UNRWA was established after the 1948-9 Arab-Israel war. It was an early attempt at dealing with refugees from war after WWII ended. There was a major effort to register Arab refugees with the only criteria for registration being that the person had lived in Palestine during the Mandate period (a year before the end of the war in 1949). Some 3/4 of a million refugees were registered (about ¾ of the adults probably could not truly claim that their parents were Palestinian, but the British Mandate Authorities never recorded Arab migration into Palestine from other Arab areas). UNRWA initially set up temporary camps to shelter them and provided food using a ration card system that rapidly became corrupt.
UNRWA facilities inside Israel were replaced by Israeli governmental services and UNRWA in Israel was closed down. Elsewhere, the program was soon recognized as having both political and economic advantages and was renewed regularly at the UN under the watchful eyes of other Arab nations. Those nations kept the Arab refugees out of the control o the UN High Commissioner on Refugees office which was established after UNRWA. This was important because the UNHCR is required to repatriate OR resettle refugees, but UNRWA has been locked into a definition requiring only repatriation. That made registered refugees a captive population for a future Arab Palestinian State. Local residents were recruited to work for UNRWA. The tent camps were replaced by hastily built ‘permanent’ homes and the refugees remaining in them consigned to status of captives (not permitted to acquire permanent residency outside the camps, and often, not entitled to work in the countries hosting the camps).
In 2022/3 there were camps in Jordan (10 camps, 169 schools, 25 health centers for a over 2 million registered refugees), Syria (9 official camps and 3 unofficial ones, 102 schools, 38 health facilities for about half a million refugees. Many refugees in Syria fled the Syrian civil war nd went to Turkey, claiming to be Syrians in order to escape the camps, about 30,000 are currently in Lebanon), Lebanon (12 camps, 64 schools, 27 health facilities for nearly half a million refugees, about a third of them have managed to leave), The West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority (19 camps, mostly small, 96 schools, 43 health facilities for about 870,000 registered refugees), and Gaza (8 camps, mostly large, 183 schools, 22 health facilities for about 1.5 million registered refugees). Prior to the current war UN schools, hospitals, and clinics (and tunnels under them) were a favorite location for Hamas to set up military bases for command, logistics, and combat. UNRWA employees were regularly enrolled in Hamas in various roles. Many were active combatants. Others drove ambulances which Hamas employed as a safe method of moving their personnel from place to place inside the Gaza Strip.
The higher administrative echelon of UNRWA has devoted a major effort to denying any connections between their organization and Hamas. But the names of UNRWA local employees appear on Hamas rosters as well as on the UNRWA payroll.
Wetherhorn 