By Pesach Benson • december 2, 2025
Jerusalem, 2 December, 2025 (TPS-IL) — A new documentary offering a sweeping look at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is set to make its U.S. debut in New York on Tuesday night. The film comes as the United Nations General Assembly is due to vote on renewing UNRWA’s mandate later in December.
UNraveling UNRWA, produced by Zygote Films, brought together Palestinian, Arab, Israeli, and international voices — including former UNRWA staff and Palestinian refugees — to examine the agency’s history since its founding in 1949 and its role in the region today. Other key figures interviewed include Scott Anderson, former head of UNRWA operations, legal advisor James Lindsay, and former Knesset member Dr. Einat Wilf.
“The film is the story of UNRWA. It opens something you haven’t seen, ignored or understood about the conflict — the story of the refugees in 1948 and their demand for a return to nowadays Israel. The refugees of 1948 are the ethos of Palestinian identity,” the film’s director, Duki Dror, told The Press Service of Israel.
Complying With Hamas
“One of the things the documentary reveals is the complacency of UNRWA with whoever is in control of Gaza,” Dror told TPS-IL.
“After Hamas took over in 2007, UNRWA had to deal with this so-called government. Whether they wanted or not, they had to comply with Hamas so they could work. One of the interviewees, James Lindsay, who was UNRWA’s legal advisor, said they had no other choice. He slowly realized that the UNRWA staff became more and more identified with the Palestinian and Hamas narrative. He called it ‘clientitis,’ in which individuals identify with their hosts. That’s one of UNRWA’s main problems,” Dror explained to TPS-IL.
Behind this widespread identification was the fact that 99 percent of UNRWA’s employees are Palestinian. “You can’t rely on the neutrality of UNRWA. And neutrality is the core idea of UN agencies,” Dror explained.
“The involvement of UNRWA employees in the Hamas-led attacks of October 7th has been well documented, but it’s a symptom of a much larger issue that until now has been untold. While UNRWA is understandably bestowed with god-like praise from most Palestinians for its humanitarian work, in parallel, by actively encouraging the Palestinian right of return, UNRWA is prolonging the crisis and undermining the two-state solution it professes to support,” he said.
‘Solve These Problems and Move On’
Palestinian refugees are the only refugee population with its own dedicated UN agency. The rest of the world’s refugees fall under the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
“In every conflict, there are new refugees. The UNHCR solves these problems and moves on. UNRWA’s the only agency dedicated to a specific group of refugees. There was another refugee agency created around the same time called UNKRA [UN Korean Restoration Agency] that took care of refugees from the Korean War — 1.3 million refugees. They took care of all the refugees and shut down the agency” in 1958 after five years, Dror told TPS-IL.
While refugee status is supposed to be temporary according to the UNHCR, that isn’t the case with UNRWA. “Palestinians are recognized as refugees, even if they’re fourth or fifth generation,” Dror noted. He added that there are fewer than 100,000 Palestinian refugees still alive from 1948.
“Maybe they’re entitled to compensation, but I wouldn’t call them refugees anymore. If you talk about compensation for Palestinian refugees, you need to also look at the 800,000 Jews driven out of Arab countries. It’s the same conflict,” Dror told TPS-IL. “My family is from Iraq. All their property was left behind. They became refugees, but they resettled and continued with their lives. You don’t perpetuate refugee status through generations unless there’s a political motivation.”
UNraveling UNRWA has already been recognized in the documentary circuit, winning the Investigative Documentary Award at the 2025 Haifa International Film Festival. The film will be released to the public in early 2026.
“As filmmakers we hope to capture the central tension, that all the actors, including the Israeli government, are guilty of kicking the can down the road and being unwilling to finally address UNRWA’s pivotal yet inherently problematic role,” Dror said.
Said Lindsay, “This documentary makes a genuine effort to show both the good that UNRWA has done, and in some cases still does, and the political function UNRWA performs in the views of many, perhaps most, Palestine refugees. It also highlights the multi-generational issues that arise when most refugees remain in camps, are not encouraged to integrate into the broader societies around them, and are exposed to an education that promotes hostility toward Israelis and Jews, rather than alternative points of view.”
Reinhardt Beetz, founder of Beetz Brothers Film Production, added, “Our film gives decision makers the insight to judge whether UNRWA should continue, be reformed, or shut down.”
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