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UNRWA in Gaza Has Been Replaced; It’s Time to Shutter the Agency
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.
The UN Relief and Works Agency — or UNRWA — in Gaza has been replaced by over a dozen other aid organizations. UNRWA’s decades-long monopoly on aid and services has finally been broken, presenting a rare opportunity for deradicalization and, eventually, peace.
What’s more, the international community now has a model for how to replace UNRWA everywhere it operates, not just in Gaza.
The UN Security Council approved President Donald Trump’s proposal to build a “Board of Peace” on November 17 that will oversee the deradicalization of Gaza and the dismantlement of Hamas’ terror state. But Trump’s vision will not succeed until UNRWA is shuttered.
UNRWA was created with a temporary mandate after Israel’s 1947-1948 War of Independence to provide aid and services to approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs displaced by the war.
Over the past 75 years, UNRWA’s mandate has ballooned. Not only does UNRWA continue to provide a myriad of services in the jurisdictions where Arab refugees from 1948 immigrated, but refugee status has been passed from generation to generation. As a result, what was a relatively small refugee population in 1948 (compared to other 20th century refugee populations) is today a large and growing 21st century refugee population with no end in sight. UNRWA counts 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and has an annual budget of over a billion and half dollars.
UNRWA schools teach the belief that Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants would all return to the modern state of Israel — an outcome that would immediately erase Israel’s Jewish majority.
The focus on “return,” coupled with the well-documented glorification of terror and incitement — including arithmetic problems involving numbers of Palestinian “martyrs,” antisemitic tropes, and naming schools and soccer fields after suicide bombers — has produced generations of indoctrinated and radicalized Palestinian children.
UNRWA staff participated in the horrors of October 7, praised the violence on social media, and Israeli hostages were held captive in UNRWA facilities for months during the war.
Once Israel exposed the extent of UNRWA’s involvement in terror, Israel’s Knesset passed legislation in October 2024 to end coordination with UNRWA and to rescind the special privileges and immunities that Israel granted the organization. Israel’s actions made it difficult for UNRWA — which had used the Jewish State as its base of operations for decades — to continue delivering its services.
UNRWA advocates warned that Israel’s new law would have catastrophic consequences. It didn’t.
Israel’s justified decision to cease cooperating with UNRWA demonstrated quickly that other organizations and state actors — without the proclivity towards terror — were willing and able to step in.
UNRWA candidly describes itself as a quasi-state actor. This is true. For decades, UNRWA in Gaza provided services — like trash collection, education, and health clinics — that should be the responsibility of the state. In Gaza, this meant that Hamas outsourced its governmental obligations to UNRWA — with the international community picking up the bill — financially freeing Hamas terrorists to hoard weapons and build a terror fortress underneath Gaza.
Before October 7, UNRWA was the second biggest employer in Gaza and provided basic services like sanitation, health, and education to over a million people. After Hamas launched the war, UNRWA — swiftly announcing that it was not the terror organization’s responsibility to care for distressed Gazan civilians — went into high gear, taking over additional aid distribution functions.
In January 2025, when Trump negotiated the first ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, the UN established a new initiative with a dedicated online tracker to monitor aid entering Gaza. The tracker reports that UNRWA has not brought any aid into Gaza since January.
According to an Israeli official familiar with aid delivery in Gaza, the basic services performed by UNRWA before and during the first year of the war are now performed by other actors in the enclave. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is managing most of the waste management in the enclave. Fuel distribution is managed by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). The World Central Kitchen has been effective at delivering food alongside the World Food Program (WFP), which is also handling the broader logistics function for aid delivery in Gaza — a function WFP performs worldwide. UNICEF has taken a larger role in children-related humanitarian responses, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is providing medical aid to field clinics and hospitals.
This is how the rest of the world manages humanitarian crises caused by wars and natural disasters, and the correct way to manage the crisis in Gaza: with organizations that have a temporary mandate to deliver aid. Once the crisis has passed, those services should once again be the responsibility of the state.
Funding UNRWA — a self-described quasi-state — for over three quarters of a century to run services that should be the responsibility of a state government has been a calamity for Gaza and the region.
US taxpayers have historically been UNRWA’s largest donor, and have contributed over seven billion dollars to the UN agency since its creation. Congress has voiced consistent but limited support for ending UNRWA funding, and both Presidents Trump and Biden previously cut taxpayer dollars to the UN agency.
UNRWA supporters — including UNRWA’s US organization that lobbies Washington for support and funding — railed against attempts to cut funding, arguing that “UNRWA is irreplaceable,” a slogan often employed by UNRWA staff and advocates.
The reality is that UNRWA in Gaza has already been replaced.
Sadly, UNRWA’s multi-generation radicalization campaign in Gaza is not unique. The same brainwashing is happening wherever UNRWA operates, breeding terrorists and terror sympathizers across the region.
The UN and the international community can use the Gaza model to replace UNRWA’s corrosive monopoly on aid to Palestinians across the region.
The Trump administration now has an opportunity to wield its influence with other major UNRWA donors — namely the EU, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Canada, and Japan — to redirect their UNRWA funding to relief organizations that can deliver the much-needed aid and services without the radicalizing agenda. This critical reform should be implemented if the world truly wants to bring about peace.
Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow her on X @EKrivine.
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High-Stakes US Special Forces Mission Rescues Airman From Iran After F-15 Crash
FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft takes off for a mission supporting Operation Epic Fury during the Iran war at an undisclosed location, March 9, 2026. U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
US forces staged the audacious rescue of an airman behind enemy lines after Iran downed his fighter jet, officials said on Sunday, resolving a crisis for President Donald Trump as he weighs escalating the war, now in its sixth week.
The airman rescued by special operations forces, who Trump said was a colonel, was the weapons-systems officer on the downed F-15, a US official told Reuters.
“Over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History,” Trump said in a statement, adding that the airman was injured but “he will be just fine.”
The officer was the second of two crew members on the warplane that Iran said on Friday had been brought down by its air defenses. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said several aircraft were destroyed during the US rescue mission, Tasnim news agency reported.
Reuters reported on Friday that the first crew member had been retrieved, triggering a high-profile search by both Iran and the United States for the remaining airman.
Iranian officials had urged citizens to help find him, hoping to gain leverage against Washington in the war Trump and Israel launched on February 28.
Trump has threatened to escalate the conflict in the coming days with attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
Had Iran captured the airman, the ensuing hostage crisis could have shifted American public perception of a conflict that opinion polls show was already unpopular.
Trump said the airman was rescued “in the treacherous mountains of Iran” in what he said was the first time in military memory that two US pilots had been rescued, separately, deep in enemy territory.
The official told Reuters that as the weapons-systems officer was moved from near a mountain to a transport aircraft parked within Iran, US forces had to destroy at least one of the aircraft because it had malfunctioned.
U.S. AIRCRAFT HIT
The rescue effort, involving dozens of military aircraft, encountered fierce resistance from Iran.
Reuters reported on Friday that two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search were hit by Iranian fire but escaped from Iranian airspace.
Separately, a pilot ejected from an A-10 Warthog fighter aircraft after it was hit over Kuwait and crashed, the officials said, though the extent of crew injuries was unclear.
Still, Trump was triumphant.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” he said in his statement.
US air crews are trained in what to do if they go down behind enemy lines, measures known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, but few are fluent in Persian and face a challenge in staying undetected while seeking rescue.
The conflict has killed 13 US military service members, with more than 300 wounded, US Central Command says. No US troops have been taken prisoner by Iran.
While Trump has repeatedly sought to portray the Iranian military as being in tatters, they have repeatedly been able to hit US aircraft.
Reuters reported on US intelligence showing that Iran retains large amounts of missile and drone capability. Until just over a week ago, the US could only determine with certainty that it had destroyed about one-third of Iran’s missile arsenal.
The status of about another third was less clear, but bombings probably damaged, destroyed or buried those missiles in underground tunnels and bunkers, Reuters sources said.
The US and Israeli war on Iran has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands and hitting the global economy with soaring energy prices that are fueling fears of inflation.
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On Easter, Pope Leo Urges World Leaders to End Wars, Renounce Conquest
Pope Leo XIV waves from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica after delivering his “Urbi et Orbi” (To the city and the world) message, on Easter Sunday at the Vatican, April 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Pope Leo urged global leaders in his Easter message on Sunday to end the conflicts raging across the world and abandon any schemes for power, conquest or domination.
The pope, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of the Iran war, lamented in a special message to the thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square that people “are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent.”
“Let those who have weapons lay them down!” the first US pope exhorted. “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!”
Leo did not mention any specific conflicts in the message, known as the “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing. It was unusually brief and direct.
The pope said that the story of Easter, when the Bible says Jesus rose from the dead three days after not resisting his execution by crucifixion, shows that Christ was “entirely nonviolent.”
“On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars,” Leo urged.
Leo, who is known for choosing his words carefully, has been forcefully decrying the world’s violent conflicts in recent weeks and ramping up his criticism of the Iran war.
In a sermon for the Easter vigil on Saturday night, he urged people not to feel numbed by the scope of the conflicts raging across the world but to work for peace.
The pope made a rare direct appeal to US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, urging him to find an “off-ramp” to end the Iran war.
In his address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday to the Square below, decorated with thousands of brightly colored flowers for the holiday, Leo offered brief Easter greetings in ten languages, including Latin, Arabic and Chinese.
The pope also announced he would return to the Basilica on April 11 to host a prayer vigil for peace.
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Temple Mount Set for Limited Reopening to Jews and Muslims
Israeli National Security Minister and head of Jewish Power party Itamar Ben-Gvir gives a statement to members of the press, ahead of a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Jan. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Oren Ben Hakoon
i24 News – Israeli authorities are preparing to partially reopen the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to both Jewish and Muslim worshipers for the first time since the start of the war with Iran, under a tightly controlled and highly restricted security arrangement, i24NEWS has learned.
According to details obtained by i24NEWS, the Israeli police, backed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, are also expected to permit limited access for Jewish worshipers to the Western Wall as part of the same phased plan.
Under the framework, access to the Temple Mount and surrounding holy sites would be restricted to small groups of up to 150 people at a time. In the event of a missile alert, all visitors would be immediately evacuated in accordance with emergency protocols.
The decision follows a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing demonstrations in a limited format. Police argue that a consistent standard must apply across both civic gatherings and religious sites, with Ben-Gvir insisting that “there cannot be one rule for demonstrations and another for the Temple Mount.”
However, the reopening contradicts recommendations from the Home Front Command, which has advised keeping sensitive sites closed due to the ongoing risk of missile attacks.
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin has proposed transferring authority over such security-related decisions exclusively to defense officials, an initiative that could reshape the balance between the judiciary and security establishment regarding restrictions on public access.