On Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu publicly advocated the shuttering of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), created in 1949 to tend to Palestinian refugees displaced during the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war. The prime minister was responding to the recent discovery of a Hamas military tunnel underneath an UNRWA school in the Gaza Strip—the most recent example of the organization’s facilities being used for terrorist purposes. But, writes Dore Gold, the problem goes much deeper:

Unlike the millions of refugees after World War II, who were resettled in the countries in which they now resided and became citizens, the Palestinian-Arab refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war maintained their refugee status. . . .

Successful refugee programs, like that of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), have led to a diminution of the refugee problem in different parts of the world. UNRWA has had the exact opposite effect. The heart of UNWRA’s problem is definitional. . . . Unlike other UN refugee agencies, . . . UNRWA added “the descendants of Palestine refugee males” [to its mandate]. . . . UNRWA has now reached the fourth generation of refugees. . . .

There are 58 Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East. With the implementation of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, 26 of these camps fell under Palestinian control. Yet there was no indication that a single Palestinian camp was about to be closed. It was clear that the Palestinian Authority wanted these camps to be retained . . . to keep their grievance with Israel alive. In other words, they wanted to perpetuate the conflict. . . .

[T]he Palestinians’ preparedness to . . . resolve this issue is probably the best litmus test of their intentions—of whether they are ready to end the conflict once and for all. If a new peace initiative is to start, it should include at the outset a program to dismantle the refugee camps and promote a massive international effort for the construction of new housing. This initiative should begin in the West Bank but also should include Jordan, which hosts the largest Palestinian refugee population in the world.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.