UK funding of UNRWA makes Gaza peace less likely

Hamas can devote itself to brutal war thanks in part to a UN agency and our money going into its coffers

Remember Claude Rains’ Captain Renault in Casablanca protesting he was “shocked, shocked!” by the gambling going on under his nose? 
Such was the reaction of UNRWA higher-ups to the finding that nine Palestinian employees were among the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre. Keeping up this façade is essential for the few non-Palestinians who work at UNRWA, their purpose to maintain the appearance of a respectable organisation paid for by international taxpayers – including the UK after its recent decision to restore funding. 
The problem is, the façade is just that. UNRWA maintains the Palestinians as a people in waiting until they finally realise their vision of “return”. Anyone imagining that equates to innocent nostalgia for a great-grandmother’s long-lost home should look to the horrors of October 7 as a reality check. Since the 1950s, texts in UNRWA schools have portrayed “return” as bloody triumph over the Jewish body. 
UNRWA’s few donor-facing Western managers will claim they are merely providing social services such as education and healthcare until the conflict is resolved. Palestinians are more straightforward, making it clear as far as they’re concerned they are owed those services until “return” is realised. A sign as you enter an area under Palestinian Authority control near Bethlehem, mis-labelled “a refugee camp”, reads: “UNRWA Services are our Right until Return”. The final purpose couldn’t be clearer. 
Since its earliest days, UNRWA has been hijacked to become a purely Palestinian organisation devoted to “return”, nurturing violent groups determined to erase Israel. Almost all the terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics were graduates of UNRWA schools. From Black September, Fatah and the PFLP to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, UNRWA provided the ideological infrastructure of the forever war against Israel’s existence. UNRWA’s connection with violence against Jews is not a bug, but its defining feature. 
A fuller investigation could have addressed how many October 7 perpetrators were educated in UNRWA schools by UNRWA-paid teachers. It could have asked how many are registered by UNRWA as “refugees”, though none would be considered such by international norms, given we’re now into a fifth generation of descendants from those originally displaced. The outcome would have shown almost all participants in the massacre are UNRWA graduates and carriers of the lethal ideology of “return”. 
In an interview after the massacre, a senior Hamas official, Abu-Marzouk, explained the terror group built tunnels in Gaza for militant purposes, not to shelter residents, because responsibility for civilians lies with the UN (that is, UNRWA). In his view, the international community should bear the financial burden so Hamas can devote all to butchering Jews. 
UNRWA argues its organisation is essential to Gaza now and for any future rebuilding effort. Yet as long as UNRWA fuels the destructive vision of “return”, Western taxpayers’ funds will be used only to prepare for war. 
If the UK had stuck to its decision to stop funding and other states had followed suit, Gaza’s leaders might have been forced to use taxes to care for its people. Hamas does raise taxes – levying duties on the thriving trade through the border with Egypt – but released by the West from their responsibilities, they use the funds to build tunnels and buy weapons. 
Without UNRWA perpetuating this destructive cycle, Palestinians could have used their considerable skills and Western donations to recreate Gaza as the Singapore of the Middle East, the Dubai of the Levant. Instead, the landscape has been weaponised for the purpose of “liberating Palestine from the River to the Sea”. By providing taxpayer cash to fund this ideology, the UK is telling Palestinians that they need never build a constructive future for themselves. It is a message that puts peace ever further out of reach.
Einat Wilf is a former Labor Party member of the Israeli Knesset