Competition between Syrian refugees 700,000 and Pali refugees 450,000 in Syria

UNRWA Keeps Quiet on Syria

by Asaf Romirowsky and Alexander Joffe
The National Interest

When two employees of UNRWA, the United Nations organization for Palestinians, were killed in Syria, one by a sniper and the other in a crossfire, the organization responded by deploring “the tragic loss of life.” It was even more subdued when Syrian artillery shells slammed into a United Nations school for Palestinians in a Damascus suburb, as it called for “all sides to refrain from conducting the conflict in civilian areas and to comply with their obligations under international law.”

These mild responses were utterly unlike the cries of condemnation and calls for war-crimes investigations that came forth when an Israeli shell struck outside an UNRWA school during the 2009 Gaza. But double standards are sometimes revealing. The responses point to a new predicament for UNRWA and Palestinians. Simply put, they are no longer the Middle East’s premier refugees. Some three hundred thousand Syrian refugees are now registered with the UN in neighboring countries, with estimates of up to seven hundred thousand refugees by year’s end.

The way the UN deals with these developments is instructive. Syrian refugees must rely on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which deals with crises the world over. Palestinian refugees have their own dedicated organization, which for more than sixty years has acted as their internationally funded health, education and welfare ministry. UNHCR has a staff of 7,600 spread across 126 countries. UNRWA has a staff of twenty thousand in the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. UNHCR’s budget in 2010 was $1.3 billion, while UNRWA’s was roughly $600 million. One organization is about helping refugees; the other is about keeping Palestinians refugees.

The amount of international money and attention paid to the Palestinian refugees has no precedent. For decades, it has relied on the predictable and concerted efforts of Arab and Muslim states to demand ever-increasing amounts of money from Western donors, as well as majorities in the UN General Assembly who will condemn every Israeli abuse, real or imagined, of Palestinians.

The rebellions across the Middle East and the underlying Sunni-Shia conflict that is tearing Syria and other countries apart have changed the rules of the game. The Assad regime and Syria supported UNRWA as a weapon against Israel and the United States rather than out of sympathy for the Palestinians. Palestinian terror groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad also have long been based in Syria and, like Hezbollah, have benefitted from the Assad regime’s patronage. But this support also had a price—the refusal of Syria to permit integration of fellow Arabs, namely Palestinians, into the Syrian society in which they have resided for six decades.

Unlike Lebanon, the 470,000 Palestinians in Syria have been granted the right to work in any profession but are not citizens and cannot own property besides the houses in which they reside. But most Palestinians in Syria have never known any other home and are effectively as Syrian as other groups in that country’s ethnic-religious patchwork. Unlike Christians, Druze and other groups now being turned into refugees or internally displaced persons, Palestinians have the UNRWA to provide support and act as their advocate. Syrian refugees will now ask why one resident population has its own UN support organization while the rest do not.

But broader Arab and international support for UNRWA and the Palestinian cause can no longer be taken for granted. Nominally, the Palestinian issue is the only thing that can unite the Arab and Muslim worlds, even though in material terms their support has been utterly trivial. Now, the Arab and Muslim worlds have been gripped—and sharply divided—by a genuine humanitarian tragedy. The Palestinian issue is no longer as immediate.

UNRWA must now compete for attention and support while not alienating either the Baathist regime or the rebels and their various patrons. UNRWA is therefore playing a cautious game. The organization has a patented sense of outrage, honed against Israel, as well as a keen sense of public relations. But these cannot be used against Syria, which could, as in Kuwait in 1991, simply expel Palestinians without any international challenge. Palestinians themselves are equally unaccustomed to the lack of attention and to assuming a secondary position in the Arab world’s litany of crises, even as they have been maintained as second-class citizens for decades by states such as Syria or Lebanon.

The tragic scale of the human-rights crisis in Syria—some thirty thousand dead, hundreds of thousands displaced and murderous abuses on all sides—has put the Palestinian situation in proper perspective. Decades of unwillingness to resettle Palestinians on the part of Syria, the UN and the Palestinians themselves have again had the unintended consequence of making Palestinians vulnerable. Any just solution to the Syrian situation will demand that Palestinians be granted full citizenship rights and at the same time be made to stand on their own two feet without special international aid that only retards their reintegration and infuriates their neighbors. Such a solution would also inevitably put UNRWA out of business. UNRWA is more likely to play a quiet waiting game. It should not be permitted to do so.

Asaf Romirowsky an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Forum and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Alex Joffe is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow of the Middle East Forum.

November 11, 2012 | 7 Comments »

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  1. TO YAMIT – Absolutely! Thank you for your tribute to Jewish vets’ valor, and the one to the devoted animal soldiers. Army animals too have suffered enormously and given everything, but they are hardly ever remembered.

    AND A VERY BIG THANKS TO YOU YAMIT, AND ALL OTHER JEWISH SOLDIERS.

    PS: My first impulse was to focus on American and Canadian vets whose plight is everyday news on these parts. I feel very ashamed by the contemptuous way with which they are treated by governments and society in general, particularly the physically and mentally injured vets, failing to fulfill promises made to them concerning their dignity, health care and well being. It’s nothing less than a betrayal.

  2. As a Jewish vet  I support Otter and all vets especially we Jewish ones.Mark Twain wrote: “ He is a frequent and faithful and capable
    officer in the civil service, but he is charged with an unpatriotic
    disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldier — like the Christian
    Quaker.
    ” (
    Concerning The Jews, Harper’s Magazine, March, 1898
    )”A year after Mark Twain wrote his famous article “Concerning the Jews” in 1898 he apologized.”

    “Postscript — The Jew as SoldierWhen I published the above article in Harper`s Monthly, I was
    ignorant — like the rest of the Christian world — of the fact that the
    Jew had a record as a soldier.
    http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-concerningjews.htm
    American Jews and the Congressional Medal of HonorOne case where both antisemitism and bureaucracy denied some Jews their just due.

    This was and still is not unique in the American armed forces. 

    During World War II, Captain Benjamin Salomon was assigned to the 2nd
    Battalion, 105th Regiment, 27th Infantry Division during the invasion
    of Japanese held Saipan. He was a Dentist. His medical unit was
    located less than 100 yards behind the American lines when the Japanese
    attacked. The medical doctor was wounded. Salomon, though trained as a
    Dentist, became the medical doctor in the crisis. His citation for the Congressional Medal of Honor read:
    For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:
    Captain Ben L. Salomon was serving at Saipan, in the Marianas Islands
    on July 7, 1944, as the Surgeon for the 2d Battalion, 105th Infantry
    Regiment, 27th Infantry Division. The Regiment’s 1st and 2d Battalions
    were attacked by an overwhelming force estimated between 3,000 and 5,000
    Japanese soldiers. It was one of the largest attacks attempted in the
    Pacific Theater during World War II. Although both units fought
    furiously, the enemy soon penetrated the Battalions’ combined perimeter
    and inflicted overwhelming casualties. In the first minutes of the
    attack, approximately 30 wounded soldiers walked, crawled, or were
    carried into Captain Salomon’s aid station, and the small tent soon
    filled with wounded men. As the perimeter began to be overrun, it became
    increasingly difficult for Captain Salomon to work on the wounded. He
    then saw a Japanese soldier bayoneting one of the wounded soldiers lying
    near the tent.
    Firing from a squatting position, Captain Salomon quickly killed the
    enemy soldier. Then, as he turned his attention back to the wounded, two
    more Japanese soldiers appeared in the front entrance of the tent. As
    these enemy soldiers were killed, four more crawled under the tent
    walls. Rushing them, Captain Salomon kicked the knife out of the hand of
    one, shot another, and bayoneted a third. Captain Salomon butted the
    fourth enemy soldier in the stomach and a wounded comrade then shot and
    killed the enemy soldier. Realizing the gravity of the situation,
    Captain Salomon ordered the wounded to make their way as best they could
    back to the regimental aid station, while he attempted to hold off the
    enemy until they were clear. Captain Salomon then grabbed a rifle from
    one of the wounded and rushed out of the tent. After four men were
    killed while manning a machine gun, Captain Salomon took control of it.
    When his body was later found, 98 dead enemy soldiers were piled in
    front of his position. Captain Salomon’s extraordinary heroism and
    devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military
    service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United
    States Army.
    Delays in submitting the necessary paperwork caused the
    recommendation for awarding Captain Salomon the CMOH to lapse in the
    early 1950’s. A second issue was that, technically, Captain Salomon was
    a medical officer and could not be recognized for his aggressive
    defense of his position and his patients as if he were a regular combat
    officer. Repeated efforts by Christian and Jewish officers to have his
    situation reexamined were declined by the military.
    Congressman Brad Sherman of California took particular interest in
    the failure to honor Captain Salomon. May 1, 2002, in a White House
    ceremony, Captain Benjamin L. Salomon was posthumously awarded the
    Congressional Medal of Honor by President George Bush.

  3. Our soldiers –

    Off-topic, but I’d like to devote just one moment to honor our soldiers on this November 11. The American and Canadian governments don’t do enough to look after men who have risked everything to fight in the name of their country.

    Never mind whether those wars have been justified or not. The fact is that they went to war and came back physically and mentally wounded.

    People with mental trauma cannot look after themselves very well. Some statistics say that one in seven homeless people in the US are veterans. There is a shocking number of suicides among veterans and active soldiers.

    Many of them suffer from the effect of toxic substances, such as depleted uranium. Medical treatment for those with PTSD is delayed and often of poor quality. A new scandal erupts every few months in agencies dealing with veterans, indicating substandard treatment.

    In the meantime our governments are letting veterans down, too concerned with saving money, while splurging on the wrong programs for political reasons.