Palestinians admit again: UNRWA’s role is political
This is the fourth time this year that Palestinian Media Watch is exposing an admission by the Palestinian Authority/PLO as to UNRWA being a political organization.
An article in WAFA, the official PA news agency, reported on a speech given by Ahmad Abu Houli at the UNRWA Advisory Commission meetings in Amman. Abu Houli, who is a PLO Executive Committee member and head of the PLO Department of Refugee Affairs, called on commission members "to halt the Israeli policy aimed at undermining the agency's humanitarian and political role."
This "political role" is the real reason the PA/PLO fights so hard to preserve UNRWA. While UNRWA presents itself to the world as a humanitarian agency, the Palestinian leadership repeatedly admits that UNRWA's primary importance is political—it is the international mechanism through which the Palestinians keep alive the so-called "right of return."
"PLO Executive Committee member and head of the PLO Department of Refugee Affairs Ahmad Abu Houli demanded that donors remove all restrictions and conditions imposed on UNRWA funding, sign multi-year funding agreements, and provide additional urgent assistance to cover the financial deficit in its current budget.
In a speech he delivered today at the UNRWA Advisory Commission meetings in the Jordanian capital of Amman, Abu Houli called on the commission members to push their governments to act urgently to halt the Israeli policy aimed at undermining the agency's humanitarian and political role...
He stressed his opposition to the recent efficiency and reduction measures taken by UNRWA's management, which harm workers' rights and job security, primarily: salary reductions, a 20% decrease in working hours, the termination of the contracts of hundreds of workers and professionals from the Gaza Strip who are residing in Egypt against their will, and the dismissal of 70 workers in Gaza based on false Israeli claims that were not investigated in a neutral and transparent manner..."
[WAFA, official PA news agency, June 18, 2026]
The "right of return" does not mean the return of a small number of original refugees from the 1948 War of Independence. It means granting hereditary refugee status to millions of Palestinian Arab descendants, most of whom were born and raised outside Israel. The goal is to maintain a permanent, expanding population of "refugees" who are told that their future lies not in the countries where they were born, but inside Israel. Implementing that demand would mean flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians and ending Israel's existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Abu Houli's latest statement therefore once again demonstrates the fiction at the heart of UNRWA. If UNRWA's role were merely humanitarian, its services could be transferred to other international agencies, such as the UNHCR, as is done for refugees throughout the world. The PA/PLO, however, is pushing to keep UNRWA from being replaced precisely because it is not merely humanitarian. It is political infrastructure for the Palestinian war against Israel's legitimacy.
Abu Houli also attacked UNRWA management for firing 70 workers in Gaza whom Israel has exposed as being linked to terror organizations and involved in the October 7 atrocities. Abu Houli's concern was not that terrorists had penetrated a UN agency, rather it was that the agency had lost employees. In that way, he goes far beyond arguing against defunding, and instead becomes implicated in defending and obscuring the involvement of UN employees in the largest terror attack in Israel's history.