Global Policy Forum

By Greg Myre

For years, Israel has feuded with the United Nations refugee agency for Palestinians over a wide range of issues, and recently Israel thought it had found a smoking gun to press its case. Based on a grainy videotape shot from a spy plane, Israel asserted that Palestinians in Gaza City had placed a rocket of the type being launched against Israel into a United Nations ambulance. But what Israel thought was a rocket appeared on closer examination to be a folded stretcher, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said. Israel backed off its charge.

Still, the case highlighted the running battle between Israel and the refugee agency, which was established in 1950 and now has more than four million Palestinians on its rolls. The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, dispatched a team to investigate similar Israeli accusations in recent years. The agency has grown into a huge operation, with 25,000 employees, almost all of them Palestinians, and its continued existence is a symbol of the unresolved Middle East conflict that has left Palestinians in limbo for decades.

In the past four years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, the agency's role has expanded to meet the urgent needs of Palestinians who have lost their livelihoods and homes because of the conflict. The refugee agency is widely praised by Palestinians, but Israel contends that the agency's Palestinian workers have helped Palestinian militants, and the militants have often gained access to United Nations ambulances, schools and other facilities.

"Israel's hope is that U.N.R.W.A. will live up to the standards set by the international community on terrorism," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, referring to the agency by its initials. He added that the agency's "behavior is in contradiction of the U.N.'s own standards." "They are turning a blind eye," said Mr. Gold, a former envoy to the United Nations. "This leads to a situation where U.N. facilities can be exploited." In response, the agency's director, Peter Hansen, said Israel had frequently raised false or inflated accusations against it and had consistently hampered aid efforts by imposing stringent travel restrictions against its personnel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Lionel Brisson, director of operations at the agency's offices in Gaza City, acknowledged that some employees, as well as armed Palestinians, had violated the agency's policies, but he said that those cases had been rare and that the agency had dealt with them. "We have been able to operate in this explosive environment for so long because we maintain neutrality," Mr. Brisson said. "We are not engaged in politics, but it seems politics always comes running after us."

The feud is set against the backdrop of the Palestinian refugee issue, one of the most delicate in the Middle East conflict. Palestinians say the refugees must be allowed to return to their original land, and they cite United Nations resolutions to support their argument. Israel says it will never allow itself to be flooded with Palestinian refugees, saying to do so would destroy the Jewish character of the state.

Since 2001, Israel has arrested and indicted 17 of the agency's workers, accusing them of assisting militants, and seven have been convicted by military courts, the Israeli military said. In one case, Nahad Atallah was arrested two years ago in Gaza and accused of using his United Nations vehicle to transport armed Palestinians to sites to carry out attacks. He was convicted and is appealing, the agency said.

The Israeli government and military have assembled a long list of complaints against the refugee agency, including an incident in Gaza City in May, when four Palestinian gunmen climbed into a United Nations ambulance after placing a wounded comrade inside. The incident was captured by a television cameraman, and the Israeli military contends that the Palestinians were using the ambulance to escape. "This is not the first time terror organizations have made use of U.N.R.W.A. installations and vehicles in order to make their operational activity easier," the military said in a report.

But Mr. Brisson said the driver told the men to get out. When they refused and threatened to shoot him, he reluctantly drove them and the wounded man to a hospital. Israel has also criticized the agency's schools for using the same textbooks as the Palestinian Authority, saying the books preach incitement against Israel. "The education material raises the question of whether U.N.R.W.A. schools are educating for peace or hate," Mr. Gold said.

The agency says that it is standard policy around the world to use the same textbooks as government schools and that Palestinian textbooks have been revised in recent years and are less hostile toward Israel. Another Israeli grievance is that the agency employs members of Hamas and other militant factions. Mr. Hansen, the agency director, said recently that there were employees who supported groups like Hamas but that he was not aware of any who were active members in the faction, which is regarded as a terrorist group by Israel and the United States. With so many employees, "I would be very surprised if there weren't some employees who, for religious or nationalistic reasons, sympathize with Hamas," he told The Jerusalem Post.

In the middle of the latest dispute, Israel carried out a major military offensive against the largest Palestinian refugee camp, Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip, to pursue members of Hamas and other factions who have been firing rockets into Israel. The United Nations agency said the Israeli military had badly damaged two of its schools in the camp. More than 100,000 Palestinians live in the densely packed and impoverished area, which, like most refugee camps, is a hotbed of Palestinian militancy.

Palestinians say the United Nations agency is essential to meeting the basic needs of the poorest Palestinians. "The Palestinian Authority can't meet many social needs, and U.N.R.W.A. fills this very large gap," said Ziad Abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator and a former cabinet member. The agency here is the United Nations' oldest and largest refugee operation. It was established to handle some 700,000 Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948-49 war. The survivors and descendants of the original group now total more than four million. It serves refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the West Bank, while in Gaza, the agency's presence is so pervasive it seems more like a government.

More than 900,000 of Gaza's 1.3 million people are registered with the agency. With the economy a shambles, the agency provides food to half of the territory's population. The agency's school system in Gaza has more teachers and students than the parallel one administered by the Palestinian Authority. The agency provides housing, runs medical clinics, makes small business loans and has 8,000 Palestinian employees in Gaza alone. For Ahmed Abdullah, 40, an unemployed electrical technician in the Jabaliya camp, the agency is an integral part of his life. His parents came from Israel to Gaza as war refugees in 1948 and initially lived in tents. A few years later they received a simple cinderblock house from the agency. He was born in the house and has never lived anywhere else.

Mr. Abdullah and his wife, Asma, 39, were educated in the agency's schools. The five of their seven children who are in school are being educated by the United Nations agency, and the two others will join them when they are old enough. The youngest was born this month, and during the pregnancy, Mrs. Abdullah had checkups at a clinic operated by the agency, and while the delivery was at a government hospital, the refugee agency paid for it. "U.N.R.W.A. has done a lot for us and everyone else in this camp," Mr. Abdullah said.