WASHINGTON (JTA) – Days after the resumption of US funding for the troubled UN agency providing relief to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, the Biden government said it had UNRWA’s commitment to ‘zero tolerance’ for anti-Semitism, racism or discrimination.
“UNWRA has made clear its firm commitment to the United States on the issues of transparency, accountability and neutrality in all its operations,” a senior U.S. official said in an interview over the weekend, describing the process leading up to the administration last week. announcing the resumption of funding for the agency. “And what neutrality means in the context of the United Nations is no tolerance for racism, discrimination and anti-Semitism.”
The official said the resumption of aid was in line with a Biden administration policy to favor a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Get The Times of Israel Daily Edition by Email and Never Miss Our Top Stories Free Sign Up
A UNRWA spokesman did not respond to a request from a Jewish Telegraphic Agency late Monday afternoon.
UNRWA has been plagued for years by reports of mismanagement and anti-Semitic content in the textbooks used by the agency in the school it runs.
Palestinian students receive new textbooks in their classroom during the first day of a new school year at one of the UNRWA schools in Beirut, Lebanon, 3 September 2018. (Hussein Malla / AP)
The Biden administration official, who asked not to be named to speak honestly, reached out to JTA. The call was in line with what has become a Biden administration practice: to withdraw Trump administration policies that favored Israel, but to elevate the change with promises and actions that assure Israel of American support. A similar dynamic plays out in the government’s effort to reintroduce the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
President Donald Trump ended aid to UNRWA in 2018. Trump administration officials have said the agency’s prescription – to treat millions of Palestinians as refugees – perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That was the demand by Israel’s US ambassador, Gilad Erdan, in an extremely unusual reprimand from the Biden government when the $ 150 million aid was announced.
Biden campaigned for the reimbursement of UNRWA – on humanitarian grounds and to restore American influence in the region.
In January, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, a watchdog, reported that the UNRWA textbooks ‘are full of problems that contradict UN values’.
Illustrative: In this photo on 26 May 2019, a teacher is supervising while Palestinian school children are taking a final exam at the UNRWA Hebron Boys School, in the city of Hebron in the West Bank, during the last day of the school year. (AP Photo / Nasser Nasser)
The Biden official agreed that there were ‘significant’ examples of anti-Semitism in the textbooks. However, the official said the government in Biden rejected the prescription that the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees become conflict-resistant. The refugee problem will be addressed in a two-state solution, the official said, which was the ultimate goal of the Biden government.
Israel, which in its first months criticized Biden, has rejected aid to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, which provides housing, schools and other care to more than six million Palestinians. and their offspring.
“We believe that this UN agency for so-called ‘refugees’ should not exist in its current format,” Erdan said.
Israel argues that the education offered by the UN-backed schools includes incitement against the Jewish state.
“I have expressed my disappointment at the decision to renew UNRWA funding without first ensuring that certain reforms, including inciting incitement and removing anti-Semitic content from its educational curriculum, are implemented,” Erdan said.
However, Israel has long insisted on the closure of UNRWA, arguing that it helps end the conflict with the Palestinians, as it grants refugee status to the descendants of those originally displaced during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
Times of Israel Staff contributed to this story
