In 2020, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) entered the eighth decade of its existence. Given the complexity of the humanitarian situation in UNRWA’s various operational zones (in particular in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria); the stagnation of the political process; the regional upheaval and its impact on the population of Palestinian refugees; and the centrality of Palestinian refugees to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a place—and even an obligation—to examine UNRWA’s mandate, operational paradigms, and functional procedures with fresh eyes.

Relating to UNRWA a decade ago, James Lindsay,...

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly approved Resolution 181, which determined the end of British rule in Mandatory Palestine and the division of the land into two separate states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. Israel accepted the plan; the Arab world rejected it. On May 14, 1948, the Jewish leadership declared the establishment of the State of Israel, and shortly thereafter, Arab armies invaded the state. As a result of the war that broke out, hundreds of thousands of Arabs were uprooted and fled from their homes.⁴

Following these events and pursuant to General Assembly Resolution...

In 1950, a year after UNRWA’s establishment, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was founded.⁵⁴ A year later, in 1951, the Refugee Convention was ratified by 145 countries who agreed to the definition of who is a refugee.⁵⁵ Naturally, the UNHCR’s establishment raised the issue of the place of the Palestinian refugees within this new refugee framework. Arab states, which were determined that the Palestinian issue would remain on the agenda of the international community and leverage the issue to apply pressure on Israel, insisted that the Palestine refugees remain under UNRWA’s responsibility. This separation of Palestinian refugees was...

In considering theoretical alternatives to the lacunae elaborated upon in the previous chapters, we have formulated four alternatives (three basic and one modular) based on experience and ideas that have accumulated over the years and are presented here for the first time. Evidently, while each of the first three alternatives has its advantages and disadvantages, no course of action is fully sufficient. Nevertheless, we chose to present these alternatives and to highlight the complexities involved in adopting a course of action that is based on a single logic. Thus, a fourth modular alternative that combines relative advantages from each course...

UNRWA was established according to UN General Assembly Resolution 302(IV) from December 1949, which ordered the creation of an aid agency for a two-to-three-year period until the emergency situation (following the war) would end and some 700,000 refugees would be resettled. At the time, the Palestinian refugees constituted only a small portion of the world’s refugee population following World War II. However, unlike other refugee populations whose numbers were significantly reduced with important UN assistance, the population of Palestinian refugees grew to over 5.5 million registered as UNRWA beneficiaries, seven decades later. This influx is the product of an accumulation...