Former MK Dr. Einat Wilf spoke to Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about the controversies surrounding UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for the descendants of the Arab refugees from the 1948 war, and the danger the organization represents.
"Once you understand UNRWA, a lot of things become clear," Dr. Wilf said. "UNRWA is essentially the organization that constitutes Palestinian nationalism as a negative nationalism singularly focused on the Jewish State no longer existing."
She stated that UNRWA "exists for the sole purpose of keeping the war of 1948 open until the war ends the way that the Arabs initially intended: for there not to be a Jewish State. UNRWA exists so that the refugees from that war, the Arab refugees, will continue generation after generation, never settling, unlike Germans and Ukrainians and Poles and Hindus and Muslims and Jews from the period of after the [Second World] War."
"Only the Arab refugees remain unsettled because they themselves say: 'We will not settle, never, as long as the Jewish State exists.' They demand what they call 'return.' And lest we think that 'return' is some kind of innocent idea, October 7th is 'return.' October 7th is the Palestinian vision of 'return.' 'return was always a violent, triumphalist idea. And this is why there was so much exhilaration acter October 7th, because this is what generations of Palestinians have been groomed by UNRWA to wish for, to wish for that day of violent triumphalist 'return,' for the liberation of Palestine from the Jewish presence, from the sovereign Jewish presence anywhere between the river and the sea," she explained.
According to Dr. Wilf, "After October 7th, there is a greater awakening ... that our enemies meant what they said."
She said that the Palestinian Arabs "have a remarkable ability to actually tell us what they are going to do and why. Listen to what the Arabs, the Palestinians, are saying. They say about UNRWA, UNRWA is not some aid agency - they don't care about that. UNRWA, they say, is the global guarantor that they are still refugees and that one day they will return."
"They say that, so listen to them rather than speak over them," she said.
According to Dr. Wilf, the main thing people must understand about the current war is that "the conflict has only ever been about one thing and one thing only, the Arab and especially the Palestinian denial of the Jewish right to self-determination anywhere between the river and the sea. And if people want to see the war over - and I'm not talking about the war in Gaza. The war in Gaza is merely an arena. If people want to see the hundred-year war over, that war is only over when the Arabs, and especially the Palestinians, recognize the equal right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland."