More Distortion

When asked for additional information about the demolitions, such as court orders, Gunness became extremely agitated, used crude language and demanded immediate publication of "the facts."

Facts? Let’s examine this claim in the Ma'an interview:

"Many displacements are taking place where settlements are expanding and with it we are seeing an upturn in vicious attacks by Jewish settlers. Palestinians are being thrown off their ancestral lands to make way for settlers," Gunness told Ma'an.

This suggests two things: First, that settlements are still expanding outside their municipal boundaries, and second that Jews are supplanting Palestinian Arabs.

As Gunness knows very well, since 2005 settlement expansion has only taken place within the existing zoning lines of the municipal boundaries. No Palestinian Arabs have been kicked off their land to be replaced by Jews.

In fact, Gunness was referring here to Bedouins who are illegally squatting. An official with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told us that the Bedouin increasingly tend to camp in the vicinity of Jewish settlements and are often paid to do so by pro-Palestinian NGO's.

In the same Ma'an interview Gunness claimed the following:

"There is growing evidence that it (demolitions in Area C of the West Bank) is destroying the very fabric of these communities and ultimately contributing to a demographic shift which is changing the ethnic make-up of the West Bank."

This suggests a slow "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinian population on the West Bank.

Of course, Gunness is well aware of the fact that only 3% of the Palestinian population lives in Area C – most of them Bedouins, who mostly live in tents and are used to moving from place to place.

UNRWA's own census from 2007 shows an average population growth of the Palestinian population on the West Bank of 2.5 percent per year.

But there was more. In an e-mail to Missing Peace Gunness wrote the following:

"127 people expelled in Ma'aleh Nikhmas [sic] - displaced for settlement in the last few weeks. Is that enough?"

Really?

The 127 Palestinians expelled from Ma'aleh Michmas "for [Jewish] settlement" were in fact Bedouins who decided to leave, as his own UNRWA press release states.

There is no evidence that Ma'aleh Michmas residents took their place.

In fact, according to a report by the pro-Palestinian organization International Solidarity Movement, 16 Bedouin were evicted in the Ma'aleh Michmas area at the end of July.

This happened after they illegally camped within a closed military zone and received eviction orders two years ago.

UNRWA's Mandate

This was not the first time Gunness was caught distorting the facts and engaging in an anti-Israel campaign. During the 2009 Gaza war he falsely accused Israel of firing at UNRWA convoys.

The new shocking aspect in this affair is that UNRWA now clearly interferes in politics and oversteps its current mandate, as defined by the UN:

"UNRWA's contemporary mandate is to provide relief, human development and protection services to Palestine refugees and persons displaced by the 1967 hostilities in its fields of operation: Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

UNRWA's mandate has been repeatedly renewed by the UN General Assembly. The current mandate runs till 30 June 2014.

What do the UNRWA investigations into West Bank building issues and violence between Jews and Arabs have to do with providing humanitarian services to displaced persons?

Gunness told us that UNRWA has a team of 12 investigators conducting research on settlement and building issues on a daily base. Got that? A UN organization designed to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees is going after Israel's building policies on the West Bank.

Instead of focusing on the plight of the refugees and their descendants in, for example, Lebanon, where the Palestinians living in refugee camps still are without basic human rights, UNRWA prefers to join the disinformation campaign against Israel.

Too Late

It may be too late for Israel to repair the damage caused by this global disinformation campaign. That's too bad because this is where many other campaigns like divestment and delegitimization start.

The Israeli government does not seem to grasp the severity of the situation and still doesn't respond decisively to the endless flurry of distortions and outright false claims.

However, it is not too late to demand an immediate investigation into UNRWA's participation in this cognitive war against the Jewish state.

This affair, on top of earlier scandals in which UNRWA's ties to Hamas were exposed, should finally lead to a complete overhaul of the way the UN deals with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This was prepapred by Yochanan Visser director of Missing Peace, an Israel-based public diplomacy organization operating in Europe and Sharon Shaked who has a BA in Middle East Studies from the Hebrew University and is a researcher for Missing Peace.