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James G. Lindsay is an American attorney specializing in security and international relations. For twenty years he worked in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with assignments in the Internal Security, Appellate and Asset Forfeiture Sections. Between 1985 and 1994, he was seconded to the Multinational Force and Observers in Sinai, as the force counsel for legal and treaty affairs. In 2000, he retired from the Justice Department to join the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. He was the legal advisor and general counsel for the UNRWA from 2002 to 2007. He oversaw all legal activities, from aid contracts to relations with Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority.

Lindsay is currently an Aufzien fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on Palestinian refugee issues and UN humanitarian assistance.

Military service and education

Lindsay served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army from 1968 to 1970. He earned a juris doctorate from the University of Missouri School of Law and a master's degree in Southeast Asian history from the University of Hawaii.

Opinion of the UNRWA

In January 2009, Lindsay published a 80-page critique of the organization, regarding its history, conduct, and involvement within the Palestinian Territories.

In the report, Lindsay refers to Peter Hanson, former Commissioner-General to the UNRWA, who in 2004 said, "I am sure there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."

According to the Jerusalem Post, Lindsay appears concerned about the lack of accountability within the organization. Quoting the report, he claims, "Over the course of its long history, UNRWA has rarely been the subject of comprehensive external evaluation, and virtually nothing has been written on the organization's strategy and operations by a senior staff member with knowledge of how UNRWA actually works." Lindsay further comments on the Hamas involvement within the organization, "UNRWA has taken very few steps to detect and eliminate terrorists from the ranks of its staff or its beneficiaries, and no steps at all to prevent members of terrorist organizations such as Hamas from joining its staff."

Lindsay has also expressed concern about the United States relationship with the organization: "The United States, despite funding nearly 75 percent of UNRWA’s initial budget and remaining its largest single country donor, has mostly failed to make UNRWA reflect U.S. foreign policy objectives. UNRWA initially served U.S. humanitarian purposes, but in later years often clashed with U.S. policies." Even though the US was the UNRWA's largest donor, it "did not support the the right of Palestinian return to within Israel's pre-1967 border." He believes that as the largest donor, "the US should do more to push for changes within UNRWA, including a return to a needs-based operation."

The majority of Lindsay's report however focused on operational suggestions to de-politicize and change the organization's mission and to reduce the list of 4.5 million refugees. In Jordan, where 2 million Palestinian refugees live, all but 167,000 have citizenship, and are fully eligible for government services including education and health care. Lindsay says, "To continue to call citizens of recognized states refugees is suspect and suggests that the agency's continued existence is due at least in part to political purposes, even though UNRWA was not designed as a political organization." He continues, "The decision to allow for a growing refugee population had become a political statement that fostered and supported the Palestinian demand to return to Israel,

Lindsay also offers suggestions to improve the conditions of the organization: "UNRWA should halt its one-sided political statements and limit itself to comments on humanitarian issues; take additional steps to ensure the agency is not employing or providing benefits to terrorists and criminals; and allow the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), or some other neutral entity, to provide balanced and discrimination-free textbooks for UNRWA schools."

UNRWA response

Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the UNRWA, said "The report makes selective use of source material and fails to paint a truthful portrait of UNRWA and its operations today and does not detail the organizations three year process of reform. For all these reasons, UNRWA rejects the article and its findings and is preparing a detailed response to it."

In an rejoinder approved by the United Nations, Dr. Maya Rosenfeld, a research fellow of Harry S. Truman Research Institute at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, criticizes the report: "We argue that Lindsay's recommendations stem from the prejudiced political stand of the author with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Palestinian refugee problem rather than from a research-based evaluation of UNRWA's performance in the past and present." She adds, "The attack against UNRWA appears to be led and conducted by ultra-right wing oriented research centers and media agencies in Israel and by their counterpart pro-Israel foundations and lobby organizations in the US, and is addressed primarily to the US administration."

References

1. ^ Biography - Washington Institute
2. Biography -ICJS Research
3. Fixing UNRWA: Repairing the UN's Troubled System of Aid to Palestinian Refugees - About The Author
4. Fixing UNRWA: Repairing the UN's Troubled System of Aid to Palestinian Refugees
5. UNRWA head to go against his will
6. ^ UNRWA staff not tested for terror ties
7. ^ Executive Summary from Fixing UNRWA
8. CNN - U.N. agency demands Israel support claims about militants at school
9. United Nations rejoinder

See also

• Palestinian refugee
• United Nations Human Rights Council

• American academics
• American foreign policy writers
• American legal writers
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Writers on the Middle East
• University of Missouri–Columbia alumni
• Living people