Republicans in Congress are responding to the resumption of U.S. foreign aid to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) by the Biden administration earlier this year by introducing a set of bills aimed at preventing taxpayer funds from being sent to the agency unless certain requirements are met.
The legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives on Tuesday by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and co-sponsored by 28 Republican members of Congress, and in the Senate by Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the same day with 12 Republican co-sponsors.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan has spoken about the problems with UNRWA and has urged the Biden administration not to restore its funding, which was eliminated during the administration of former President Donald Trump.
The release cited examples of UNRWA’s entanglement with terrorist organizations, such as the April 2017 resignation of an UNRWA teacher and chairman of the UNRWA Employees Union in Gaza amid allegations that he had been elected to a leadership position in Hamas and the October 2017 report of Hamas tunnels under UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip.
“U.S. taxpayer dollars should never go to a corrupt entity that undermines, Israel, one of our greatest allies and closest friends. UNRWA has a long track record of using educational materials that promote anti-Semitism, violence and terrorism while maintaining ties to the terrorist organization Hamas,” Roy said in the release. “Because of this, UNRWA is an obstacle to peace whose flawed mandate perpetuates the Palestinian ‘refugee crisis’ by using a nonsensical definition of a refugee.”
“When UNRWA was created, its specific purpose was to provide relief for refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. More than 70 years later, the organization has employed individuals affiliated with Hamas, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization and its schools have been used to promote anti-Semitism and store Hamas weapons,” Risch said in the release. “It is unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used to fund this agency, which is why I’ve introduced legislation to cease U.S. contributions to UNRWA unless the administration can certify without a doubt that the agency has no affiliation with U.S. designation FTOs and does not support anti-Semitic rhetoric.”