europe, and elsewhere who require assistance.
Fourth, UNRWA neither owns nor administers any of the 58 recognized Palestinian refugee camps, nor the additional informal ones, such as the sprawling Yarmouk Camp in Damascus.
These were typically established on land leased by the relevant governments from private landowners or otherwise made available to accommodate the mass influx of refugees in 1948 and on a smaller scale in 1967.
UNRWA’s role, with certain exceptions, is limited to the provision of services to Palestine refugees registered with the Agency within its areas of operations, whether they live within these camps or outside them.
Fifth, UNRWA has a humanitarian and development rather than political mandate. Although bound by UN resolutions it has no formal responsibility for either formulating, promoting, or implementing a resolution of the Palestinian refugee question.
It’s also never done so. That remains within the purview of UNCCP and other UN organs like the Security Council and General Assembly.
Sixth, UNRWA unlike other UN agencies reports directly to the General Assembly, which created it. Although now in existence for more than seven decades, it formally remains a temporary agency,
in the sense that it will cease to exist once a durable solution to the Palestinian refugee question is achieved. This also means that its mandate is subject to renewal by the General Assembly every three years.
Its continued existence therefore reflects the collective will, repeatedly expressed, of the international community and not a decision by the UN. Additionally, it is funded by voluntary contributions paid directly to the Agency,
as opposed to being funded from the UN general budget which consists of mandatory annual contributions by member states and which the UN is free to allocate as it sees fit.
UNRWA is also the world body’s largest agency, with 30,000 employees. This number was recently reduced to 29,989. I only subtracted 11 because according to Gréta Gunnarsdóttir, Director of the UNRWA Representative Office New York,
UNRWA did not fire one of the twelve Palestinians recently accused by Israel of participating in the 7 October Hamas attacks in southern Israel. Reason: he isn’t an UNRWA employee. Kind of helps one understand why Israeli intelligence performed so disastrously on 7 October...
UNRWA is the only UN agency specifically dedicated to serving only one group of refugees. There are several reasons why the UN did not make Palestinian refugees, like those elsewhere in the world, the responsibility of UNHCR.
Most obviously, the UN bears a special responsibility towards Palestinian refugees.
It played a direct role in their dispossession by partitioning their country and handing most of it over to a supremacist movement committed to transforming its allotted entity into an exclusivist state. No partition, no Nakba.
Or at least not one for which the UN bears moral, political, and arguably legal responsibility for the entirely predictable consequences.
This sets Palestinian refugees apart from, for example, South Asian and Chinese refugees during the same period, or Sahrawi, Afghan, or Syrian refugees more recently. None lost their homes, homeland, and livelihoods because the world body decided to partition their homeland.
Additionally, UNHCR did not exist when UNRWA was established, but the Palestinian humanitarian emergency did. UNHCR was created about a week later, and during its early years was primarily concerned with assisting millions of refugees in Europe produced by the Second World War.
Anne Irfan of University College London, who has written a highly-regarded book on the Palestinian refugee question, in this respect notes:
“When UNHCR was created it had a restricted mandate … that enabled its work to only be applied to European refugees. So this idea of creating specific UN agencies for particular groups of refugees was very much the norm at the time …
So there was UNRWA, there was UNHCR, and then in the 1950s we also had UNKRA, which was created for Korean refugees so that was the norm at the time. It wasn’t until 1967 that UNHCR’s mandate was universalized and the Eurocentrism was dropped.”
Even after UNHCR became a genuinely global agency UNRWA was not merged into it. Institutional inertia probably played a role, but the primary reason remains the political will of the international community to sustain it
until a durable solution to the Palestinian refugee question is achieved. As expressed on 4 February of this year by Josep Borrell, Vice-President of the European Commission and the EU’s foreign policy chief (not to be confused with Frau Genocide):
“UNRWA’s continued existence, since it was established in 1949, is the direct consequence of the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has never been resolved”.
Given the tsunami of Israeli and pro-Israeli agitprop on UNRWA and UNHCR Irfan makes another important distinction:
“UNRWA has a much more restricted mandate to this day than UNHCR … UNRWA is mandated solely to provide services to Palestine refugees in the fields where it works. UNHCR by contrast is also mandated to pursue durable solutions …
So Palestine refugees are actually in some ways almost at a disadvantage because the agency that serves them has a much more limited mandate than the agency that serves all other refugee groups.”
UNRWA’s critics nevertheless habitually claim that a merger with UNHCR would be meaningful because UNRWA, unlike UNHCR, alone classifies the descendants of refugees as refugees.
While this makes for effective agitprop, in the world of verifiable fact UNHCR applies exactly the same criteria. In the words of the UN itself:
Under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found. Both UNRWA and UNHCR recognize descendants as refugees on this basis,
a practice that has been widely accepted by the international community, including both donors and refugee hosting countries. Palestine refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia,
where there are multiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises."
Refugees and their descendants are classified as refugees until they are no longer refugees. Until, in other words, the underlying conditions that made them refugees and sustain their dispossession are resolved.
In this case it is thus up to Israel, not UNRWA, to change their status.
But the idea that UNRWA artificially perpetuates Palestinian refugee status is the hoax that won’t go away. It is, more than anything else, based on a profoundly racist idea.
Bought to you by the same people who used to and in many cases continue to insist that Palestinians don’t exist, the idea seems to be that there is this group of ignorant savages, who neither know they are refugees, nor have a clue they have been dispossessed,
nor have an inkling that they are entitled to any rights. Rather, it is only because such ideas are being implanted into their unthinking heads by UNRWA that they call themselves refugees and insist they have rights vis-à-vis Israel. No UNRWA, no Palestine refugee question.