President Biden recently ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “defer” the removal of (and give work permits to) Palestinian illegal aliens because of the fighting in Gaza; the number of beneficiaries is estimated to be 6,000. The total number of Palestinians resettled here through normal refugee resettlement channels amounts to a little over 2,000 from 2001 through February 2024. Although there have been some calls to resettle more refugees from Gaza, there are no current plans to do that, and much opposition.
Despite these relatively small numbers, the issue of Palestinian refugees is important, not just in the obvious foreign policy sense, but also to U.S. migration and refugee policy. The United Nations has two refugee agencies: the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for all other refugees in the world. The United States is the largest funder of UNRWA, and the U.S. official in charge of the State Department’s refugee efforts — both assistance abroad and resettlement here — is also the head of the UNRWA’s advisory commission.
This report offers an overview of UNRWA’s history, financing, staff, and institutional culture, as well as its various scandals, including its ties to Hamas.
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Introduction
According to intelligence reports shared at the end of January, at least 12 employees of UNRWA — including primary or secondary school teachers and social workers — were involved in Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack and around 10 percent of its Gaza staff (some 12,000 employees) were found to have strong ties with Islamist groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Moreover, as much as 50 percent of UNRWA employees in Gaza have at least one close relative with ties to terrorist groups according to these reports. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken deemed these reports to be “highly, highly credible”.
These accusations raise, once again, serious concerns about UNRWA’s mandate, leadership, staff (mostly local), and financing.
In response to these accusations, UNRWA terminated the contracts of some of these staff members and launched an investigation. This is, according to the State Department’s spokesperson, Matthew Miller, indicative of the fact that “UNRWA found that the evidence that was presented to them was credible enough.”
The United States (along with other donor countries) decided to pause “additional” unobligated funding to UNRWA pending a UN investigation in this matter. But this pause is more about throwing dust in one’s eyes than anything else. Even the State Department spokesperson Miller “downplayed” its significance by explaining it had already provided most of the money allocated by Congress toward that funding this fiscal year: Since the beginning of FY 2024 (October 1, 2023), the U.S. government gave UNRWA $121 million of the $121.3 million allocated funding; which means that only $300,000 was suspended.
Regardless of this pause, the overall funding available this fiscal year to UNRWA is still unknown since the U.S. government is currently operating under a continuing resolution (CR). Further funding to UNRWA will depend on the amount to be determined in a supplemental budget request and a CR, or a full appropriations bill.
A national security supplemental bill that was discussed (but did not pass) included $10 billion in humanitarian assistance requested by President Biden to cover all those impacted by the wars, including in Ukraine and Gaza. Of that $10 billion, $1.4 billion would go to Gaza. As funding to UNRWA remains paused, money should be redirected to other partners to provide assistance in Gaza, like the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and other NGOs. Simultaneously, the U.S. government is working with donor countries to ensure that they can continue supporting UNRWA.
A new funding bill is being…
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