Examining Just How UNRWA Operates

Last month, Operation Guardian of the Walls was launched when Hamas indiscriminately launched 4,200 missiles into Israeli residential communities. According to the UN Charter, every nation has the right to defend its civilian population. The Biden administration pledged $235 million dollars in aid to rebuild Gaza, most of which will be given directly to the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

In 2020, UNRWA listed its budget as being $806 million and it employed some 30,000 people. How does UNRWA operate? What is its underlying mission? How friendly is it with Hamas? Are our taxpayer dollars that will be delivered to UNRWA part of the problem or part of the solution to the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians?

Here to answer these questions and more is Asaf Romirowsky, Executive Director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

About the speaker: Middle East historian Asaf Romirowsky is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a senior non-resident research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), and a Professor [Affiliate] at the University of Haifa. Trained as a Middle East historian he holds a Ph.D. in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King’s College London, UK, and has published widely on various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and American foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as on Israeli and Zionist history.

Romirowsky is co-author of Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief and a contributor to The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel.

Romirowsky’s publicly engaged scholarship has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, The American Interest, The New Republic, The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Ynet, and Tablet, among other online and print media outlets.