UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer appeared on ILTV with Calev Ben-David to discuss Israel’s Supreme Court challenge to the UNRWA ban, the agency’s ties to Hamas, and the future of Gaza.
Calev Ben-David, ILTV: In other news, Israel’s Supreme Court is this week hearing a potentially landmark legal challenge to the recent Israeli law banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which deals with Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, from operating in Israel. The law also bans Israeli officials from working with UNRWA.
A High Court petition filed by the civil rights group Adalah argues that the law undermines humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and East Jerusalem, while also raising constitutional concerns. The Israeli government says the law is a critical security measure, accusing a number of UNRWA employees of taking part in the October 7 attacks and of maintaining ties to Hamas.
UNRWA has dismissed several employees but says Israel has not provided evidence to support all of its allegations.
Joining us for more on this issue is Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch. I think it’s fair to say, Hillel, that you, more than anybody else, have really led the way in exposing UNRWA’s links to Hamas.
First of all, I’d like to get your reaction to this challenge to the Israeli law. I should note that, in the past, Israel’s Supreme Court has generally allowed the government to make decisions on issues specifically related to security. What’s your view?
Hillel Neuer: Look, the foreign minister of Switzerland, Ignazio Cassis, said several years ago that UNRWA is perpetuating the conflict. He said it has become “a perverse logic.” We, he said, who are funding and supporting UNRWA, are only perpetuating the conflict.
That’s the truth. That’s the reality.
It’s not just a question of reform. The very idea of UNRWA today—even though its origins were benign—is to teach millions of Palestinians, whether they’re in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, or Jordan, that their mission in life is to dismantle Israel.
Keep in mind, Jordan has two million citizens who have Jordanian citizenship, but according to the UN, they are UNRWA refugees, which means their mission in life is to “return,” as they call it—which, in their minds, means returning, like October 7, through violence and massacre, to dismantle Israel.
That is the essence of UNRWA. The Israeli law, I would say, finally—perhaps decades too late—recognized that.
Calev Ben-David, ILTV: I want to expand beyond that because this law applies to territory under Israeli control. But, as we reported earlier in the broadcast, there is now a process in Gaza that would see the IDF pull back and establish a new governance structure in the Gaza Strip.
The question is: what is being done, potentially, either to reform UNRWA—which, as you say, is probably impossible—or replace it with another kind of administration, which the Trump administration had previously tried to do, with very mixed results?
Hillel Neuer: Look, the Board of Peace has said expressly that UNRWA will not be part of the future of Gaza. They have said it very clearly. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has said it as well. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that UNRWA has become a subsidiary of Hamas.
That is corroborated by our research in Gaza and Lebanon.
Keep in mind, the head of the UNRWA Teachers’ Union in Gaza, representing 8,000 UNRWA teachers funded by Western states, was Suheil al-Hindi. He’s a member of the Hamas politburo. He’s now one of the Hamas leaders who meets with the Iranian regime in Qatar on behalf of Hamas. He was a teacher, a school principal, and the head of 8,000 teachers.
The same happened in Lebanon. The head of the UNRWA Teachers’ Union there, a teacher and school principal for 30 years, Fathi al-Sharif, was the commander of Hamas in Lebanon until justice was delivered to him some two years ago.
UNRWA knows about this. Philippe Lazzarini, who was the head of UNRWA for the past five years and has now retired, should be held accountable. There is no way he could have been unaware that the heads of UNRWA teachers’ unions were Hamas leaders.
They pretend they didn’t know, but the fact is we released a 100-page report showing that Fathi al-Sharif, every day on his Facebook page, was posting photos of himself with Hamas and other terrorist leaders.
They knew. They were complicit. They need to be held to account.
Calev Ben-David, ILTV: You mentioned the Board of Peace, but that board does include—or is planning to include—representatives from Turkey and Qatar, countries that have certainly defended UNRWA, to say the very least. That appears to have had some influence, at least in the Trump administration’s planning for Gaza.
How hopeful are you, under those circumstances, that some kind of alternative structure will be established in Gaza to replace UNRWA’s functions?
Hillel Neuer: You’re right to point the finger at Qatar and Turkey. They have been legitimizers, funders, and enablers of Hamas. Hamas leaders were based in Qatar, and many are now in Turkey. The Turkish foreign minister was openly tweeting just a few days ago about hosting a Hamas leader.
If these countries have any influence over the process, it will be a failure. Hopefully they won’t.
The fact is, the people speaking for the Board of Peace are condemning UNRWA so clearly that whoever is in charge of the Board of Peace today is not Qatar or Turkey—it’s someone else.
I agree that Qatar and Turkey should not have any influence on the ground in Gaza. Otherwise, we’re going to repeat what we saw before: enabling Hamas and sending Palestinians into a very dark future.
If we get rid of UNRWA and tell Palestinians that the future is not about resentment and war but about building a future, they could have a great future.
But no future administration in Gaza can succeed unless people sign on the dotted line that they are not refugees. Otherwise, any money sent there will once again go into terror tunnels.
They have to accept that wherever they are living is where they are going to build their future. It’s not about creating terror tunnels to destroy Israel.
Calev Ben-David, ILTV: Briefly, is there something Israel should be doing more of? As you mentioned, they came to this somewhat belatedly. You more or less led the way on this issue. Is there more the Israeli government should be doing?
Hillel Neuer: Actually, I’d like to give credit to Dr. Einat Wilf, who wrote the primary book on this with Dr. Adi Schwartz, The War of Return.
They explained that, for a decade, they had been calling out UNRWA. Einat Wilf, a former Knesset member who is now running with her own party, has said that when she approached IDF leaders, they would tell her, “It buys us quiet.”
But that was a false quiet. It was an illusion of temporary quiet. At the end of the day, the fact that there are Hamas murderers who want to murder Jews is a symptom. The real problem is the education they receive.
UNRWA, whether in Lebanon, Jordan, or elsewhere, educates Palestinians that their mission is to dismantle Israel.
Israelis did not want to recognize that reality. They were living under an illusion. That included the defense establishment.
That illusion blew up in their faces on October 7.
