Israel has frequently highlighted the promotion of anti-Israel propaganda in UNRWA-run schools. Photo: SWU

A new agreement signed by the UN and the Palestinian Authority is set to release $18 million to UN agencies and anti-Israel NGOs, a prominent Israeli monitoring organization warned on Sunday.

The UN’s “Development Assistance Framework 2018-2022” for what it describes as the “State of Palestine” – which is not a full member of the UN – provides over $1 billion to “support Palestine’s path to independence” and other “pillars of the government’s National Policy Agenda.”

NGO Monitor – an independent Israeli organization that investigates the funding of NGOs waging legal and boycott campaigns against the Jewish state – said on Sunday that it had identified “two disturbing aspects” of the UN’s agreement with the PA, which contains the signatures of a number of leading UN officials in the region. The names include Robert Piper, the UN’s humanitarian aid coordinator in the Palestinian territories, as well as the operations directors of Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA in both the West Bank and Gaza.

The first problem, NGO Monitor said, concerns the funding that will be made available to “Palestinian civil society representatives” to pursue legal action against Israel over alleged human rights abuses, reinforcing at the same time its status as an “occupier” within international judicial institutions.

Other UN agencies are also involved in executing this strategy, most prominently the UN Human Rights Council, which is preparing a database of companies it says are involved in sustaining Israel’s “occupation” – the so-called “blacklist.” The council’s special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, Michael Lynk, this week endorsed the boycott of Israel at a briefing at UN Headquarters in New York.

The strategy is founded upon “repeating the standard claims beginning with the infamous (August) 2001 Durban NGO Forum declaration” (at the UN’s global anti-racism conference), and through which “Human rights mechanisms are increasingly engaged to hold Israel accountable for its obligations under international law.”

Second, NGO Monitor argued, as “with many UN initiatives, this strategy substantiates the longstanding collusion between UN agencies and radical anti-peace NGOs for political warfare…Many of these NGOs promote antisemitism, rejectionism, and BDS.”

The infusion of $18 million of UN funds would affirm the “modus operandi” of the anti-Israel NGOs, the group asserted. “UN agencies and NGOs helped fashion a strategy that guarantees that these same NGOs and UN agencies will continue to receive massive amounts of money for their ongoing anti-Israel political warfare campaigns,” NGO Monitor said.

“As the past record shows, these campaigns will do nothing to revitalize the ‘stalled peace process’ or the creation of a ‘peaceful and just Palestinian society,'” the group concluded.