It is “beyond human comprehension” to see the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s unique mandate, which maintains the refugee status of Palestinians for generations, as a threat to Israel, Ayman Safadi, the Jordanian foreign minister, told JNS last week.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday after a high-level ministerial meeting in support of the beleaguered U.N. Palestinian-only aid and social services agency, Amman’s top diplomat responded to a question about why the Jewish state should be expected to facilitate UNRWA’s existence in Jerusalem and throughout Israel.
UNRWA and other U.N. and diplomatic officials have chastised Israel over pending pieces of legislation to shut down the agency’s operations in Israel, declare it a terror organization and strip its officials of their immunity in Israel. During the war, 222 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza, the global body has said.
The U.N. agency has accused Israel of needlessly limiting the entry of humanitarian aid. The Jewish state has documented UNRWA’s failure to retrieve aid in a timely manner after Israeli security cleared it and placed it in Gaza, beside the border.
The agency was the subject of an internal U.N. investigation, which found that nine of its staffers “may” have participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel. The Jewish state says that number is substantially larger.
A U.N. spokesperson later agreed that the phrase “likely or very likely” more accurately described the likelihood that the nine staffers are culpable, rather than saying they “may” have been an active part of the terror attack.
Israel has accused UNRWA of substantial ties to Hamas and has found terror tunnels beneath UNRWA facilities and weapons within buildings operated by the global body. A released Israeli hostage believes that she was held in an UNRWA facility based on markings she saw in the building.
Safadi, the Jordanian official, said that Israel must allow UNRWA to operate in eastern Jerusalem, which the United Nations considers “occupied” territory, “because Israel, as the occupying power, has to abide by international law.” He added that UNRWA “is mandated by the General Assembly that speaks on behalf of the whole international community.”
The Jewish state “has no right, has no jurisdiction legally over the occupied territories, except for guaranteeing the safety and well-being of people under occupation,” Safadi said.
Israel declared eastern Jerusalem part of its sovereign territory in 1980, after liberating it during the Six-Day War of 1967. Jordan had controlled it for 19 years prior to that and rid it of Jewish life. It did not form a Palestinian state, despite also controlling all of Judea and Samaria.
UNRWA’s mandate passes refugee status across generations, maintaining the so-called “right of return” for all Palestinian refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars and their descendants. Such a return would eliminate the Jewish majority in Israel.
JNS asked the Jordanian official why the Jewish state should accept a threat imposed on it by the international community.
Safadi appeared to react emotionally, insisting that UNRWA’s humanitarian work poses no threat.
“Where is the threat that the international community is imposing? Is it a threat to feed children? Is it a threat to allow children to go to school? Is it a threat to vaccinate people against polio?” he said. “I mean, it is ridiculous to assume that a United Nations agency, mandated with a humanitarian work, could be a threat to anybody.”
JNS noted that it was asking only about UNRWA’s mandate that maintains refugee status seemingly in perpetuity, and not the agency’s humanitarian work.
The Jordanian diplomat doubled down.
“Israel doesn’t decide who is a refugee or not. The international law decides,” he said. “How could a child be a threat to Israel? How could Palestinians, who are living under Israeli occupation, be a threat to Israel, and how could applying international law be a threat to Israel? We have to speak facts.”
The Jordanian diplomat’s question about how Palestinians could threaten Israel came nearly a year after Hamas terrorists attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7 from Gaza, which Jordan and the United Nations consider “occupied” territory.
“To say that UNRWA is a threat is, with all due respect, is just beyond human comprehension,” he added.
