As we enter 2024, it is important to remind the world that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UN organisation responsible for Palestinian refugees, is effectively a branch of Hamas, the internationally proscribed terrorist organisation that was responsible for the horrific massacre of over 1,200 Israeli civilians, including babies, kids, women and the elderly on 7 October.

When UNRWA was established in 1950, the initial scope of its work was direct relief and works programmes to Palestine refugees, in order to prevent conditions of starvation and distress and to establish conditions for peace and stability. UNRWA’s mandate was soon expanded by the UN which instructed the agency to function neutrally in order to establish a reintegration fund to be utilised for the permanent re-establishment of refugees and their removal from relief.

Since its establishment, UNRWA has become one of the largest UN programs, with over 30,000 personnel operating in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. It remains the only UN agency whose area of operation is not global but regional, and which deals with a single group of people. It is also unique in that it directly provides government-like public services to its beneficiaries.

But UNRWA has not remained neutral. Since 2008, it has echoed Hamas views by continuously criticising the Israeli blockade of Gaza while at the same time working closely with this terrorist group and ignoring regular reports of theft by Hamas of humanitarian assistance items destined for the civilians of Gaza.

On its establishment, UNRWA had developed its own working definition of a Palestine refugee as a person whose regular place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.

In 1965, UNRWA changed the definition of a Palestinian refugee to include third-generation descendants and, in 1982, it extended it again, to include ALL descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, regardless of whether they had been granted citizenship elsewhere. Therefore, all children of refugees and their descendants are now also considered refugees.

The adoption of UNWRA’s new definitions is clearly artificial and misleading because it manufactures fictional refugees, now standing at almost 7 million, who vastly outnumber the actual number of real “refugees”. This practice is seriously undermining any possibility of resolving the refugee issue in future peace negotiations.

Contrast UNRWA with the other United Nations agency for refugees, UNHCR, established at about the same time to help all other refugees from all over the world. UNHCR describes its success by stating that since 1950, it has helped to resettle well over 50 million refugees!

This contrast is extraordinary and quite phenomenal as whilst UNHCR has resettled millions of refugees, during the same period, UNRWA hasn’t resettled even one. Furthermore, UNRWA has imposed refugee status on millions of children, born over the last 70 years and so whilst the UNHCR has been working towards resettling all its refugees, UNRWA is perpetuating its own existence by never resettling any refugees.

But as UNRWA attempts to deceive the world about its supposed neutrality, it is well understood and documented that Hamas, the organisation that controls all government ministries and institutions in Gaza, also controls UNRWA.

During the current war between Israel and Hamas, it has become clear that a significant number of UNRWA employees in Gaza are also members of Hamas, with an unknown number of these being Hamas fighters, supporters or active participants in its activities. The inevitable outcome of this fact is that this U.N. agency has unbreakable ties to Hamas, where UNRWA personnel and Hamas members are practically indistinguishable. In fact, it is reported that UNRWA is effectively a $1 billion branch of the Hamas organisation.

This is unsurprising as both UNRWA and Hamas share the same goals: the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. Both organisations maintain the belief that all Palestinian refugees must return to a homeland that they have never visited, owned or controlled, including areas which are now part of the State of Israel.

During the current war between Israel and Hamas, it has been confirmed that UNRWA schools and other facilities serve as access points to Hamas terror tunnels and as storage facilities for Hamas weapons. It has also been common in the past that rockets and explosives found in or near UNRWA schools were handed over to Hamas, thus actively helping the terrorist organisation to attack Israeli civilians.

Also, UNRWA ambulances have been repeatedly caught transporting terrorists that have been actively involved in attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians and only last week The IDF announced that it discovered hundreds of weapons in a West Bank Kindergarten run by UNRWA.

UNRWA’s education curriculum taught in schools is shaped by Hamas, which has regularly rejected any textbooks that fail to teach about armed resistance and that the Jews must be removed from the land of Israel.

It is clear therefore that UNRWA is certainly not a neutral organisation and its aims do not include the resettlement of refugees and resolution of the refugee problem. Instead it would rather preserve them as permanent refugees, serving its own goals and those of Hamas.

Since its establishment, UNRWA has been an institutional failure and despite its huge annual budget, approximately £1billion in 2021, it is never likely to achieve its objectives. In reality, it has been the cause of an increase rather than a decrease in the number of refugees it manages, especially due to its absurd and unwarranted definition of a refugee. It has continuously failed to find any lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. Its educational services have nurtured a Palestinian identity based almost entirely around a narrative of victimhood and injustice, one which vilifies the Jews and other western actors and which preaches that the only solution is violent resistance.

Most people now agree that the world should find a way to resettle and provide a homeland for the Palestinian refugees rather than allow them to continue as victims of UNRWA.

Ideally UNRWA should be closed down but its main funders and supporters will never let that happen. Alternatively, UNRWA must be reformed, as otherwise it will never fulfil its responsibilities to the Palestinian refugees. This failing organisation must become free of Hamas and the dictates of the Palestinian Authority.

Looking ahead, for there to be peace in the region, the world must find a way to force UNRWA use its billions of dollars to solve the refugee problem by training the refugees, creating jobs and providing them with homes in the countries where they were born or where they have lived for most of their entire lives.

It is time that the international community recognised and admitted that UNRWA and Hamas are one and the same and without the total destruction of this internationally proscribed terrorist organisation, we will never see the peace that is so important for the people living in this part of the world.