T. Belman. Incredible. Who would believe that the authors of this article would write it and that Newsweek would publish it.
By Einat Wilf (former MK) and Adi Swartz (former Sr Editor of Haaretz), NEWSWEEK
The Biden Administration announced last week that it is resuming funding for UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, allocating $150 Million a year as “a means to advance a negotiated two-state solution.” Whatever the Administration’s true intentions are, advancing a two-state solution cannot seriously be the goal. The Administration is consciously choosing to fund an agency that is institutionally committed to ensuring that peace will never be possible.
UNRWA, under the cover of providing social services to Palestinians, is in effect giving political cover to the dream of undoing Israel by nurturing and legitimizing the demand to settle millions of Palestinians inside Israel, within its pre-1967 lines, in the name of “return.”
Unless the Administration is keen to extend the Palestinian conflict with Israel, in the hope that one day Israel shall cease to exist as the sovereign state of the Jewish People, it is unclear why it has made such a disastrous policy choice.
UNRWA is one of the greatest, if not the greatest obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In contrast with normal international standards, UNRWA has its’ own distinct definition for Palestinian refugees, which automatically includes all the descendants of the original refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars.
Today, the majority of UNRWA refugees worldwide are grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original refugees. Moreover, the vast majority of them are also citizens of other countries or living within territories governed by Palestinians in Palestine, and so are not actually refugees and in no need of resettlement.
UNRWA’s definition inflates the number of those who should properly be considered refugees, 20-100 fold. Only a small share of those registered on UNRWA’s rosters—those who still live stateless and discriminated against in Syria and Lebanon—are in need of resettlement. But rather than working to resettle them, UNRWA sustains many of them in perpetual limbo, together with their millions of long-settled brethren, in the elusive promise that they will one day be able to settle within Israel and claim Israel itself, rather than the West Bank and Gaza, as Palestine.
The Trump Administration had it right when it decided to defund UNRWA. And the Biden Administration is making a huge mistake upending that decision. To understand the magnitude of this error, imagine if the U.S. took the position that the entire West Bank is disputed, and then allocated funds towards building West Bank settlements and encouraging settlers to live there, while constantly reminding settlers that by legal “right” the entire West Bank is theirs and only theirs. Imagine if the U.S. refrained from ever saying anything that might be construed as implying that the settlers do not have the full right to settle all across the West Bank, and that someday they might be expected to forgo territory, so as not to anger them or hurt their feelings. Finally, after all that, imagine if the U.S. expressed confidence that when the time comes to settle the territorial dispute with the Palestinians, the settlers would somehow accept and support the need for such compromise.
We are surprised? To paraphrase Churchill: We are not at the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end; we are at the preface. There is much more on the way.
Wow…This is from Newsweek? Someone must have been fired either just before or just after this was published.
On the money!!!! Got it right on all points.