Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress makes the following findings: The total annual budget of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), including its core programs, emergency activities, and special projects, exceeds $1,400,000,000. The United States has long been the largest single contributing country to UNRWA. From 1950 to 2014, the United States has contributed almost $5,000,000,000 to UNRWA, including an average of over $260,000,000 per year between fiscal years 2009 and 2014.

UNRWA staff unions, including the teachers’ union, are frequently controlled by members affiliated with Hamas. The curriculum of UNRWA schools, which has been known to use the textbooks of their respective host governments or authorities, has a history of containing materials that are anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and supporting violent extremism. Despite UNRWA’s contravention of United States law and activities that compromise its strictly humanitarian mandate, UNRWA continues to receive United States contributions, including $294,000,000 in fiscal year 2013 and over $250,000,000 in just the first 6 months of 2014.

Assistance from the United States and other responsible nations allows UNRWA to claim that criticisms of the agency’s behavior are unfounded. UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness has dismissed concerns by stating that, If these baseless allegations were even halfway true, do you really think the U.S. and [European Commission] would give us hundreds of millions of dollars per year? . Former UNRWA general counsel James Lindsay noted in a 2009 report the following: The United States, despite funding nearly 75 percent of UNRWA’s national budget and remaining its largest single country donor, has mostly failed to make UNRWA reflect U.S. foreign policy objectives . . .

Recent U.S. efforts to shape UNRWA appear to have been ineffective . . . . [T]he United States is not obligated to fund agencies that refuse to check its rolls for individuals their donors do not wish to support. . A number of changes in UNRWA could benefit the refugees, the Middle East, and the United States, but those changes will not occur unless the United States, ideally with support from UNRWA’s other main financial supporter, the European Union, compels the agency to enact reforms. .

If the [UNRWA commissioner-general’s] power is used in ways that are conflict with the donors’ political objectives, it is up to the donors to take the necessary actions to ensure that their interests are respected. When they have done so, UNRWA—given the tight financial leash it has been on for most of its existence—has tended to follow their dictates, even if sometimes slowly. . During Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in 2014 in response to Hamas rocket attacks against Israel, UNRWA’s Commissioner General gave a press briefing ignoring the extraordinary efforts Israel goes to avoid civilian casualties, and not once in the nearly 1,100 word statement mentioning Hamas or condemning Hamas’ use of Palestinian children, women, and men as human shields in violation of international humanitarian law.

On July 16, 2014, UNRWA reported that it had found 20 missiles in one of its schools in Gaza, likely placed there by Hamas, and then instead of dismantling the missiles, UNRWA returned them to the relevant authorities in Gaza, and since Hamas controls Gaza, it likely turned them back over to Hamas. On July 22, 2014, UNRWA reported that it had found a second instance in which missiles were stockpiled in one of its schools in Gaza, and again failed to condemn Hamas publicly. On July 29, 2014, UNRWA confirmed that, for the third time in less than a month, a stockpile of Hamas rockets was found in one of its schools in Gaza, establishing a pattern of Hamas weapons being stored in UNRWA facilities, and calling into question UNRWA’s claim of being caught unawares to Hamas’ actions.

On July 30, 2014, three Israeli Defense Force soldiers were killed in an explosion at a booby-trapped UNRWA health clinic, which was housing the opening to one of Hamas’ underground tunnels. On July 30, 2014, John Ging, head of UNRWA from 2006–2011, when asked if Hamas has been using human shields and using United Nations schools and hospitals to store weapons and as a shelter from which to launch missiles into Israel, stated in an interview, Yes, the armed groups are firing their rockets into Israel from the vicinity of UN facilities and residential areas.

Absolutely. . During Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, UNRWA repeatedly distorted the facts and accused Israel of targeting Palestinian women and children based off of the casualty numbers provided to it by Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which has been shown to have deliberately lied about the casualty numbers.