UNRWA the terrorists friend.

The U.N.: Clueless or Complicit in Gaza?

Claudia Rosett

If UNRWA officials did know that Hamas was building terror tunnels, but raised no public alarm — which they certainly did not — then that should be grounds for a major inquiry into UNRWA complicity with terrorists.

There’s also the question of whether UNRWA employs or directly supports members of Hamas. If so, that should block the agency from receiving money from the U.S., which is its longtime top donor — contributing $294 million in 2013. Officially, these days, UNRWA eschews hiring members of Hamas. But there may be some precious distinctions at work here.

Since 2005, UNRWA and the U.S. have had a formal partnership, via a “Framework for Cooperation,” in which UNRWA promises to comply with various requirements of “neutrality.” The aim is to avoid triggering a provision of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which forbids funding to UNRWA unless UNRWA takes “all possible measures” to ensure that no U.S. assistance goes to any refugee who has received “military training” as a member of the Palestine Liberation Army, or any other “guerrilla-type organization,” or who has “engaged in any act of terrorism.”

There are enough loopholes here to drive a Hamas cement truck through. In the most recent version of the U.S.-UNRWA partnership, signed last November, UNRWA promised to ensure “neutrality” of its facilities and staff, by conducting regular inspections and checking its staff against specific U.N. sanctions lists. But those U.N. sanctions lists are not that relevant to Gaza: They cover al-Qaeda and the Taliban, not Hamas (there is no U.N. sanctions list for Hamas).

UNRWA also promises to provide lists of its staff members, upon request, to U.N. member states and the Palestinian Authority. In other words, this means it is up to the U.S. government to confirm that there are no Hamas cooperators among UNRWA’s 12,000 employees. (In UNRWA-staff-union elections in Gaza in 2012, a Hamas-affiliated slate won 25 of 27 seats.)

On its website, UNRWA advertises “neutrality” as “a core obligation and value of UN staff.” What does that mean to UNRWA’s Swiss commissioner-general, Pierre Krahenbuhl? In a briefing to the U.N. Security Council on July 31 — just after UNRWA had discovered a third cache of rockets in one of its “vacant” Gaza schools — Krahenbuhl took it upon himself to accuse Israel of war crimes for a strike on an UNRWA school, in which people died. But when Hamas summarily executed at least 18 Palestinians in Gaza last month, accusing them of collaborating with Israel, when Hamas gunmen paraded at least half a dozen of these suspects, hooded and handcuffed, then shot them to death before a cheering crowd in a Gaza public square, Krahenbuhl raised no public protest. Should the U.S. accept such skewed standards as “neutrality”?

These are just a sampling of the questions surrounding UNRWA’s role in the Israel–Gaza conflict.

UNRWA is now seeking $295.4 million in immediate emergency funding for its work in the Gaza Strip, with more fundraising to follow. Before the U.S. contributes anything more to this scene, how about some answers to what’s really going on with this welfare-for-terrorism agency?