Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.

The insistence by the Palestinian Authority (PA)/PLO on preserving UNRWA is about preserving a political weapon against Israel.

The PLO is demanding “financial and political commitments” to protect UNRWA and prevent its replacement by another body.

Why must UNRWA itself survive? The PLO’s explanation goes straight to the political purpose that Palestinian Media Watch has repeatedly exposed: UNRWA keeps the Palestinian refugee issue on the international agenda as a political cause, sustaining the so-called “right of return” to Israel for more than five million descendants of Arabs who ran away from Israel during the 1948 War of Independence.

See this quote from the official Palestinian daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida:

PLO Executive Committee member and head of the PLO Department of Refugee Affairs Ahmad Abu Houli called to translate the international positions supporting UNRWA into financial and political commitments that will ensure the preservation of its mandate and the continuation of its activities.

Abu Houli emphasized that the international positions stressing the preservation of UNRWA’s mandate and the opposition to replacing it [with another body] constitute a clear political message against attempts to undermine UNRWA’s role and eliminate the issue of Palestinian refugees…

He said that the positions expressed during the conference confirm that UNRWA is not merely an institution for providing humanitarian services, but an embodiment of international responsibility pertaining to the issue of Palestinian refugees and their rights. He further stated that the continuation of its mandate is linked to the ongoing existence of the refugee issue until a just and comprehensive solution is achieved according to the decisions of international institutions, foremost among them Resolution 194. [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 27, 2026]

The reference to Resolution 194 invokes the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” encompassing millions of descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees born and raised outside Israel. Their inherited refugee status keeps alive the expectation that their future lies inside Israel. Implementing that demand would mean flooding Israel with millions of Arabs and ending Israel’s existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people. That is what the PLO is fighting to preserve.

The PLO’s statement again exposes the fiction behind UNRWA’s humanitarian image. Other international and even UN institutions, such as the UNHCR, could provide the Palestinians with humanitarian services, but the PLO is afraid that replacing UNRWA would mean replacing the refugee issue itself.

The PA/PLO instead wants an institution that maintains an expanding refugee population and international backing for its claims against Israel, and it is therefore demanding the money and political support to keep that machinery running.

That’s what supporting UNRWA is really about.

The author is a researcher at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.