UN Watch Legal Advisor Dina Rovner spoke with David Schulberg on the Israel Connexion Podcast to discuss UN Watch’s latest report revealing UNRWA’s claims of reforms are far from accurate.
Conversation Highlight:
Dina Rovner: UNRWA is really a political organization with a political mandate. Its purpose is to keep Palestinians as perpetual refugees, hoping and dreaming that one day they will be able to exercise this so-called right of return to Israel, until there is what they call a “just solution” to the refugee problem.
And we all know exactly what that looks like, because we saw it on October 7th.
UNRWA’s humanitarian work is really just an excuse. It’s what allows the political mandate to continue, because otherwise, why do we need a separate UN agency for Palestinian refugees? There are other UN agencies that could provide humanitarian assistance very well.
This idea of a “just solution” - that’s their term - is really a euphemism. We remember the Oslo peace process, and one of the major issues that prevented a final status agreement was the Palestinian demand for a right of return. Of course, Israel is not going to allow millions of Palestinians to move into its sovereign territory, because that would mean the end of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
It is true that around 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were displaced in 1948 during Israel’s War of Independence. But this wasn’t unique to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You just have to look at India and Pakistan, for example, where millions of people were displaced at the same time during partition, and those populations were eventually absorbed and resettled.
You can also look at all of the Jews who were expelled or forced to leave Arab countries after Israel’s establishment. We’re talking about some 850,000 Jews. Many of them came to Israel, where they were absorbed and built new lives.
Today, none of those people call their grandchildren refugees. But somehow, for the Palestinians, we have created a completely different system.
Look at the UNRWA refugees themselves. In Jordan, most of the 2 million UNRWA refugees have Jordanian citizenship and have lived there for generations. So why are they still registered as UNRWA refugees?
In the West Bank and Gaza, again, we’re talking about over 2 million Palestinians who were born there, whose parents and grandparents were born there, and who live in self-governed territories that are supposed to become a Palestinian state. Why are we continuing to tell these people that they are refugees? Why are we still calling their neighborhoods refugee camps?
At some point, we have to stop indulging this narrative that their lives are temporary and that they’re all just waiting to come back to Israel.
The donor countries really need to ask themselves what exactly they’re funding. There’s a difference between helping people who need humanitarian assistance, which the UN can do very well, as we’ve seen in many examples around the world, and maintaining a political system that keeps millions of people believing that their real home is somewhere else.
That is what UNRWA stands for.
As long as donors continue to fund this system, they’re actually helping to keep the conflict alive, and that’s very unfortunate.
“UNRWA’s humanitarian work is an excuse. It’s what allows the political mandate to continue, because otherwise, why do we need a separate UN agency for Palestinian refugees? Other UN agencies could provide humanitarian assistance.”
- UN Watch Legal Advisor Dina Rovner pic.twitter.com/CFmU1IDjzp
- UN Watch (@UNWatch) October 29, 2026
