UnRaveling UNRWA Documentary | Israel | 2025 | Director: Duki Dror | Hebrew, Arabic with English subtitles | 75 minutes | Berney Theatre May 19, 2 p.m.
Winner, Investigative Documentary Award, 2025 Haifa International Film Festival
The 75 minute documentary UNRaveling UNRWA is definitely worth seeing, as it contains very interesting archival footage, and interviews of UNRWA officials, as well as of Israelis and Palestinians, and Germans. In particular the film shines a light on the history of the problematic UN agency and the extremist education it is delivering to Palestinian children.
UNRWA is the only UN agency that deals with Palestinian refugees and when it was set up after the 1948 Israeli-Arab war it was expected to be a temporary agency that would last for 18 months only. As Einat Wilf, a former Labour Party Knesset member, and author of the book “The War of Return” indicates in the film, there were 3.1 million Korean refugees and UNKRA took 18 months to resettle them and then that agency came to an end. In the case of the 750, 000 Palestinian refugees created as a result of the 1948 war, Israel under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion refused to allow these Palestinian refugees to return to the new Jewish state. Israel had lost 1% of its population in a brutal war and saw Palestinian refugees as a fifth column who could invite Arab states to try to wipe out the new Jewish state, (Additionally although this is not specifically mentioned in the film, Israel was absorbing at least as many Jews from surrounding Arab states into Israel).
The film outlines how UNRWA received funding by Western countries as a result of the Cold War, since the West wanted the Arab states to be in the orbit of the West not The Soviet Union. Arab States were not interested in absorbing the Palestinian refugees as they wished to keep Palestinian identity alive for political purposes as a counterweight to undermine Israel’s existence, and to perpetuate the conflict There is footage in the film which refers to Mousa Alami, a prominent wealthy Palestinian nationalist politician who was willing to build a large agricultural community in Jordan where Palestinian refugees would be permanently resettled. However, Palestinians themselves were not interested in this and the plan did not proceed (Alami, by the way , thought that Palestinians ought to have accepted the 1947 Partition plan as a basis for negotiation but fell out of favour with the extremist Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini after showing such pragmatism.) Similar plans to resettle some refugees permanently in the Sinai in Egypt also did not come to fruition.
The film explores how Palestinians in refugee camps run by UNRWA are taught to maintain their right of return to their 1948 villages. After the emergence of the PLO under Yassir Arafat , refugees in UNRWA camps received vocational training but the camps in the evening were transformed into breeding grounds for training terror , and teaching children jihadist values. I had not known until seeing this film that 5 of the terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 had grown up as friends together in a UNWRA refugee camp.
There is a very interesting part of the film where Einat Wilf speaks about how she believed in a two state solution, and the idea of land for peace. However when she met Palestinian leaders following the signing of the Oslo accords, it became clear to her that they saw Jews not as a nation but having a religion only. These Palestinian politicians were only interested in Palestinians exercising a right of return to places such as Jaffa, Haifa, Acre , but not returning to a future Palestinian state in the West Bank. Wilf determined that UNRWA is a perpetuator of the conflict as it promotes the right of return by force of arms as a way to end the Jewish state, and make it all the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River be Palestine. Under the Oslo Accords Israel was willing to allow in 50, 000 Palestinian refugees but Arafat chose to abrogate the accords and begin the Second Intifada
As several of those interviewed in the film indicate according to UNRWA Palestinian refugee status is granted not only to the original 1948 refugees (most of whom are no longer alive), but to all of their descendants from generation to generation such that there are now 6 million refugees. Unless this changes there will be no end to the conflict.
The documentary also examines the schoolbooks taught in schools run by UNRWA, which do not promote peace but rather promote a violent vision of a right of return by jihadist means. In 2014-2016, the Palestinian Authority changed its textbooks to remove any references to peace agreements and Jews are painted only as illegitimate usurpers having no history in the land. One UNRWA official interviewed in the film sees this as problematic but indicates there is not much to be done as UNRWA uses textbooks provided by the host countries, which are the PA textbooks. Others indicate the UN agency ought not to be teaching from these textbooks. The textbooks teach girls, for example, that Dalal Mugrabi , the terrorist responsible for the coastal road massacre murdering 35 Israelis is a role model.
Another aspect explored is that 12 UNRWA employees were found to have taken part directly in the Oct 7 massacre.
I found interviews with Palestinians in the film to be especially interesting. One anti-Hamas Gazan (who is now no longer in Gaza) speaks about how he was wrongly indoctrinated in an UNRWA refugee camp to want to destroy Israel by force of arms,. and to become a martyr. On the other hand, A Palestinian grandmother says she and her descendants will never give up their right of return, and one day all the land will belong to Palestinians. A third Palestinian interviewed says Israelis and Palestinians will have to find solutions of living together as neither of them will leave the land.
This documentary is well done and educational. The film no doubt resonated with me since I have been to an UNRWA refugee camp outside Bethlehem where there was a large key over the entrance promoting the right of return. I have seen graphic images of Dalal Mugrabi as a role model in another UNWRA camp near Bethlehem (see my photo).
