Egypt seizes Brotherhood property in Sinai An Egyptian court is examining a lawsuit that will ease the state s confiscation of Muslim Brotherhood-owned real estate in Sinai. A relative of police officer Ibrahem Nasr, who was killed in an attack on two buses packed with Egyptian policemen near the border town of Rafah, in northern Sinai the previous day, points to graffiti on the wall of his home that reads in Arabic: The Muslim Brotherhood are killers, terrorism of the Muslim Brotherhood, in Kafr el-Sawalmiya village in the Egyptian Delta region of Menufiya, Aug. 20, 2013. - MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP via Getty Images
Seventy years after its founding with an 18-month mandate to provide emergency aid to the “Palestine refugees,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has grown into a gargantuan $1.2 billion, 30,000-strong “phantom sovereignty”[1]Â that has done more than any other international actor to perpetuate the “refugee problem” it was established to solve. With the Trump administration slashing its donation to the agency, and the Gulf states and the Europeans demanding greater transparency regarding its finances and operations, UNRWA may at long last be approaching its moment of truth.
The Original Mandate and Its Demise