"The big, expensive, terrible program that desperately needs reform is UNRWA. This UN bureaucracy was established in 1950 after Israel's War of Independence, when a coalition of Arab states failed to wipe the new nation off the map. The war the Arabs started but lost created around 650,000 Arab refugees. These refugees were then exploited by the UN and the Arab states, which realized they could be used as pawns in the permanent war on Israel's legitimacy.
UNRWA was created, and along with it a clever new definition for refugees: For Palestinians, unique among all people in the world, refugee status would be hereditary. This has been terrible for Palestinians, but it has worked splendidly in maintaining a false grievance for Israel's detractors, who can blame the constantly growing 'refugee crisis' on Israel. Today there are 5.2 million 'refugees' living in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, only a fraction of a percentage of whom were even alive during the war in 1948 and 1949.
As the number of fake refugees increases, so does UNRWA's budget, which today is well north of $1 billion a year. Since the beginning the United States has donated close to $6 billion in total, and is (by far) UNRWA's single biggest donor at around $400 million a year. The United States is contributing to the cruel exploitation of millions of Palestinians, who are raised in dependency, grievance, and victimhood, and taught in UNRWA schools and community centers to believe in the fantasy of Israel's destruction and their 'return' to homes they never had.
Two suggestions for reform:
1) In the short term, a shot across the bow. UNRWA has something called a 'cash assistance' program that involves UNRWA literally handing out cash to people in Gaza (controlled by Hamas) and Syria (controlled by Iran). There is no accountability or oversight for these disbursements, which in 2016 amounted to an astonishing $192.3 million...
UNRWA's cash handouts program undoubtedly involves an enormous amount of waste, fraud, and diversion of funds to terrorists and other bad actors. Future U.S. donations to UNRWA should be conditioned on either the termination, or the strict reduction and dramatic reform, of this program.
2) In the long term, condition U.S. assistance on a change in UNRWA's definition of a refugee. U.S. and international law reject hereditary refugee status for obvious reasons. UNRWA should adopt the refugee definition that is observed everywhere else in the world, including at the UN: that of the 1951 Geneva Convention. This is the policy change UNRWA fears the most-and it is the policy change that will do the most good, because it will allow the descendants of refugees from 1948 to finally have a chance at normal lives... It is time for UNRWA's mission to be transformed from enlarging the number of 'refugees' and promoting an ever-expanding problem, to helping integrate Palestinians into the countries where they live, consistent with the treatment of all other refugees in recent history."