UNRWA's Hamas problem

By James S. Tisch
December 18, 2004
The Jerusalem Post
Original Source: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1103356913322&p=1006953079865

The UN Relief and Works Agency is sometimes compared to Frankenstein's monster. Russian-speaking Israelis, however, would probably argue that UNRWA more closely resembles Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharik, the protagonist of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel Heart of a Dog. 
In both classics a well-intended creation goes awry. Sharik, though, is a more subtle character. 
Adapting to his authoritarian environment, the half-dog, half-man undergoes a moral decay while stridently claiming to be a model citizen. 
Likewise, as Hamas causes the inner rot, UNRWA continues to declare its integrity. 
Much ink has been spilled about UNRWA's pro-Palestinian bias. Of course, it's biased. Today UNRWA is a Palestinian organization with a thin UN veneer. 
In its Gaza and West Bank field offices, UNRWA has 12,916 employees, of whom only 37 are not Palestinian. 
No one should have been surprised when UNRWA Commissioner Peter Hansen admitted that UNRWA employs Hamas members or sympathizers. Can anyone expect those 37 internationals to screen almost 13,000 Palestinian employees – mostly residents of the refugee camps – for Hamas affiliation, even if they wanted to? 
UNRWA cannot even prevent posters of suicide bombers from being plastered on the walls of its schools, or teachers from extolling suicide bombers. 
THAT HANSEN did not see the hiring of Hamas members as a crime is just the latest example of his unfitness for the UN post. 
During Operation Defensive Shield he lent credence to Palestinian lies about Jenin: 
I had hoped that the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by the emotions engaged, but I am afraid these were not exaggerated and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history. 
Apparently, Hansen's recent history did not extend back three weeks to the Passover massacre in Netanya, where more civilians died than in Jenin. 
When the reports from Jenin, including his own, were completely refuted, Hansen offered no apology or even acknowledgement. 
Peter Hansen is only part of the UNRWA problem. In addition to employing Hamas members or sympathizers, UNRWA likely feeds and loans them money too. 
The US government's General Accounting Office asked UNRWA whether it screens its beneficiaries for ties with terrorist organizations, as required by section 301(c) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. 
UNRWA replied that it could not, because its staff would be endangered. 
Reporting on one incident, the General Accounting Office highlights the extent to which the Palestinian street, not the UN, controls UNRWA. 
The houses of six Palestinian families on UNRWA's registry were destroyed during bomb-making activities, yet UNRWA concluded there was not enough evidence to deny them benefits under the terrorist-exclusion rule. 
American and European taxpayers provide those benefits via the US government's and European Union's support for roughly 75% of UNRWA's budget. 
In Heart of a Dog the doctor is able to get rid of the intolerable Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharik by reversing the operation, separating the canine from the human. 
The same solution should apply here. 
To remove Hamas's influence on UNRWA radical reform is needed. Procedures need to be put in place to comply with the Foreign Assistance Act, and the safety of those who would enforce those regulations must be ensured. 
On December 7, UNRWA raised over $90 million in pledges from 18 donor countries at a conference it claims was the best ever. But the job of a refugee organization should be to eliminate camps by helping the destitute find permanent homes. 
By this measure UNRWA is a colossal failure, since by its own account the Palestinian refugee population has swelled 500 percent over 55 years. 
It is clear that UNRWA has been instrumental in perpetuating the refugee problem it should have solved long ago. 
Though UNRWA seems hopelessly far from advancing what should be its mandate, it must at least rid itself of Hamas influence; or the charade of its neutrality should end. 
UNRWA's critics will stop demanding the impossible when UNRWA stops claiming the unbelievable. 
The writer is chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.