T. Belman. When I launched the Jordan Option, I advocated that UNRWA and the PA be wound up and that all monies that traditionally went to them be redirected to Jordan to assist in the absorption of former Palestinian refugees. It looks like my ideas are gaining traction
Slowly but surely President Trump is slaying the sacred cows of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy.
Last week the State Department announced a $200 million cut in annual aid to the Palestinian Authority. Before that, America cut support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a body created in 1949 to tend to some 750,000 Arab refugees from the war Israel’s neighbors launched to erase it off the map.
UNRWA now handles over 5 million refugee-camp residents in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. It exclusively tends to Palestinians, while another UN agency deals with refugees everywhere else on the globe.
Next, Washington reportedly plans to announce a cap of 500,000 refugees UNRWA can handle. Further, they’ll be counted as other refugees are counted instead of the expansive way only Palestinian “refugees” are counted, which includes multi-generational descendants.
Host countries will be asked to pitch in. (Jordan, a majority-Palestinian state, already recognizes camp residents as citizens.)
Most absurdly, Palestinian UNRWA clients living in camps where the Palestinian Authority, or in Gaza where Hamas, has full control, remain “refugees” despite Palestinian rule, hoping they’ll relocate to Tel Aviv or Haifa one day.
Since Jimmy Carter’s days, and more so since the Clinton-era Oslo Accords, Washington saw “refugees” as a “core issue” to be resolved between the parties, with America as referee.
It’s never been resolved. So just as in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (another traditional “core issue”), Trump is changing tack. And as expected, veteran peace processors are screaming bloody murder.
But not only them. Israeli security establishment types are concerned that cash cuts will harm security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority.
True, regardless of the $200 million aid cut, America will continue funding Palestinian security bodies. And the other cut, to UNRWA, has little to do with security directly. Yet, funds are fungible and PA President Mahmoud Abbas may well retaliate by diverting funds from security to welfare.
And so, “the ramifications of [Trump’s] abrupt steps will only empower the radicals,” warns a former Israeli army spokesman, Peter Lerner, in Haaretz.
Einat Wilf, the Israeli coauthor of “The War for Return,” a book critical of the demand for a “right” to return, disagrees. A vocal advocate of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, she nevertheless strongly calls for dismantling UNRWA.
“UNRWA encourages radicalism,” she says. “It keeps alive the dream that the pre-1948 status quo will return and that Israel as a Jewish state will be erased from the map. I’m not against aid to Palestinians, just against encouraging that dream.”
Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department antiterror official, argues that as Trump’s presentation of his “deal of the century” peace plan nears, Washington is seeking to weaken the Palestinian Authority.
After all, Abbas has rejected Trump’s plan before he saw it, sought to end America’s primacy in peacemaking and continues to denounce the US everywhere. So perhaps Trump thinks aid is simply bad business.
Yet Schanzer guesses that once Trump’s plan is out, America may well renew financial aid, or even add to it in coordination with supportive Arab states.
Now vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Schanzer observes that Trump is sharply veering away from traditional US peacemakers who “brought Israel and the Palestinians to the table as equals, as if the Palestinians have significant power.”
They don’t, and the traditional process is yet to yield peace.
That process took too seriously the Palestinian dream that 5 million “refugees” will one day flood the Jewish state.
“The current dynamic, and Trump’s expected offer, don’t recognize the aspirational, it recognizes reality,” Schanzer says.
Detractors say this is all shortsighted. And indeed, Trump’s new approach may lead to an uptick in violence — in the near term. But ultimately, Gordian knots are there to be cut.
In the long run, peacemaking will succeed if it addresses 21st-century facts, rather than 1948 hopes.
Should have not told them that the philistines ate traif when they claimed to be the generations off. Then denied them building rights for mosqs letting them build churches only. Then let them fight over which branch of christen they wanted to be?
Trump’s policy of no longer pandering to the Palestinians is to be welcomed, but don’t get your hopes up about peace. Getting the refugee issue off the table will not lead to peace. Allah, in the Koran specifically commands Moslems to make war on the Jews (and Christians, too) and subjugate them to Islamic rule. The Moslem prophet Muhammad specifically commanded Moslems to fight the Jews and kill them. This makes the conflict not a “Palestinian-Israeli” conflict but an Islamic war on the Jews. This is why The Islamic Republic of Iran is Israel’s deadliest enemy, and this is why no Moslem country has recognized Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. The bitter truth is that peace is impossible because the Palestinians are Moslems, and Moslems are prohibited by their god and their prophet from making peace with the Jews. Trump’s policy can help to make the Palestinians quiescent, but there will never be peace.
@ Russell:
Better leadership I hope, than the bean heads that brought about the Oslo Accords.
All these “ëxperts” that say the plan will or won’t because of this possible Abbas reaction or that possible “unknown” or whatever should rather just wait and see. The Arabs are unpredictable at the best of times and Abbas is pretty much finished as a viable leader so who really knows what their reaction will be to a plan that non of us have the confirmed details of at this time. All we know is what Abbas is doing right now and he rejected without even seeing it. He is an old man and probably won’t be around for long. What we do know is that Trump so far is trampling on the silly myths that have been costing thousands of lives over the last 70 years, so I will pray for wisdom of the leadership and for peace in Jerusalem. G-d’s will, will be done in Israel so let’s “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding”.