UNRWA’s insidious terror links

The controversial UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East can take no satisfaction from former French foreign affairs minister Catherine Colonna’s report on its operations made at the request of UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres. Neither should Australia, which restored funding to the agency in March after initially suspending it following allegations by Israel that at least 12 UNRWA staff members were directly involved in Hamas’s October 7 massacre of Jews.

In her report, Ms Colonna notes that Israel has yet to provide evidence to support its claim that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organisations, but that was not part of her mandate. A separate investigation into those claims is being done by the UN’s internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services.

Even without that controversy, Ms Colonna’s report is alarming and raises questions about what the agency has been doing with the decades’ worth of funding it has received from Australia and other nations since 1949. Despite procedures aimed at upholding what she asserts is the UN’s principle of neutrality, her investigation found anti-Semitic textbooks in almost 200 schools the agency runs in Gaza with donor funding. Some of the textbooks include maps that avoid any reference to Israel’s existence, labelling Jerusalem the capital of Palestine, affecting the understanding of generations of Palestinian children.

The blatant misuse of funding cannot be divorced from the reality that Israeli forces repeatedly have found UNRWA schools and other facilities stockpiling Hamas weapons caches. It beggars credibility that UNRWA officials were unaware of the major Hamas military tunnel complex found under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters.

Ms Colonna recommends reforms to achieve the neutrality most donor nations expect. These include zero tolerance of anti-Semitism or discrimination in school textbooks and better screening of UNRWA staff for red flags. If the Albanese government insists on maintaining Australian support for the agency, it has a big responsibility to ensure taxpayer dollars are never again misspent on terrorist textbooks and on militants operating under the guise of a premier UN refugee and welfare agency.