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UNRWA Forces Refugee Status on Palestinians in Perpetuity — Even Against Their Wishes
Security personnel work at the UNRWA headquarters, in Jerusalem, May 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
A Palestinian walks into a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) office and asks to be removed from its refugee registry. UNRWA says no.
It sounds like the start of a bad joke. But the joke has been going on for nearly a century, and it has been at the expense of Palestinians, Israelis, and international donors.
When Israel declared independence in 1948, neighboring Arab countries failed to smother the nascent Jewish state in the cradle. A refugee crisis emerged, with around 750,000 Arabs fleeing their homes in Mandatory Palestine. The United Nations created UNRWA to address the refugee issue. But instead of resolving the problem, UNRWA has prolonged it.
UNRWA has developed a massive infrastructure over the years. By expanding the definition of refugees under its care to automatically include the patrilineal descendants of refugees — unlike how the United Nations treats all other refugees — UNRWA has ballooned its registry to nearly 6 million, and its budget has swelled to more than $1 billion annually.
Mo Ghaoui is a naturalized US citizen and an UNRWA-recognized refugee. His citizenship would preclude him from refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention — but not so with UNRWA. Ghaoui entered an UNRWA office in Lebanon to pose the question: What if someone wanted to be removed from UNRWA’s list?
“Why?” the employee asked him, in Ghaoui’s account. “There’s nothing to lose. No one does it. No one. We don’t have this procedure.” The UNRWA staffer told Ghaoui that he cannot move past his victimhood identity in the agency’s books.
The enforced permanence of the Palestinian refugee issue is absurd. Thousands of Jews were displaced in the same war that led to UNRWA’s creation, but they neither received their own UN agency nor are they still counted as refugees. The same goes for the 850,000 Jews who were forced from Arab lands in the decades following Israel’s War of Independence.
Moreover, UNRWA was founded just years after the end of World War II, which saw more than 50 million people uprooted from their homes in Europe, including my grandparents. If UNRWA standards were applied universally, I would be a refugee thanks to my father’s birth in a displaced persons camp.
That would be preposterous — just like handing refugee status eternally to the descendants of those displaced in 1948.
For example, real estate developer Mohamed Anwar Hadid, whose father left Nazareth in 1948, is reported to be an UNRWA-recognized refugee even though he now lives in California. This would make his American-born, millionaire model daughters, Bella and Gigi, refugees as well.
The same applies for Zahwa Arafat, the daughter of Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president who reportedly stole billions of dollars from his own people, allowing Zahwa to live in Paris and own prime real estate in London.
But UNRWA isn’t just a slap in the face to common sense — its support for terrorism is an obstacle to peace as well.
Of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, Israeli security documents revealed that 440 are active in Hamas’s military operations and 2,000 are registered Hamas operatives. At least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the October 7 massacre, including at least one who stole the body of a dead Israeli and brought it back to Gaza as a bargaining chip.
In February 2024, Israel discovered a large Hamas data center underneath UNRWA headquarters that ran cables through the UN facility above. Hamas stored weapons in other UNRWA facilities. And a senior Hamas leader eliminated in an Israeli strike in September 2024 was the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon.
IMPACT-se, an international research organization that monitors and analyzes education around the world, has catalogued many cases of UNRWA radicalizing future generations of Palestinians. For example, a textbook used in UNRWA schools praises jihadists, including the perpetrators of October 7, instructing students to count using martyrs as a unit of measurement and teaching pupils the physics behind attacking Israeli soldiers.
Moreover, several UNRWA staffers lauded the Hamas Oct. 7 atrocities on social media.
Meanwhile, UNRWA has campaigned alongside Hamas against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US-funded initiative to provide aid directly to Palestinians, which prevents Hamas from siphoning the supplies. Rather than engage with GHF, UNRWA has campaigned to shutter this threat to Hamas.
And as Mo Ghaoui’s story demonstrated, UNRWA is in the business of protracting the refugee crisis, not solving it. While the UN Refugee Agency, which oversees all non-Palestinian refugees, offers a variety of solutions to help refugees improve their lives, including resettlement in a third country, UNRWA indulges the Palestinians’ desire to move to Israel en masse and overwhelm the only Jewish-majority country in the world.
The inflated rosters and expanding budgets have taken their toll on UNRWA. Several donor countries pulled funds over UNRWA’s collaboration with Hamas. The agency currently faces a $200 million deficit and is considering cutting services.
UNRWA’s critical services should be transferred to neutral bodies, with the ultimate goal of weaning Palestinians off UNRWA’s unrealistic and ahistorical promises.
Reform is not enough — UNRWA is an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace and must be dismantled.
David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow David on X @DavidSamuelMay.
The post UNRWA Forces Refugee Status on Palestinians in Perpetuity — Even Against Their Wishes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Pounds Gaza City Suburbs, Vows to Press on with Offensive
Smoke rises following an Israeli strike, in Gaza City, August 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Israeli planes and tanks pounded the eastern and northern outskirts of Gaza City overnight Saturday to Sunday, destroying buildings and homes, residents said, as Israeli leaders vowed to press on with a planned offensive on the city.
Witnesses reported the sound of explosions non-stop overnight in the areas of Zeitoun and Shejaia, while tanks shelled houses and roads in the nearby Sabra neighborhood and several buildings were blown up in the northern town of Jabalia.
Fire lit the skies from the direction of the explosions, causing panic, prompting some families to stream out of the city. Others said they would prefer to die and not leave.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that its forces have returned to combat in the Jabalia area in recent days, to dismantle militant tunnels and strengthen control of the area.
It added that the operation there “enables the expansion of combat into additional areas and prevents Hamas terrorists from returning to operate in these areas.”
Israel approved a plan this month to seize control of Gaza City, describing it as the last bastion of Hamas. It is not expected to begin for a few weeks, leaving room for mediators Egypt and Qatar to try and resume ceasefire talks.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz on Sunday vowed to press on with the offensive on the city where famine has been declared, which has raised alarm abroad and objections at home. Katz has said that Gaza City will be razed unless Hamas agrees to end the war on Israel’s terms and release all hostages.
Hamas said in a statement on Sunday that Israel’s plan to take over Gaza City showed it wasn’t serious about a ceasefire.
It said a ceasefire agreement was “the only way to return the hostages,” holding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for their lives.
The proposal on the table calls for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 10 living hostages held in Gaza and of 18 bodies. In turn, Israel would release about 200 long-serving Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Once a temporary ceasefire begins, the proposal is for Hamas and Israel to begin negotiations on a permanent ceasefire that would include the return of the remaining hostages.
On Thursday, Netanyahu said that Israel would immediately resume negotiations for the release of all 50 hostages – of whom Israel believes around 20 are still living – and an end to the nearly two-year-old war but on terms acceptable to Israel.
‘HUNGRY AND AFRAID’
Around half of the enclave’s two million people currently live in Gaza City. A few thousand have already left, carrying their belongings on vehicles and rickshaws.
“I stopped counting the times I had to take my wife and three daughters and leave my home in Gaza City,” said Mohammad, 40, via a chat app. “No place is safe, but I can’t take the risk. If they suddenly begin the invasion, they will use heavy fire.”
Others said they will not leave, no matter what.
“We are not leaving, let them bomb us at home,” said Aya, 31, who has a family of eight, adding that they couldn’t afford to buy a tent or pay for the transportation, even if they did try to leave. “We are hungry, afraid and don’t have money.”
A global hunger monitor said on Friday that Gaza City and surrounding areas are officially suffering from famine that will likely spread. Israel has rejected the assessment and says it ignores steps it has taken since late July to increase aid.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led gunmen burst into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and taking 251 hostages.
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Iran Signals Willingness to Scale Back Uranium Enrichment to Ease Tensions
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iran may be prepared to significantly reduce its uranium enrichment levels in a bid to stave off renewed UN sanctions and limit the risk of further strikes by Israel and the United States, according to a report published Sunday in The Telegraph.
Citing Iranian sources, the paper said Tehran is considering lowering enrichment from 60% to 20%.
The move is reportedly being championed by Ali Larijani, the newly appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who is holding talks with regime leaders.
“Larijani is trying to convince the system to reduce the level of enrichment in order to avoid further war,” a senior Iranian official told the paper.
The proposal, however, faces stiff resistance from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has long opposed concessions on the nuclear program. Still, the report suggests Iran’s leadership may be open to greater flexibility, including the possibility of reviving engagement with Western powers.
Last month, i24NEWS reported exclusively that a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to travel to Iran. The team of technical experts would seek to resume monitoring of nuclear sites, inspections that have been heavily restricted in recent years.
The development comes amid mounting regional tensions and could represent a critical turning point in the long-running nuclear standoff.
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Major Brush Fire Erupts Near Jerusalem, Evacuations Underway
A view of the new Tel Aviv-Jerusalem fast train seen over the HaArazim Valley (“Valley of Cedars”) just outside of Jerusalem, Sept. 25, 2018. Photo: Yossi Zamir/Flash90.
i24 News – A large brush fire broke out Sunday in the Cedars Valley area, near Route 1 and the Motza interchange, prompting an emergency response from Jerusalem district fire services. Several water-bombing planes were dispatched, and authorities have declared a “fire emergency.”
As a precaution, residents of Mevaseret Zion are being evacuated. Access to the town from Route 1 has already been blocked, and officials are weighing a full closure of the major highway.
Fire crews from the Ha’uma station are on site working to contain the flames, while motorists in the area are urged to heed traffic updates and follow instructions from emergency services.
Eight firefighting aircraft are currently operating above the blaze in support of ground teams. The fire comes amid one of the hottest, driest summers on record, with conditions fueling a series of destructive wildfires across the country.
Officials warn the situation remains critical, as the blaze threatens a vital transportation corridor leading into Jerusalem.