UNRWA'S HAMAS PROBLEM

UNRWA's Hamas Problem - James Tisch (Jerusalem Post)
Today UNRWA is a Palestinian organization with a thin UN veneer. In its Gaza and West Bank field offices, UNRWA has 12,916 employees, of whom only 37 are not Palestinian.

UNRWA Commissioner Peter Hansen's admission that he did not see the hiring of Hamas members as "a crime" is just the latest example of his unfitness for the UN post. During Operation Defensive Shield, he lent credence to Palestinian lies about Jenin, saying: "Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history."

Apparently, Hansen's "recent history" did not extend back three weeks earlier to the Passover massacre in Netanya, where more civilians died than in Jenin.

The job of a refugee organization should be to eliminate camps by helping the destitute find permanent homes. By this measure UNRWA is a colossal failure since, by its own account, the Palestinian refugee population has swelled 500% over 55 years.

It is clear that UNRWA has been instrumental in perpetuating the refugee problem it should have solved long ago. UNRWA must at least rid itself of Hamas influence, or the charade of its neutrality should end.