Most recently, the agency faced allegations by the Israeli government that twelve of its employees were involved in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, leading to lay-offs, an investigation, and the temporary suspension of funding by numerous donors.

[28] In response to the political aspects of the conflict, less than a month later the General Assembly adopted Resolution 194, creating the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), mandated to help achieve a final settlement between the warring parties, including facilitating "the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees" in collaboration with the UNRPR.

[29] Unable to resolve the "Palestine problem" which required political solutions beyond the scope of its mandate, the UNCCP recommended the creation of a "United Nations agency designed to continue relief activities and initiate job-creation projects" while an ultimate resolution was pending.

A 26 January 1952 resolution allocated four times as much funding on reintegration than on relief, requesting UNRWA to otherwise continue providing programs for health care, education, and general welfare.

[36][d] The scope and renewal of UNRWA's mandate is determined primarily by resolutions of the General Assembly; unlike other UN agencies, such as the World Health Organization or the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, it lacks a constitution or statute.

The agency's headquarters are divided between the Gaza Strip and Amman, with the latter hosting the Deputy Commissioner-General, currently Leni Stenseth of Norway, who administers departmental activities such as education, healthcare, and finance.

Membership is obtained via General Assembly resolutions, with all host countries of Palestinian refugees (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon) sitting on the commission followed by the 24 leading donors and supporters of UNRWA.

[50] Historically, most of the agency's funds came from the United States and the European Commission;[51][52][53] in 2019, close to 60 percent of its pledge of $1 billion came from EU countries, with Germany being the largest individual donor.

People are living longer and developing different needs, particularly those related to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and chronic conditions that require lifelong care, such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.

A healthy life is a continuum of phases from infancy to old age, each of which has unique, specific needs, and our programme therefore takes a 'life-cycle approach' to providing its package of preventive and curative health services.

The MD is an autonomous financial unit within UNRWA, established in 1991 to provide microfinance services to Palestine refugees, as well as poor or marginal groups living and working in close proximity to them.

[86] However, as the camps have gradually transformed from temporary "tent" cities to semi-permanent and dense urban environments, UNRWA has characterized them as "hyper-congested" and "overcrowded" with "critically substandard and in many cases life-threatening" infrastructure.

[87] ICIP is implemented differently in each host country based on local needs, resources, and priorities, albeit with a broader focus on rehabilitating or reconstructing existing shelters, building new housing or service centers, providing maintenance, and improving public infrastructure such as sanitation and water drainage.

[92] UNRWA has received praise from Nobel Peace laureates Mairéad Corrigan Maguire[93] and Kofi Annan,[94] the president of the UN General Assembly,[95] former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,[96] and representatives from the European Union,[97] the United States,[98] the Netherlands,[99] Japan,[100] Bangladesh,[101] Cyprus,[102] Jordan,[103] Ghana, and Norway, among others.

In 2007, the permanent representative of Norway to the United Nations described his country as a "strong supporter" of UNRWA, which acts as "a safety net" for the Palestine refugees, providing them with "immediate relief, basic services and the possibility of a life in dignity".

[111][112] In 2004, Emanuel Marx and Nitza Nachmias pointed out that many criticisms of the agency corresponded to its age, "including symptoms of inflexibility, resistance to adjust to the changing political environment, and refusal to phase out and transfer its responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority".

In 2005 Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, wrote a short but comprehensive review article about textbooks used by Palestinians, focusing especially on changes starting in 1994.

IPCRI's June 2004 follow-up report notes that "except for calls for resisting occupation and oppression, no signs were detected of outright promotion of hatred towards Israel, Judaism, or Zionism" and that "tolerance, as a concept, runs across the new textbooks".

The third assessment, by the [German-based] Georg Eckert Institute, studied 156 PA textbooks and identified two examples that it found to display antisemitic motifs but noted that one of them had already been removed, the other has been altered.

[149] UNRWA has strongly denied this and pointed out that "Staff elections are conducted on an individual – not party list – basis for unions that handle normal labour relations – not political – issues.

In addition, we enrich our education programs in Gaza with an agreed human rights curriculum which has been developed with the communities we serve: with educationalists, parents groups, teachers associations, staff members and others.

But, he noted, while Israeli officials privately argued for its abolishment, with no other credible party able to take over the agency's duties, including administering the more than 200,000 Gazans internally displaced during the then-ongoing 2014 Gaza War, Israel had never "launched a no-holds-barred effort to bring UNRWA down".

In 2004, the U.S. Congress asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate media claims that government funding given to UNRWA had been used to support individuals involved in militant activities.

While the letter does not call on the State Department to cut aid, the senators write that the American taxpayers "deserve to know if UNRWA is fulfilling its mission or taking sides in this tragic conflict."

Responding to the letter, a State Department spokesman said that the UN is taking "proactive steps to address this problem," including deploying munitions experts to the strip in search of more weapons caches.

"The international community cannot accept a situation where the United Nations– its facilities, staff, and those it is protecting — are used as shields for militants and terrorist groups," State Department spokesone Edgar Vasquez told The Jerusalem Post.

"There are few good solutions given the exceptionally difficult situation in Gaza," Vasquez continued, "but nonetheless we are in contact with the United Nations, other UNRWA donors, and concerned parties – including Israel – on identifying better options for protecting the neutrality of UN facilities and ensuring that weapons discovered are handled appropriately and do not find their way back to Hamas or other terrorist groups.

"[169]In 2018, citing a "failure to mobilize adequate and appropriate burden sharing," the Trump administration stopped funding UNRWA, calling its fundamental business model and fiscal practices "simply unsustainable".

[183] Since then the relationship has been characterized by two-state advocate Baruch Spiegel, as "an uneasy marriage of convenience between two unlikely bedfellows that have helped perpetuate the problem both have allegedly sought to resolve.

Israeli media organizations have claimed that Peter Hansen, UNRWA's former Commissioner-General (1996–2005) "consistently adopted a trenchant anti-Israel line" which resulted in biased and exaggerated reports against Israel.