Greg Bouwer
IINZ
As New Zealand debates whether to follow Ireland, Spain, and others in recognising a Palestinian state, one glaring contradiction must be confronted. If Palestine is recognised as a sovereign nation, then the rationale for UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) ceases to exist.
For over 75 years, UNRWA has been the vehicle through which Palestinians have been treated as a perpetual refugee population, separate from the global refugee regime overseen by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Recognition of statehood would expose this arrangement as not just outdated but fundamentally incompatible with the principles of international law.
Refugee Status and Statehood: Mutually Exclusive Categories
Refugees, by definition, are people who lack the protection of a state and require temporary international assistance until they can return home, resettle, or acquire new citizenship. Once a state is recognised, its people are no longer refugees but nationals of that state. This was true after the birth of India and Pakistan in 1947, when millions were displaced but absorbed into new sovereign frameworks. It was true after World War II, when tens of millions of displaced Europeans were resettled and integrated.
It was also true for the nearly 850,000 Jews expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the years following Israel’s independence. Stripped of property, citizenship, and rights, they fled with little more than what they could carry. The vast majority were absorbed by the nascent State of Israel, which – despite being impoverished and under existential threat – integrated them into its society rather than keeping them in perpetual refugee camps. Within a generation, they became full citizens – part of the fabric of the state.
The Jewish refugee crisis was, in fact, larger in scale than the Palestinian one. While around 700,000 Arabs left or were displaced during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, over 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries. Yet only one group (the Palestinians) was frozen in permanent refugee status, passed down through generations. The other (Jews) were resettled and integrated, their refugee condition ended.
If Palestine were recognised as a state, its citizens would be under the responsibility of the Palestinian government. By the ordinary rules of international law, they could not simultaneously claim to be “refugees” from Palestine while also citizens of it. To do so would be to defy the most basic logic of sovereignty.
UNRWA’s Anomaly: A Perpetual Refugee Class
UNRWA is unlike any other UN agency. It defines Palestinian refugees not only as those displaced in 1948 but also their descendants, with no cut-off date. No other refugee group in history has had status transmitted through generations. This has created a self-expanding population: from roughly 700,000 in 1948 to nearly six million today.
In practice, many of these so-called ‘refugees’ already live in the territory claimed as Palestine (Gaza and parts of Judea and Samaria) or are full citizens of other states, such as Jordan. Even celebrities in the US! Yet UNRWA continues to classify them as refugees, sustaining the idea of a “right of return” not to Palestine, but to Israel – an idea that negates Israel’s existence and fuels continued rejectionism.
Recognition of Palestine without dismantling UNRWA would therefore perpetuate a dangerous fiction: that Palestinians can be both sovereign citizens of a state and eternal refugees from another.
Why the Refugee Status Persists
The persistence of UNRWA is not a humanitarian necessity but a political choice. Host countries such as Lebanon and Syria refuse to integrate Palestinians, preferring to keep them stateless as leverage against Israel. The Palestinian leadership itself insists on preserving the refugee identity, not to strengthen Palestinian statehood but to undermine Israel’s legitimacy through the promise of return.
Meanwhile, UNRWA has become an enormous institution in its own right, with over 30,000 employees, the vast majority of them Palestinians. Its budget, funded by Western donors like New Zealand, sustains schools, clinics, and social services – functions that, in any normal situation, would be the responsibility of a sovereign state.
Implications for New Zealand
If New Zealand recognises Palestine while continuing to fund UNRWA, it will expose itself to a glaring inconsistency. Recognition implies sovereignty, sovereignty implies responsibility, and responsibility means that Palestinian authorities – not the UN – must provide for their people. Continuing to funnel money into UNRWA after recognition would mean subsidising the fiction of refugeehood, prolonging dependency, and enabling the political agenda of Israel’s delegitimisation.
There is a clear alternative. If New Zealand is serious about recognition, it should insist that UNRWA be wound down and responsibility transferred either to the Palestinian government or to UNHCR, which operates under established refugee norms. Aid should support state-building and integration, not sustain perpetual victimhood.
The Choice Before Us
The recognition debate in New Zealand is framed as an act of moral courage. But true courage lies in honesty. To recognise Palestine as a state while continuing to fund UNRWA would not advance peace: it would institutionalise contradiction. It would signal that New Zealand recognises sovereignty in name only, while underwriting a structure designed to keep Palestinians in permanent limbo.
The choice is stark: either Palestinians are perpetual refugees, in which case Palestine cannot be recognised as a state, or they are citizens of a state, in which case the refugee designation must end. Both cannot be true.
If New Zealand genuinely wants to contribute to a just and lasting peace, it must confront this contradiction. Recognition of statehood must come with recognition of responsibility. Anything less would be a hollow gesture – symbolic politics that perpetuates the very conflict it claims to resolve.
This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.
