With evidence that UNRWA employees took park in kidnapping and murder on October 7 now much discussed, we turned to Dr. Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on UNRWA, to get a fuller picture.
Towards the end of January, Israel announced that it had concrete evidence that workers for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency, which is the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, had participated in the October 7th massacre in a number of different ways. Israel did not originally report exactly how people were involved, but eventually, Israel's Channel 12 began to reveal some of the evidence. It revealed that one of the twelve men implicated was an UNRWA teacher accused of being armed with an antitank missile, while another teacher had been accused of filming a hostage being taken captive during the attack on October 7th. Another one of the staffers, who was also an elementary school teacher, was a Hamas commander and participated in the killing at Kibbutz Be'eri, while a person who was a social worker for UNRWA was apparently also involved in kidnapping an IDF soldier's body on that day. Altogether, about 12 people in UNRWA were at least accused of participating, and some people believe that the numbers of those who were involved were probably much higher.
In order to try to understand a bit about UNRWA, where it comes from, why it was formed, what its responsibility is, and how it ultimately became so deeply enmeshed in Hamas, or Hamas enmeshed in it, we turn to one of the world's leading experts on UNRWA, Asaf Romirowsky. Asaf Romirowsky is the executive director of SPME- Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. He's a senior nonresident research fellow at the Begin- Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) and an Affiliate Professor at the University of Haifa. He's trained as a Middle East historian and holds a PhD in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King's College in London and has published widely on a wide array of aspects of the Israeli- Arab conflict and American foreign policy in the Middle East. He's the co-author of "Religion, Politics and Origins of Palestinian Refugee Relief" and a contributor to the Case Against Academic Boycotts in Israel. His work's been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, The American Interest, The New Republic, Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Tablet, among many, many others. Very, very grateful to Dr. Romirowsky for taking the time to speak with us and to give us a really thorough background into what it is that UNRWA does and what it is that UNRWA was meant to do.
So, Asaf, I guess one could say that everybody has that moment when things kind of coalesce and what they've been working on for a lifetime, all of a sudden, matters to a lot more people. And if this was ever a moment when somebody like you, who's a scholar, who's written about UNRWA, has written about something that many more people are talking about, perhaps, than ever before in history, I think maybe this is the moment. So I'm really very grateful to you on behalf of all of our listeners, for taking the time, really, to give us a class in UNRWA, how it got started, why it got started, why the UN decided to create an organization for Palestinians when it didn't do that for other refugee populations, why Israel was enthusiastic or certainly in favor of the creation of UNRWA at the beginning when things started to go bad. How bad are things? Can it be fixed? Those are the few subjects that we'd love to hear you talk about. So, I'm going to let you take us through.
Great. Well, first of all, I appreciate the opportunity. It's great to be here and any opportunity to talk about UNRWA, you know, as you said, I've devoted the greater time of the past three plus decades to the topic. So UNRWA was created to begin with as a special case study, a special case in the sense that they were put in a category, where they're created by the UN, and they were created as an article 22, which also means that it allowed donor countries to also, in essence, create their own politics and infrastructure that allow them to define who they are.
UNRWA is uniquely defined like no other refugee organization. There are two refugee organizations worldwide. Just to put it into the context. One is called UNRWA, and the other one, its sister organization, the UNHCR, the UN High Commission for Refugees, not to be confused with the Human Rights Council, the same acronym, but two different organizations. UNRWA had the opportunity, and really, in this kind of vehicle and in this milieu that they created for UNRWA was created before the UNHCR. So, because it was created before the UNHCR in 1949, and the UNHCR came along in 1950, it had the opportunity to really to define and redefine itself.
UNRWA defines an Arab Palestinian refugee as anybody who was in Mandatory Palestine between 1946 and 1948. And the kicker is, and their descendants. No other refugee population worldwide has the ability and opportunity to have the lineage population. Beyond that, they really also got creative over the years, Muslim lineage is patriarchal. They were able to expand it, to make it matriarchal. So, every Palestinian has been taught from generation to generation until this very day that they are a Palestinian refugee in perpetuity, and they all have the privilege and opportunity of the so called right of return, which is a golden calf that is basically part and parcel with Palestinian identity.
Is the right of return an UNRWA thing? UNRWA actually says that the Palestinians have a right of return?
UNRWA actually adopts the right of return. And in essence, the UN resolution that calls for a right of return when it comes to 194, actually, they've adopted it. What they say in their original language and later on in subsequent languages, is until there is resolution for the Arab Israeli, then Israeli Palestinian dynamic, and they have basically become de facto the gatekeeper of the one single issue that I have argued over the years that maintains and sustains the conflict, which is the refugee issue.
And let me just ask you one other question, one second. How many refugees were there, let's say, in 1949, January, February 1949, after the war?
Right. Okay. So that's also a very good question, and it's good to point out exactly the numbers. The scholarship differs between 10% to 15% as far as, there was a big debate from my friends, from colleagues like Benny Morris and Efraim Karsh. You're talking about between 615 to 750, more or less. I think that the accepted number that I would go with is maybe 650, based on all the scholarship that I've seen, and there's been a lot of studies between those two scholars who've debated the numbers post '48. But that's what you're looking at, 650 or so to 715.
Okay. And today, how many people are categorized by UNRWA as Palestinian refugees?
So, according to UNRWA's numbers, as of today, you're talking about 5.9 million. And at the trajectory that we're going, based on this lineage, based on this narrative that I'm talking to you about, it's only going to only grow from generation to generation, all demanding a right of return. And also critical, important to our conversation, that the financial support that UNRWA receives, or demands for that matter, is based on the so-called existence of Palestinian refugees. But interestingly enough, also important to note for your listeners to understand, Arab Israelis who are naturalized citizens of the state of Israel, according to UNRWA's account, are also considered to be refugees. And so, this configuration, and the numbers, the growth, the natural growth, the so-called natural growth, resurrection of the dead, everything that I've studied over the years and looking at these numbers, this is where it all comes from.
Now, why did the world adopt one definition for who qualifies as a Palestinian refugee and a different definition altogether for who qualifies as a refugee of any other lineage, ethnicity? How did that come to be?
Well, so that was an advantage that was taking place post 1948, because the United Nations in its kind of nascent, early days was really able to see this as what they defined as a temporary problem, a temporary problem that I would argue has no end. So, the temporariness of the problem itself is what allowed them to define and redefine itself and go back and forth. And it's interesting, and this goes to your early question in our opening remarks, is how the Arab world saw this. And so, the Arab world really, and this ties into the psychology of 1948 and Nakba ideology and Nakba history in general. The Arab world took no responsibility for the outcome of 1948 at large. The Nakba is, this was the so-called Holocaust that was imposed upon them. And the results of the Nakba are the existence of Palestinian Arab refugees to remind the world of how awful the Nakba was and this kind of generational narrative.
So what has happened is that the Arab world predicated its early money. And by the way they predicated this is also critical to understand, the Arab world predicated their money based on the transformation of UNRWA into an Arab Palestinian political arm in the first decade of UNRWA's existence.
And really, according to all the early mandates that I've seen and reviewed as far as UN resolutions, UNRWA was supposed to be an apolitical arm, supposed to be a neutral organization that would allow neutrality and to allow to work with the refugees. But the Arab world predicated money becoming that political arm. And at the same time, they've also denied and refused to accept what all of us call in American foreign policy, the policy of resettlements. And so, this is also part of the argument, by making them stateless, by making them a token, by making them a symbol. And I would argue that even going beyond that, that Palestinian identity has become synonymous to Palestinian refugeeness, which is why no Arab Palestinian has wanted to give up the Palestinian refugee identity. Not only that, I would even go beyond that today. Even at times when Abbas, in his day, dared to put the refugee question on the table, the debate about the right of return, it was seen, the reaction was horrific by the Arab world. It's seen as a divine right that is that no Arab leader has the religious authority to give up what we call this divine right of Palestinian refugees.
So, let me just try to understand here. This notion that UNRWA goes from being a relief organization to a political organization. If I was studying UNRWA, as you have done for many decades, where would I see internal to UNRWA, the change in that self-understanding? Where would I first begin to see the notion that UNRWA has become a political body rather than a relief body?
So, the change really takes place in the 1960s. In the first decade of UNRWA's existence, like I said, they have tried to stay true to their mandate and to carry out, according to, I'm quoting their own documents here, UNRWA was established to, and I quote here, "carry out, in collaboration with local government, the direct relief and works program as recommended". Actually, another part of the story of all of this is that the preamble to UNRWA were actually the Quakers was the economic survey mission that was trying to assess and survey what the Arab world can do. And so, all of these things were part of what was happening at the time.
The American foreign policy, which was involved in some of these economic survey missions were based on individuals who were involved in the Tennessee Valley here in the United States and who were serving agricultural issues, economic issues and whatnot. And American foreign policy in the 50s and 60s was based on what I call the three R's, reintegration, resettlement and repatriation. And so, the resettlement aspect is the one critical issue that UNRWA refused to do, and that's the R in UNRWA, refugee works and relief agency. The idea of what relief should be like has to do with resettlement. And over the years, which is this political transformation has to do when the works in W has kindly but not so kindly, I would say, by design, transformed itself into education, which is how UNRWA began to have the largest vehicle of education and the largest educational system for the majority of Palestinians.
Okay, I want to come back to the education thing in a second. But in response to this whole outrage about UNRWA and the participation of some of its employees in the horrors of October 7, there's been a lot of press. And some of what I've been reading shows the various governments who contribute, who fund UNRWA and their relative amounts. And the Arab countries are a small piece of this. United States bears the overwhelming majority, and then it goes down and down and down. But how is it that the Arab countries which contributed so little or relatively little to the funding of UNRWA, they were able to turn it into a political organization, why didn't the United States, which was basically funding it, say, no, you can't go through that transformation?
Well, because this is what I consider to be in the kind of diplomatic history here, a kind of a cognitive dissonance that exists in general. I mean, when you say to the world, refugees, we have an obligation to solve them. Historically speaking, there have been millions of refugees since World War II. All have been resolved and resettled. And by the way, to the point that I was mentioning before, UNHCR, you can only be a refugee one generation. We all have our story of refugeeness, as Jews specifically. We talk about how we got and the story ends, and that becomes part of who we are. Not the case with the UNRWA narrative, the so-called existence and the reminder of the statelessness was predicated on the idea that this will be resolved soon. And it's always about to be worked out.
By the way, as I mentioned before, one of the first groups that were involved that really led, was kind of the string that led into my deep dive into all of this that I was saying that the American French Service Committee, the Quakers, the American Quakers and the British Quakers had the mandate over UNRWA before UNRWA was created. They were the preamble to UNRWA. And there were numerous agreements between Sharett and the Quakers and others talking about you know, let's talk about resolution, and the critical part was accepting Israel's right to exist in peace. The Arab world constantly denied that.
But the United States in its larger refugee relief narrative believe that by giving, I would say naively, tools for reintegration, skill set that will lead to resettlement and ultimately lead to people wanting to better their lives, move on in the world and become similar to what Jews did. I mean, you know, that was the understanding. The politicalness and the understanding of the Arab world understood early on that if they refuse resettlement, if they leave them stateless, it would remind the world that they have no responsibility for the Nakba. The fact that there is an existence of refugees to the mind of the Arab world is because their predetermined understanding of 1948 was lost. And because they lost, they take no responsibility for it. We have to maintain this consistent reminder to the world that they are to blame for it. So, it's their responsibility to solve it. I have documents showing that they talk about the former Soviet Union and the United States because they allowed Israel to win the war of 1948- '49. It's their responsibility to solve it. And with the exception to this very day of Jordan, which is a different case study, no Arab world, I mean, Lebanon, we can talk about that later on, has given some privileges, has ever afforded the Palestinians citizenship because of that consistent by design understanding of who they are and what they represent. Until this very day, I mean, modern day Arafat, bin Laden, others have all used the Palestinian refugees as kind of a propaganda symbolism of the statelessness of the refugees to motivate individuals to continue the fight, the struggle for Palestine.
Okay, so they have this educational world, and we're hearing a lot about UNRWA schools lately, both because of what's in them and what's under them. When does or is it from the very beginning? When does UNRWA become, I guess, more edgy, more hostile to Israel? Or is it that way from the beginning? And how early does Israel perceive of UNRWA as a genuine problem as opposed to an organization that is acting differently than it wished it would? When does Israel get alarm bells?
Israel starts getting alarm bells along the way. Israel starts to see these problems as early on. I mean, for example, so there was already, and I'll quote for your listeners here, which I think is a very telling understanding of this but, you know, Israel's first director general of the foreign ministry, Walter Eytan, made a very famous quote, understanding how the Arab world saw the Palestinians. And I quote here, "Palestinian refugees were a gift. Arab propaganda which succeeded by preventing the facts and turning them into the gravest political liability with which Israel has to contend with for the first decade of her existence. Wherever in the western world anti-Israel feelings exist, it draws on the inspiration primarily of Arab refugees. For all her efforts, Israel has never succeeded in freeing herself from a reproach level by the Arab propaganda. And she drove out the refugees in the first place, has since cruelly denied them the elementary human return of returning home, quote unquote. And in doing so, she has defied the United Nations." And that is Walter Eytan, already in the 1950s, already understanding that this is a problem, which is a fierce problem that the Arab world is going to face.
I will take it even further. I was able to unearth, and me and my colleague Alex Joffe wrote an article in Middle Eastern Studies, years ago about one of the most cited quotes in the Zionist corpus, made by a very famous British general back in 1952 who was the first head of UNRWA in Aman in '51, an individual by the name of Lieutenant Sir Alexander Galloway. And the quote goes on deeper. And he made this quote in '52. "It is perfectly clear that the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations, as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether the refugees live or die." And these two observations have been, and by the way, that quote, which is part of the story itself, was lost in the Zionist corpus, given its affiliation. We resurrected the authorship and really, the story of Galloway itself. Galloway was fired for making that quote in '51 obviously. There is a long history of the fact of individuals, you can't count them, maybe on two hands these days, of individuals who've aired UNRWA's dirty laundry and lost their jobs because of it, because of this orthodoxy.
But to the original point of your first question, Israel identified this as a problem. They tried to work this. Out. You know, by the way, the same quote that Galloway gave when he was giving a tour of Aman was entered into a congressional testimony in '54, '55 and '56. I mean, you've seen a series of red flags that people have spoken about this, yet there has been this need to, because of the push and pull of the political narrative, to keep it alive.
Furthermore, what UNRWA has managed to do is create itself and maintain itself as the only game in town. And so, this is what created the conundrum for Israel for years to work with UNRWA. I mean, the fact that we need to work with them, that they really want to work with Israel. Part of the politicization, and this is also critical to understand, is that to date, UNRWA has become the largest employer of Palestinians. So, you have this environment, this vehicle that has basically allowed what I would consider to be what is called in business scholarship, regulatory capture, basically, where the client has hijacked the service provider. And so, the fact that there's a very low percentage of international individuals who have any kind of oversight, and the locals and the Palestinians are the ones dictating what UNRWA does and does not do. This is also part of this transformation that allowed them to politicize and create this massive machine of so-called refugee relief by the individuals themselves. And so that's also part of the political infrastructure that we are seeing till this very day.
Just a quick number question before I go on. How many people does UNRWA employ in the Gaza Strip now? About 13,000? Is that the number that people use?
More or less, yes.
And of the 13,000, almost all 13,000 are Gazan Palestinians?
More or less, yeah, they are. I mean, I would argue that they are the Gazan Palestinians, which are indeed Egyptian by default. Yes, correct.
But there's not Europeans, Americans, Germans, whatever, people from the west walking around supervising what UNRWA does?
No, so again, there's a very small percentage of individuals who are doing that. They're the ones who are getting the heat. We've seen over the years, the executive generals, the secretary generals are indeed foreign, and they come with their own politics and whatnot. But the actual work on the ground, if you don't buy in, hook, line and synchronize the narrative, then you're fired. The case study of Galloway is a perfect case study. Andrew Whitley was another individual who aired the dirty laundry and was also fired. There has been ongoing series of these issues, really few who've dared to have that kind of audacity to air and speak truth about what's going on.
Their spokesmen, on the other hand, are foreigners. You might remember individuals like Chris Gunness, who was a former reporter for the BBC, a known anti- Semite. He was the one who went on Al Jazeera a few years ago with the fake dead baby, the bloody baby, saying, this is the byproduct of Israel. These are the kind of pyrotechnics that play into you know the game as far as maintaining what Israel does and does not do as it relates to UNRWA itself.
Say something about UNRWA's educational operation. There was a clip that we're going to actually probably post in the next few days, or maybe we can post it the same day that we publish this, that Eretz Nehederet, which is sort of Israel's Saturday Night Live, of a Palestinian teacher with a gun and this and that, using Mein Kampf as a way of teaching biology and English and history. And Israelis are obviously making a lot of meat out, a lot of hay out of what's going on with UNRWA these days, and Eretz Nehederet obviously, is not short of material these days. But in a more serious vein, what can you tell us about UNRWA's educational operation, which is, does it provide all of the education in the Gaza Strip or some of it? How much of it?
So, it provides the majority of it, including also in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and whatnot, for years, during...
The majority being 51% or 98%. I mean, where in that range?
I would say closer to probably 75% as far as the educational stuff that plays into the conversation. And not only that, my colleagues, for example, at IMPACT-se and other places, have all translated the textbooks, MEMRI has, other organizations have you know to put it out there. For years, since, we have demanded congressional oversight on some of these issues. Some of the evidence that we've brought forth has been the textbooks. This is not an education towards peace and reconciliation, and looking at, to see changing the textbooks to make sure that there was actually education, not towards jihadism and martyrology, but towards coexistence. And that has never happened. UNRWA refused to do that.
In the Oslo years leading up to disengagement, still you had enough information to kind of figure out how the infrastructure of the schools and the unions, we knew which one of the unions were Hamas unions and how they were basically within the university system and within the K-12 twelve environment were able to use the textbooks and how they were utilizing this stuff.
UNRWA superintendents have become also officials within the PA. There's a tandem operation that goes on here, I would argue even more this is something that I wanted to mention before. UNRWA been acting really as a shadow government for the PA. I mean, in the sense that the kind of services that they're providing are really, if there were to be a functioning PA, state to be whatnot, it should be the services of the Palestinian Authority. But you see this kind of dual movement in this. And UNRWA has maintained the educational component of all of this. And that's why you're seeing what Eretz Nehederet did. And so, you have, when it comes to doctors and teachers, UNRWA vehicles have been used and abused to transport suicide bombers, munitions, schools have been used as launch pads for terrorism and whatnot. And so, when you ask them point blank, why are you teaching? They said, Hamas is forcing us. This is kind of trying to get away from actually the real answer. But Hamas are the Hamas teachers. And so, you see in UNRWA classrooms, you see pictures of Hamas members. I mean, there's a symbiotic relationship. This also has to do with the fact that UNRWA does no background checks and is refused, by the way, to accept the checklist of Israel and the United States because they say our lists are tainted. So, when they do background checks on employees to be, they only use their small pool of individuals. And so, they see being, it's well known that when they talk about Palestinian society, they see PIJ, Hamas, al Aqsa Martyr Brigades, as political members of Palestinian society and they do not distinguish between members of what we call here in the US, foreign terrorist organizations and the employees. So, they hire them. It's seen as diversity, for lack of better term.
So, diversity advocates would be very happy. Now, I want to leave the whole question of what they say about Israel and coexistence and all that aside. Here's a question that has nothing to do with the conflict per se, but since you know UNRWA so well, if I'm a 10th grader in Gaza going to an UNRWA school, forget what I'm taught about Jews and Zionism and Israel and all that. Just leave all that aside. What am I actually learning? I mean, how does a Gaza high school experience curriculum compare to a middle of the road western high school? Are they learning science? Are they learning math? Are they learning English? What do they learn?
Some. I mean, there is some of that. I mean, just to clarify, and just to be clear here, the majority of UNRWA's hold is on the primary education. I would say leading up to middle school, and a little bit beyond that. On the high school level, it's a bit different. By the way, it's also important to note that from an educational standpoint, per capita, Palestinians, Arab Palestinians, have been the largest recipients of Fulbright scholarships. You're talking about a very educated society. Quickly in the 60s and 70s, they were one of the fastest growing educationally wise, which a whole other part of the story is how they hijacked American academia. But we can talk about that if we have time for that. But there is sciences, there is Quranic studies, there is biology and whatnot.
There is a very strong politicization that is incorporated into anything. And that has to do with the two basic narratives that have steamrolled the understanding of their existence. And that has to do with the struggle for Palestine and the so-called occupation. Those are motivators for the existence itself. And that is being used as a background to everything that they do. Again, they get beyond that. There is a lot of movement from the Palestinian diaspora coming in and out. And so, you do have movements at large as far as education. But this kind of indoctrination predominantly takes place in the primary school aspect, which UNRWA does control heavily. And when you talk about, Palestinian universities I mean, you see this kind of a continuation of that basic narrative that was established in the primary foundational years.
Okay, so let's come back to the present. Let's come back to January, February 2024. Israel said almost from the outset that it had reason to believe that UNRWA employees had been involved in some of the atrocities on October 7th. And then in the last week or so, the United States came out and said that it's seen the evidence and it agreed with it. I think the secretary general of the United Nations also said that he'd seen it and was very concerned. And now the actual specific accusations of what they did are out there. I'm going to go out on a very, very long limb and say that you were not surprised that there were people that were taking part in this, because as far as you're describing it, the line between the Hamas and Palestinian society and UNRWA is a very thin, if not nonexistent line altogether. So, we're not surprised by that. Maybe horrified, but not surprised.
By way of beginning to draw us now towards the conclusion of our conversation. Where do we go from here? In other words, is UNRWA so thoroughly corrupt that there's just absolutely no way to fix this thing? And the best thing that the world could do for the Palestinians and the conflict would be to entirely shut it down? And if we do that, do we create something else? Do we try to get a Palestinian government, either in Gaza and/ or the West Bank, where a government does these sort of things? Would the Palestinian population put up with that? If you could have a magic wand that was somewhat realistic, you have to work in the context of the world as it is. What should we do now? Is this thing fixable or should we just trash it?
It's a good question, and look, I think that UNRWA to my mind needs to be pushed out and abolished long term. And I've argued this for a long time. And I've written policy papers on this aspect, but I think that for years UNRWA has, as I've described to you I think this morning, has a monopolization over all these facets of Palestinian life. UNRWA needs to be phased out. To take your point a bit deeper. There's no transparency and accountability under UNRWA when it comes to their monies. If you have the audacity to ask for an audit, they bulk at that. They won't tell you how many laptops they bought, salaries and whatnot. It's one big black hole. We can't decipher what's going into all of this. And for the state of Israel, which I'm happy that there is full acknowledgement of UNRWA being complacent with all of this. But for years, Israel was also part of the problem, because Israel has argued that there's nobody else to work with and we have to work with UNRWA and so, you know, the policy of Israel has been over the years to kind of say yes, but no. And we know the problems and it's never been a full...And I've argued that it's been an American issue because we pay the money, and this is a whole other deeper debate within COGAT and how Israel worked within the civil administration and UNRWA as its client as part of that.
But now there's an acknowledgement and there's been a movement that UNRWA does harbor terrorism and whatnot. I think that in the day after scenario, wherever we're going with this, there has to be either other international agencies in order to break this monopoly that you could divvy it up by service and functionality, get some accountability and transparency. Whether it's governments are going to play into all of this. As I alluded to before, the PA is non-functioning. If the PA were to do any of these things, as far as de facto, all of these so-called workers should be civil servants of the PA, but we know they're not doing that either. So there has to be an entire frame of mind, but UNRWA its current existence and as it existed for close to over 75 years, as far as in its existence at large, cannot continue to operate this way because it has been laundering money, it has been promoting terrorism, and it promotes the one single issue that will never come to fruition, and that is a full right of return, which is de facto the demographic arm to eliminate the state of Israel.
And so, this is what UNRWA is out there and what it's been doing, and it has been using diplomatic verbiage to try to get away with all of this. But the fact of the matter is that it cannot continue like this. And we have an obligation to stop that. And so, what we're seeing today, to my mind, is the cacophony of all the symptoms of the infrastructure that we allowed to grow, metastasize since the beginning. And this cannot continue going forward. We got to find other solutions. And beyond that, there has to be a reeducation of Palestinian identity that they can, if they want to go forward, they have to put aside the refugee narrative. Otherwise, you're going to be in this conundrum from generation to generation who fully believe there's going to be a full right of return and we're going to continue paying for it. American taxpayer dollars, European taxpayer dollars. Israel is going to suffer as a result of all of this. This cannot continue in this current configuration.
My last question is, what the word "cannot" means? That it means should not is very clear from what you've been saying and teaching us. Cannot-- how optimistic are you that if you and I have this chat in 24 months, we're going to see significant change?
Unfortunately, you know again, we're into now political season here in the United States and you're already seeing the Democratic Party bulking at some of these issues as far as aid, because of the cognitive dissonance as it relates to, we can't starve refugees, et cetera, et cetera. And so, I think this kind of amoeba that we've created in all of this, I think that there's still going to be a lot of push and pull. You saw it as a simple difference between the Trump administration and the Biden administration. Trump froze the money. Biden reissued the money. There was frozen money now, but now they're asking for more money to resurrect, UNRWA is going on crying out, we have no money. Who else is going to do all these services if not us? There has to be a concerted effort. And I will also, which has not happened because the Arab world has gotten a pass for this, that the Arab world also needs to take responsibility for some of these issues. This is where the refusal of settlement of Arab Palestinians has taken place because of the Arab world, they prefer the west takes care of this. And so, if we're going to work with the Jordanians, with the Egyptians, and create better vehicles and mechanisms, that needs to happen.
But again, it's a long game, and we have to play this long game. But I think that 24 months from now, we'll still be talking about these issues, what ifs, how to do this and whatnot, because Israel is still going to be in Gaza. That's the other part which Israel can't leave at this point and how all this is going to be laid out. That's yet to be seen.
Okay, that's very helpful. You know I was thinking, as you were just wrapping this up, that in 2023, I think our listeners learned a lot more about Israeli jurisprudence and the operation of the Israeli Supreme Court than they ever imagined that they would have either known or wanted to know. And now, because of the way that 2024 is unraveling, people are going to learn a lot about a lot of things that they probably never thought they'd be interested in. And knowing about UNRWA is obviously now critical. One can't understand part of this conflict and part of the hope of solving this conflict if one doesn't know about UNRWA's history and its operation and the problematics. So, it's a much bigger issue than the number of people who participated in the horrors of October 7th. It really cuts to the very core of the ongoing nature of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And I think that without your explanation today, most of our listeners would have really no idea that that's the case. So, it's really a privilege to be able to talk to the person who's probably written more about this than anybody else on the planet. I'm very grateful to you for taking the time to teach us and hope that the next time we talk, you'll be able to tell us that at least some progress has been made. But until then, my deepest thanks once again on behalf of all of us who just had the opportunity to learn from you.
Thank you, and I appreciate the hospitality.