This will be the first week in Israel without the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), marking the possible beginning of a new chapter in the Middle East. One of the long-standing falsehoods is that UNRWA deals with Palestinian refugees. It doesn’t. It deals with their descendants — a core issue in the conflict.
In December 1948, at the height of Israel’s War of Independence, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194, which included Article 11: “Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” All Arab states voted against it, as it implicitly recognized Israel’s existence.
Today, ironically, Palestinians champion the resolution. This isn’t about concern for refugees. As early as February 1949, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Muhammad Salah al-Din stated, “The demand for the return of the refugees is a demand to destroy Israel.” That has never changed. The so-called right of return has always been a call for Israel’s destruction.
In December 1949, the UN established UNRWA — not because a separate agency was needed. The UN already had the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which later became the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). These bodies were created to resolve refugee issues.
But Arab states demanded and received a separate, political body to perpetuate the problem. Other UN resolutions aimed at resettling refugees were systematically blocked by Arab states — except Jordan, which granted them citizenship. The goal was never to solve the refugee issue but to maintain it as a tool in the struggle against Israel.
Over the decades, peace initiatives have failed — not because of borders or settlements, but because Palestinians sought not one state but two. They wanted millions of Palestinians not to live in a Palestinian state but within Israel itself.
In 2002, senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Fatah official Farouk Qaddumi, a potential successor to Yasser Arafat, summarized the Palestinian position in response to Saudi Arabia’s peace proposal.
“The right of return is more important than a state.” This doomed the initiative, turning it into the "Arab Peace Initiative," which enshrined refugee descendants as a permanent obstacle to peace.
The internationally accepted definition of a refugee excludes those who gain citizenship in another country. UNRWA’s definition is different. Millions of Palestinian descendants have been naturalized, mainly in Jordan, where 2.3 million Palestinians hold citizenship — yet UNRWA still classifies them as refugees.
The deception continues. According to UNRWA, Lebanon hosts 493,207 refugees. That’s false. A 2010 study by the American University of Beirut found that the actual number was around 270,000 — and it has only declined since.
Get the Ynetnews app on your smartphone: Google Play: https://bit.ly/4eJ37pE | Apple App Store: https://bit.ly/3ZL7iNv
The last official census in 2017 counted 174,422, nearly all refugee descendants. At the time, 69% of young Palestinians in Lebanon wanted to emigrate. Many already have. In reality, Lebanon likely holds no more than a quarter of those still listed by UNRWA. Yet the world keeps paying.
A harmful education system
Most of UNRWA’s budget in recent years has gone to education. Sounds good? The opposite is true. Studies reveal that textbooks used by hundreds of thousands of refugee descendants promote the "right of return," incite hatred and glorify violence.
UNRWA never launched a single rehabilitation project because its goal was never prosperity or resettlement — it was Israel’s destruction through demographic warfare.
We now know that UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 massacre, that Hamas operatives were on its payroll and that its facilities were used to store weapons and fire rockets at Israel. According to freed hostage Emily Damari, she was held captive in a UNRWA building.
It’s late, but as of Saturday, Israel’s law banning UNRWA activities in the country took effect. The bill passed with an unprecedented majority of 92 Knesset members. That alone is worth acknowledging.
Yet for decades, Israel officially cooperated with UNRWA to maintain an illusion of quiet and shift responsibility for the refugee descendants onto others — a historic mistake, much like funding Hamas.

Now, with the law in force, Israel must push for an international effort to dismantle UNRWA and transfer its responsibilities to the UNHCR. Within a year or two, there would be no Palestinian refugees — because that’s the global standard for all refugees.
Since its inception, UNRWA has received an estimated $30 billion in funding — more than enough to build housing, industrial zones and provide employment. Closing UNRWA won’t solve the Palestinian issue. But it’s a crucial first step.