UNRWA must be dismantled, not reformed
Comment by Ted Belman
If you want peace in the Israel/Arab conflict you must dismantle UNRWA and resettle the refugees. The UN won’t do it so the alternative is for the West to stop funding it. The Arabs won’t pick up the tab preferring to have a humanitarian crises. This the west can’t abide. So the only answer is for the West to ignore UNRWA and start making offers of resettlement to all refugees. It is the only way. I discussed what must be done in Time for a new and different Palestine Mandate.
UNRWA: Barrier to Peace
By Jonathan Spyer, GLORIAExecutive Summary: The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) was created under the jurisdiction of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with the unique responsibility of solely aiding the Palestinians. Due to this special status, the UNRWA perpetuates, rather than resolves, the Palestinian refugee issue, and therefore serves as a major obstacle toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like no other UN body, UNRWA’s definition of refugees includes not only the refugees themselves, but also their descendents. Moreover, refugees keep their status even if they have gained citizenship. UNRWA employs teachers affiliated with Hamas and allows the dissemination of Hamas messages in its schools. The Hamas coup in Gaza of July 2007 has resulted in a Hamas takeover of UNRWA facilities there. Therefore, UNRWA’s activities require urgent action. The Agency should be dissolved and its services transferred to more appropriate administering organizations.
US congressmen demand UNRWA reform
A group of bipartisan US congressmen is urging reform in UNRWA, the UN body that deals exclusively with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and calling for alternative solutions to the containment of refugees in squalid camps.
“The Palestinian refugees have been used as political pawns for the past 60 years by people who don’t want peace in the Middle East,” said Congressman Eliot Engel (D-New York) at a meeting of international parliamentarians hosted last week by the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, a bipartisan pro-Israel parliamentary group.
“The UN has been part and parcel of this conspiracy,” he said.
Engel, who co-chairs the parliamentary group – established as a sister-caucus to the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus – said that UNRWA, which was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1949 to carry out relief and works programs for Palestinian refugees, was actually designed to perpetuate the festering sore of the refugee problem.
“Instead of resettling them, UNRWA keeps them in refugee camps,” Engel said. “The Palestinians are in the refugee camps because the Arab nations want them in refugee camps in order to perpetuate political hatred against Israel.”
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – with estimates ranging from 400,000 to 750,000 – fled their homes in 1948, and they, along with their millions of descendants, make up one of the most prickly issues Israeli and Palestinian negotiators must deal with as part of any resolution to the conflict.
The issue of the Palestinian refugees has been largely untouched in Israel for years due to the Palestinian demand for the refugees’ right of return, which Israel flatly rejects. UNRWA’s definition of refugees includes not only the refugees themselves, but also their descendants. As such, the number of Palestinian refugees listed with the organization has mushroomed from over 900,000 in 1950 to 4.5 million today.
About one-third of the Palestinians listed as refugees, or about 1.3 million people, live in 58 refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria the West Bank and Gaza, which critics say have become hotbeds of Palestinian terrorism.
US Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) said it was an “international disgrace” that the US, which is the biggest funder of UNRWA, would allow the growth of the number of refugees.
In contrast to the main UN refugee agency, UNHCR, which assists and resettles refugees from around the world and has an international team of around 6,300 employees, more than 99 percent of UNRWA’s 25,000-strong staff members are locally recruited Palestinians – almost all of them Palestinian refugees or their descendants, and some of them members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, groups both the US and the EU classify as terror organizations.
UNRWA, which operated on a cash budget of $487 million in 2007 – excluding special appeals for additional funding – receives most of its money from the US, European Commission, Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom.
Four years ago, amid persistent reports that the group was turning a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism, then-UNRWA commissioner-general Peter Hansen publicly admitted for the first time that Hamas members were on the UNRWA payroll.
“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,” he said.
“The organization’s record would not stand up to scrutiny of its donors in the US or Europe,” said Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), blasting UNRWA for its “lack of international standards and arrogance about accountability.”
A UNRWA spokesman in Israel did not return an e-mail request Tuesday for comment.
Recently, some Israeli parliamentarians have begun to openly advocate dealing with the refugee issue.
“It has been a big mistake not to deal with the issue of the Palestinian refugees,” MK Benny Elon (NU/NRP), who favors dealing with the issue head-on for humanitarian reasons, said at the Capitol Hill gathering.
A cornerstone of Elon’s recent diplomatic initiative includes dismantling UNRWA and resettling the Palestinian refugees into countries outside of Israel, in keeping with longstanding Israeli policy that an influx of refugees would demographically damage the country’s character as a Jewish state.
“Without the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees, no peace will come,” Elon said at the conference, which he attended as chairman of the Christian Allies Caucus.
“We are excited about our network of parliamentary sister caucuses taking on the real issues we face and challenging their respective governments to stand steadfast with Israel,” said Caucus Director Josh Reinstein.
Meanwhile, amid increased scrutiny over UNRWA’s role, an Israeli academic said in a paper released Tuesday that UNRWA should be dissolved, and the services it provides should be transferred to other UN agencies, notably the UNHCR.
“UNRWA perpetuates, rather than resolves, the Palestinian refugee issue, and therefore serves as a major obstacle toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” wrote Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the IDC Herzliya, in a paper titled “UNRWA: Barrier to Peace.”
In the absence of a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, the UN General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate, recently extending it until June 30, 2011.
The General Assembly, dominated by the Arab bloc and anti-Western countries, is unlikely ever to change the UNRWA mandate, officials said.
Hugh Fitzgerald write in the New English Review
UNRWA, Your Time Is Up
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UNRWA is at this point a wholly-owned subsidiary of the PLO, or the “Palestinian” Authority, or of the Arab League, or of the two slightly-diuverting branches of the PLO, the Fast Jihadists of Hamas and the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, who share the same ultimate goals (an end to a non-Muslim nation-state called Israel, with its Jews being forced to cry “give me dhimmitude or give me death”) but differ only on tactics and timing.
The personnel of UNRWA, save for a camouflaging handful at the top, are all Arabs — all “Palestinian” Arabs, adept at promoting the Arab cause, and in misusing funds, and demanding still more, as those funds are used to promote that cause — the cause not of Arab well-being, but of Arab rage, and Arab propaganda, against the scarcely-to-be-discerned-on-a-world-map tiny Infidel nation-state of Israel. [..]
Take the $487 million per year that UNRWA gets to keep the Palestinian terrorist machine well greased and offer it to individual Palestinians so that they start new lives in other countries, especially Arab countries that must learn to be charitable in ways that go against their combined politics and religion.
The good in this report may in time outweigh the bad.
The good is that UNRWA’s deficiencies and dysfunction that have contributed to worsening the Palestinian problems by adding to the number of Palestinians claiming to be refugees and enabling Palestinian discontent and hatred of Israel and Jews to fester all the more, has now been raised to political consciousness by this bi-partisan group of American Congressmen.
The bad is that it appears to be a concern brought forward into the political arena of only America. The worse is that the UNRWA being a U.N. body, can only be reformed by the U.N. that is now dominated by O.I.C. and anti-Western nations that will not allow that to happen.
If this American political discontent with UNWRA can gain an even greater foothold in the halls of the Congress and Senate, reform of UNWRA, if not doing away with it altogether is a distinct possibility if the following were to happen:
1. America, which is the largest contributor to UNWRA’s operating financial budget takes her concerns to the next level and reduces her contribution with threats to cut UNWRA off altogether.
2. Canada and the E.U. get the message from American resolve. If Canada and the E.U. are of the view that UNWRA is worth preserving but do not want to take up the financial slack that would be caused by America’s withdrawl of support, they could be drawn to negotiate with America for its continued participation in UNWRA in return for Canadian and EU support for UNRWA reformation.
3. If 1. and 2. occur, the U.N. member nations of the O.I.C. that contribute little funding to UNRWA, might see that the West is moving in unison to either have UNRWA reform or disappear, will see the ball is suddenly in their court to become primary funders of UNRWA, which would mean the end of their virtual free financial ride just might be moved to go along with UNRWA reform to preserve as much of it as possible.
4. Another scenario that could unfold if the views of this bi-partisan Congressional Committee grows and strengthens is that while UNRWA specifically will not be reformed or dismantled, the views expressed to that end will also bear more broadly on the problems Israel finds itself facing with the Palestinians and Americans and thus the West will become far more aware.
With that, the willfully unseen elephants in the rooms of every Israeli-Palestinian peace conference meeting that tramples hopes for peace, being intractable Palestinian/Arab Jew hatred and Arab/Palestinian dreams for Israel’s ultimate destruction will finally be seen.
With that, new peace paradigm options might also emerge and reveal themselves to Israel and the West.
The UNRWA extended fake mercy to Palestinians at the expense of Jews. UNRWA almost forcibly kept the Palestinians in ghettos, refugee camps. The camps, which were supposed to aid the Palestinians adapt to new life, became a life in itself. Instead UNRWA camps became the permanent home to four generations of Palestinians. Worse than the worst inner cities, the refugee camps produced generation after generation of the people who lacked productive skills but depended on the UN handouts, had no viable occupation but spent their time idly, day after day. No wonder that that idleness was filled with the most radical longing – romantic nationalism. Neither education nor morality was relevant in the camp life, but only raw strength.
Those who would have become bullies in the American inner cities evolved into terrorists in the UNRWA camps. The UN agency found the terrorist organizations useful both for maintaining order in otherwise unruly camps, and for providing raison d’etre for the UN operations. The persistence of refugee camps for sixty years testifies to the failure of the UN policies, but terrorists let the UN feel and show that it was not sponsoring a failed experiment in the middle of nowhere. Now the UN was in charge of the most respectable policy: the worldwide anti-Semitism. The UN was no more failing to adapt the refugees to the life’s realities, but was nurturing the anti-Jewish resistance movement. Political concerns, bureaucracy, and paternalism combined to make Palestinian refugees into the UN pet project, to preserve the refugee camps indefinitely, and transformed them into semi-permanent vast slums almost physically filled by hate.
Even the most innocent UNRWA programs become potent weapons against Israel. UNRWA sponsors education in Palestinian refugee camps. Well and good. Not so, if we realize that UNRWA pays for the education laid out by Fatah and Hamas. Whatever other meager or irrelevant knowledge Palestinian children acquire in schools, what matters is that UNRWA pays for anti-Jewish education. Likewise, the UNRWA food deliveries to Palestinians benefit Fatah and Hamas who distribute the supplies and perform other organizational tasks. More importantly, Palestinians know that their livelihood is not affected by policy changes; whether Hamas or some mythical doves are at the helm, Palestinians would still receive their food allowance from UNRWA. Guaranteed supplies of food and medicines create safety net for Palestinians and prompt them to radicalize, to take chances. The guaranteed supplies keep Palestinians at the refugee camps while absent of such aid they would have long gone to work and assimilated in the countries of residence. But UN loves its pet project and its pet people; the UNRWA has created the Palestinian nation – in refugee camps. The UNRWA is Israel’s enemy far worse than Saudi Arabia. Sabotaging the UN aid to Palestinian camps is a first-degree military priority. Without the aid, refugee camps would have been abandoned in a year or two. That is the ultimate kindness: let the refugees’ descendants go on with their lives. The UNRWA camps look like solid societies with everything from administration to schools to cafes, but these societies are on par with prisoners’ camaraderie: once out of the camps, Palestinians would shudder at the thought of them.
The rare voices coming out of the camps belong to the educated class, and so the stories of the refugees’ noble nationalism abound. In reality, refugee camp dwellers are no more idealistic nationalists than the medieval peasants who flocked to markets to hear troubadours were knightly romantics. People who live in swamp-like conditions need a bright guiding star, but few care to sail toward it.
Palestinians cannot maintain a viable state. In big countries, outlaws escape to , border regions, but in a small country like Palestine they disrupt the entire society’s life. Small countries can reach statehood only by developing a culture of political obedience first, and that requires a long history of affluence and organized communal life. Palestinian state will necessarily succumb to guerillas and criminals.
Israel should lead the way in the dismantling of the UN first by leaving that nest of vipers and secondly by ignoring it. What civilized country would pay attention to an organization in which underdeveloped African and Muslim countries are the majority? This is not about racism. The issue is why Israel should submit to their authority. They are not stronger than the Jews or the West, no more just, no smarter, not more cultured or educated. Just why should we listen to them? Let the petty UN members govern themselves and take care of their own incessant wars.
Frankly, the major powers founded the United Nations as an instrument for coordinating others, not so sovereign barbarians could dictate their will to the civilized and the strong. Tribal entities express their opinions by ritual dancing around a fire.
What decent country ever relied on some “international community” to establish its borders? Is Israel a colony whose borders are established by imperial power? Even so, the original Balfour plan allocated all of Palestine and Jordan for the Jewish state. Borders are a graphic representation of the power equilibrium. Grab as much land as you can. Forget the UN.
The hope is that should the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian bear fruit, the natural home for the refugees would be in the West Bank. And that is precisely what is being envisioned.This territory can absorb several million but that could only be facilitated over a long period of time and would require a large investment of capital and effort.Donor conferences have been scheduled during the early autumn period.The Israeli position is favorably disposed to settling Palestinians in this area for the simple reason that it would remove the pressure for the right of return to Israel proper.
Peskin, you must be reading satirical news sources.