"Jared Kushner may be right in seeking to disrupt the current structure of US assistance to the Palestinians. Since 1950, America has contributed more than $6 billion to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). UNRWA supports roughly 5 million registered Palestinian refugees, and their descendants, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, who were displaced during the 1948 and 1967 Israeli-Arab wars. About 30,000 of UNRWA's 5 million Palestinians are first generation refugees... Like any organization established in the 1950s, it is time for 21st Century disruption...
UNRWA subsidizes dysfunctionality and an unsustainable status quo in most of the Levant... Kushner is right to demand a fundamental re-ordering of UNRWA. The UN agency serves as a welfare and humanitarian relief provider which after 70 years subsidizes despair and continued conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis... The world today is vastly different from the one in 1950 when UNRWA was created. Disrupting the UNRWA's organizational model is essential if the Middle East wants to see a different future."