Since the beginning of the year, the outgoing secretary of state has been using his Twitter account to tout his department’s various accomplishments during his tenure. Among these, notes Jimmy Quinn, lay an important statement explaining the 2018 decision to cease funding the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA): “it’s estimated [that less than] 200,000 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees.” Quinn explains:

UNRWA serves Palestinian refugees exclusively—it says that there are 5.8 million of them in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and “Palestine”—and it’s the only organization within the UN system that focuses on a specific set of refugees. (All other refugee groups are handled by the UN high commissioner for refugees.) It’s a testament to the UN’s single-minded obsession with criticizing Israel.

The UN’s inflated statistic comes from the fact that it counts as a refugee anyone with a paternal ancestor who fled the territory of Mandatory Palestine in 1947 or 1948, whereas when dealing with any other conflict, neither the UN nor international law consider refugee status heritable. Quinn continues:

[Thus] the U.S. government’s estimate, as the outgoing secretary of state notes, is that the actual number of refugees is less than 200,000. . . . And despite what skeptics of the current administration’s foreign policy may think, this isn’t a Trump-era fabrication. In fact, the figure appears to come from a report completed during the Obama administration that has remained classified in the years since.

To a domestic audience, this figure will play a role in the future debate over U.S. support for UNRWA, which is facing a significant budget shortfall. Before the Trump administration cut off funding for the agency, the United States [contributed] about a quarter of its budget. With a new president set to take office, there could well be a return to the status quo. . . . The disclosure of the number of people that can truly be considered refugees should make anyone think twice.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.