Australia pays to foster hate

Australian foreign aid spending is at a record low.

Successive years of cuts have seen our aid budget drop from 0.37 per cent of gross national income in 2013-14 to just 0.21 per cent today.

Successive ministers have blamed a lack of public support for this shrinking commitment, and it’s true that Australians want to see a reduction in the amount we spend helping out overseas.

Lowy Institute research shows the public thinks 14 per cent of the federal budget is spent on aid, and that this should be reduced to 10 per cent. The reality is that last year foreign aid comprised just 0.8 per cent of the budget.

With the government tightening the purse strings, and an electorate supportive of cutbacks, it’s time to put right a major funding anomaly that undermines the integrity of our entire aid program.

Australia has pledged $20m to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) this financial year.

UNRWA was created in 1949 to carry out aid programs for Palestinian refugees.

Although it was only meant to be a temporary solution, the UN General Assembly repeatedly has renewed its mandate, most recently until next June 30.

Recently it was revealed that an internal ethics report found members of the inner circle at the very upper echelons of UNRWA, including chief Pierre Krahenbuhl, had allegedly engaged in misconduct, nepotism, corruption and other serious abuses of power.

The agency, which employs more than 30,000 people, is no stranger to scandal. In recent years we have learned that:

• Palestinian children attending a UNRWA summer camp were indoctrinated to hate Jews and Israel, and support martyrdom.

• Terrorist rockets were stored at, and likely fired from, UNRWA schools during the 2014 Gaza War.

• Hamas terror tunnels ran under UNRWA schools in Gaza.

• UNRWA vehicles were used to transport weapons and terrorists for attacks against Israel.

These and other controversies prompted the US to slash its funding to the agency last year, and cut it altogether earlier this year, describing UNRWA as an “irredeemably flawed operation”.

Last month, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium and New Zealand all suspended their funding following the latest revelations.

The Zionist Federation of Australia recently wrote to all members of parliament calling on the Australian government to do the same.

Notwithstanding the present scandal, there’s little transparency or accountability about how our aid dollars are being spent by UNRWA, and no guarantee the money isn’t being used to support terror operations against Israel.

It is as tragic as it is ironic that the agency charged with resolving the Palestinian refugee issue has played a major role in perpetuating the problem.

It’s also instructive that UNRWA’s failure comes despite — or perhaps because of — the preferential treatment afforded Palestinians through the UN’s institutional architecture.

Palestinian refugees are the only refugees to have their own dedicated UN agency; the rest of the world’s refugees fall under the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

And while UNRWA’s operations are limited to Palestinians living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza, the UNHCR works in 130 countries.

In addition to providing humanitarian aid, between 2003 and last year the UNHCR resettled more than one million refugees.

Under article 1 (c) (3) of the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, a person is no longer a refugee if they have “acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of (their) new nationality”. But the definition of a Palestinian refugee does not include such a provision.

So even if a Palestinian resettles in another country and takes on citizenship of that nation, they continue to retain their refugee status in perpetuity. The number of Palestinian refugees has ballooned from about 700,000 in 1948 to about 5.5 million today as a consequence.

No one can deny the Palestinian situation is unique, but so are the circumstances of every refugee population. Why is one group singled out for special treatment?

There’s no rationale for continuing the existing arrangements, and no evidence that the plight of Palestinians is aided in any way by UNRWA’s ongoing involvement.

The Australian government should call on the UN to hand responsibility for Palestinian refugees to the UNHCR, in line with the rest of the world’s refugees.

Our funding commitment also needs to be adjusted accordingly. As it stands, we’ve allocated $25m to the UNHCR in 2019-20, and $20m to UNRWA, a lopsided arrangement given that Palestinians make up just a fifth of the global refugee population.

If all our spending on refugees went through the UNHCR, Australians could have greater confidence that taxpayer dollars are reaching vulnerable Palestinians, rather than lining the pockets of corrupt officials.

And that will give all of us greater confidence in the integrity of our foreign aid program.

Jeremy Leibler is president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.