help refugees get on with their lives as quickly as possible and works to settle them rapidly, most frequently in countries other than those they fled. UNRWA policy, however, states that the Palestinian Arabs who fled from Israel in the course of the 1948 war, plus all their descendants, are to be considered refugees until a just and durable solution can be found by political actors. UNRWA was specifically designed not to prescribe how the outcome of an agreement would take shape. James G. Lindsay, a former UNRWA general counsel and fellow researcher for Washington Institute for Near East Policy published a report for WINEP in 2009 in which he criticized UNRWA practices. One of his conclusions was that UNRWA's failure to match UNHCR's success in resettling refugees "obviously represents a political decision on the part of the agency" and "seems to favor the strain of Palestinian political thought espoused by those who are intent on a 'return' to the land that is now Israel". However, UNRWA has never been given a mandate by the UN General Assembly to resettle refugees. In 2010 John Ging, head of UNRWA Gaza had stated that he was disappointed in Linday's criticisms of UNRWA for failure to resettle refugees. Ging argued that there is "no basis to say that it is UNRWA's decision because our mandate is given to us. I agree that it is a political failure, but we don't set up the mandate, we are only the implementers". In 2006, the UNRWA drew criticism from the US Congressmen Mark Kirk and Steven Rothman. Their letter, sent to the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, stated in part: "After an exhaustive review of the UN's own audit, it is clear UNRWA is wrought by mismanagement, ineffective policies, and failure to secure its finances. We must upgrade UNRWA's financial controls, management, and enforcement of US law that bars any taxpayer dollars from supporting terrorists." UNRWA responded by showing the results of its school students in Syria and Jordan, who outperform their peers in host-government schools. UNRWA also mentioned the difficult conditions in which it operates: its refugee load increased much faster than its budget, while the tightening of the closure regime since the Second Intifada deeply affected the humanitarian situation in the former Israeli-occupied territories. Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) said that UNRWA is an example of anti-Israel bias, and that Palestine refugees should be