Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced on Wednesday that he had instructed the Israeli mission to the UN to oppose the advancement of the annual budget of UNRWA, the UN agency for “Palestinian refugees”.
The minister stressed that, at a time when Israel is fighting the Hamas terrorist organization and all the manifestations of terrorism and incitement that UNRWA has turned a blind eye to for decades, approving a budget to the UN agency without a substantial change in its objectives and functioning, would be sending the wrong message of a return to the reality that existed before October 7.
“The countries of the world must put an end to UNRWA's perpetuation of the conflict and stop years of turning a blind eye to the incitement to terrorism and Hamas' cynical use of the agency's facilities and the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields,” Cohen wrote on X.
Created in 1949, UNRWA supplies aid to more than three million of the five million registered “Palestinian refugees” in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and territories assigned to the Palestinian Authority.
However, it is also notorious for its anti-Israel activities. During the 2014 counterterrorism Operation Protective Edge, Hamas rockets were discovered inside a school building run by UNRWA.
Likewise, a booby-trapped UNRWA clinic was detonated, killing three IDF soldiers. Aside from the massive amounts of explosives hidden in the walls of the clinic, it was revealed that it stood on top of dozens of terror tunnels, showing how UNRWA is closely embedded with Hamas.
More recently, it was discovered that a hostage kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza was held for 50 days in the attic of an UNRWA teacher.