During his tenure Pierre Krahenbuhl -from March 2014 to November 2019 he served as Commissioner General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)- met with the leaders of the designated Palestinian terrorist organizations, ensuring: “We are one and no one can separate us, as published in a denunciation article by UN Watch last Thursday.” According to the investigation, as reported by the Jerusalem Postthe meeting took place in Beirut in February 2017, with other participants, including the head of UNRWA in Lebanon Hakam Shawan, Ali Baraka of Hamas, Abu Imad Al-Rifai of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) e Salah Al-Youssef of the PFLP, as well as other representatives of different Palestinian factions such as the DFLP, the PFLP Central Command and Fatah Al-Intifada. Baraka, who oversaw the terrorist organization’s foreign relations with regimes in Tehran and Syria, was recently designated by the United States for his role in Hamas. Similarly, Rifai, a leader of Lebanon’s PIJ, had previously boasted of sending suicide bombers to Baghdad to kill American and British military personnel.
UN Watch investigations
Strikingly, Krahenbuhl seemed keenly aware of the controversial implications of such meetings. During these talks, Krahenbuhl urged participants to keep the content of their conversations away from public attention, “to avoid compromising their credibility or risking a reduction or even suspension of funding from donor countries to UNRWA.” . Second A Watch during these talks Krahenbuhl would have highlighted «the need for a spirit of collaboration with the interlocutors present and would have encouraged them to challenge UNRWA’s decisions in a confidential manner, ensuring them possible revisions or even a total cancellation of the decisions taken». Not only that, Krahenbuhl even expressed the idea of mutual collaboration, encouraging representatives of terrorist organizations to freely express criticism of UNRWA decisions. He also stated that “they could have met a thousand times to address concerns, with the possibility of reviewing or even completely reversing policies already in place.” The then director of UNRWA, addressing the leaders of the Palestinian terrorist factions, said: «Your cooperation with us in the security sphere and your commitment not to close UNRWA institutions, facilities, schools or offices are fundamental to strengthening this collaboration and if we manage to achieve this objective, it means that we are united, and no one will be able to divide us.” These documents offer an insight into the complex and controversial relationships between UNRWA leadership and groups designated as terrorist organizations by various international entities. Hillel Neuerexecutive director of UN Watch, highlighted that Baraka, who was present at the meeting with Krahenbuhl, had regular meetings with UNRWA regional directors, some of whom had even honored him on the occasion of the Hamas anniversary. The connections between UNRWA and Hamas have come under increasing criticism since October 7 last year, when Israel said that several members of the agency’s staff had participated in the massacre, playing active roles in the Hamas Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades. Furthermore, anti-Semitic and terror-motivating content was allegedly taught in schools run by UNRWA. A teacher from the agency was even reportedly among the organizers of anti-Israel protests in the Netherlands, even acting as the leader of a Hamas-affiliated organization in the country.
We asked the American analyst Irina Tsukerman a comment on this latest story in which UNRWA is the protagonist of links with Palestinian terrorist organizations: «UNWRA’s strong links with Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza and the West Bank should not be surprising. This is not a bug, but a feature of the agency’s design. The problem is not just implementation, but the whole concept of perpetuating refugee status for multiple generations. The foreseeable result is: a) dependence for the presumed beneficiaries; b) lack of incentives for government entities to invest in the economy of their territories (which guarantees the failure of any state-building from the start); c) perpetuation of an unacceptable status quo in Arab countries, where Palestinians live in camps for generations without being integrated, without receiving citizenship or even the right to work – and where extremism thrives becoming a long-term security problem for the host country. The creation of UNWRA also perpetuates the fantasy that millions of Palestinians have the ‘right of return’ to what is now Israel, and are entitled to every bit of land, regardless of whether it ever belonged to their grandparents, and regardless how it came to be no longer in their possession. As long as this myth persists, most Palestinians will be led to believe that Israel may at some point cease to exist and that therefore there is no reason to accept compromise territorial solutions, to demand better from their governments, or to even accept a cold peace with their neighbors.”
There is no doubt that over the years the UNWRA has come to abuse its status even beyond what was intended and to monopolize international humanitarian aid, acting as the sole conduit for supporting terrorism.
«Yes, the closure of organizations that finance Hamas, such as the Holy Land Foundation in the United States, it had no impact on Hamas because the most important formal channel of support – through the legitimate and respected UN agency – remained active. Of course, there is a legitimate concern that, in the midst of conflict, the closure of the main aid transmission channel could impact civilians. But the international community should ask itself the following questions: Why, after decades and billions of aid, are Gaza and the West Bank still dependent on the generosity of the world? Why does the international community continue to support terrorist organizations that then steal, cash in or sell aid abroad, harming civilians? Why is an agency designed to perpetuate anti-Israel sentiment in the region so sacrosanct? Do its financiers really care that much about the Palestinians, or is it more about undermining Israel’s existence through false charity?”
