Most of them aren’t really refugees. They’re pawns.
By Clifford D. May, NRO
After World War II, the British left India, which was to be partitioned into two independent nations. One of them would have a Hindu majority, the other a Muslim majority. More than 7 million Muslims moved to the territory that became Pakistan. A similar number of Hindus and Sikhs moved to India. Today, not one remains a refugee.
After World War II, the British left Palestine, which was to be partitioned into two independent nations. One would have a Jewish majority, the other a Muslim majority. About 750,000 Muslims left the territories that became Israel. A similar number of Jews left Arab/Muslim lands. Today, not one of the Jews remains a refugee. But there are still Palestinian refugees — indeed, their number has mushroomed to almost 5 million. How is that possible? Through two mechanisms. First of all, a refugee, by definition, lives on foreign soil, but for Palestinians the definition has been changed, so that a displaced Palestinian on Palestinian soil also receives refugee status. Second, the international organization responsible for resettling refugees, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was cut out from the start. A new organization was set up exclusively for Palestinians: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
In 1950, UNRWA defined a refugee as someone who had “lost his home and his means of livelihood” during the war launched by Arab/Muslim countries in response to Israel’s declaration of independent statehood. Fifteen years later, UNRWA decided — against objections from the United States — to include as refugees the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those who left Israel. And in 1982, UNRWA further extended eligibility to all subsequent generations of descendants — forever.
Under UNRWA’s rules, even if the descendant of a Palestinian refugee has become a citizen of another state, he’s still a refugee. For example, of the 2 million refugees registered in Jordan, all but 167,000 hold Jordanian citizenship. (In fact, approximately 80 percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian — not surprising, since Jordan occupies more than three-fourths of the area historically referred to as Palestine.) By adopting such a policy, UNRWA is flagrantly violating the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which states clearly that a person shall cease to be considered a refugee if he has “acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.”
But UNRWA’s plan is to continue expanding — rather than shrinking — the Palestinian refugee population ad infinitum. According to UNHCR projections, by 2030 UNRWA’s refugee list will reach 8.5 million. By 2060 there will be 25 times the number registered by UNRWA in 1950 — even though not one of those who actually left Israel is likely to still be breathing.
Everyone understands what it would mean if all these refugees were actually to be granted a “right to return” to Israel. “On numbers of refugees, it is illogical to ask Israel to take five million, or indeed one million,” Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said on March 24, 2009. “That would mean the end of Israel.”
But, of course, that’s the goal: The descendants of those displaced more than 60 years ago — when the first offer of what we’ve come to call a “two-state solution” was rejected — are being used as pawns to prevent a two-state solution now or in the future. By increasing the number of refugees, by maintaining that population in poverty, dependence, and anger, by understanding that the “right of return” will be demanded by some Palestinian leaders, UNRWA is helping the extremists to prevent peace and continue to wage a war of annihilation against Israel. This anti-peace policy is being funded largely by Americans: We’ve always been the largest donor to UNRWA, contributing about $4.4 billion since 1950.
A few members of Congress have figured out what’s going on and plan to do something about it. Senator Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) is working on an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2013 State-Foreign Operations Appropriations bill that, for the first time, would establish as U.S. policy that only a Palestinian refugee can be classified as a Palestinian refugee — not a son, grandson, or great-grandson, and not someone who has resettled and taken citizenship in another country. The Kirk amendment would require the secretary of state to report to Congress on how many Palestinians serviced by UNRWA fit the traditional definition of a refugee.
Representative Howard Berman (D., Calif.), ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, also is considering legislative options in response to these problems. At the very least, these approaches would ensure that descendants of refugees would be listed — with unaccustomed clarity — as “descendants of refugees.”
They might still be eligible to receive UNRWA “services,” but as “Palestinian Authority citizens” who could look forward to becoming citizens of a Palestinian state — if and when the Palestinians come to the conclusion that establishing a Palestinian state is worth what it will cost: giving up the dream of destroying the Jewish state. Too few Palestinians are there yet. If Congress can rein in UNRWA, more may be moved in that direction.
— Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
The African “refugee” problem in Israel has disappeared from the headlines – and been replaced with attacks on alleged Israeli racism and violence against refugees.
I would have preferred to post my comment under a more pertinent column but this will do. BECAUSE while Israelis bemoan the demographic threat of Arab “refugees” – they have allowed the problem of African infiltrators to fester FOR YEARS, to the point where some towns just can’t take it anymore.
Unlike the case of Arab “refugees”, the solution to this problem is in Israel’s hands.
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As a result of violent demonstrations against African infiltrators, and some thoughtless statements by MKs, much of the Israeli media in English now keep on highlighting alleged Israeli racism.
The most urgent threat of this African invasion has been pushed so far back that it’s not even addressed anymore. It’s all about ISRAELI RACISM now.
Just the way the left would want it: Promoting treasonous causes through manipulation of Jewish emotions and guilt.
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I have the strong SUSPICION that much of the “spontaneous violence” against infiltrators was instigated by leftists wanting to bermirch the grassroots movement against the anti-African invasion movement..
And to distract attention away from the problem itself.
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Some MKs – feeling guilty for their own ineffectiveness in this regard, and trying to ingratiate themselves with the population – have used rather offensive language to refer to African infiltrators.
Never mind that there are rapists, thieves, and murderers among the infiltrators. And that they’re all breaking the law one way or another. It’s not for MKs or anyone else to use such language. The only appropriate course of action is to remove them by handing ALL OF THEM over to UNHCR for placement in refugee camps in Egypt.
Turning “refugees” away at the border may or may not work. Probably not because of the Israeli government’s acute sensitivity to international criticism.
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Canada has been besieged by fake refugees for decades. Canada is obligated under international law to assess each case and, if rejected by government and appealed, to have it reviewed. Canada’s refugee system is being used by “refugees” to stay in Canada for years.
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With persecution, famine, and other major crises being endemic in Africa, there will be literally MILLIONS of legitimate refugees who may head for Israel in the near future. Israel must make it absolutely clear that it does not have the space or resources to take them in. Israel needs to get the UNHCR involved to do the job they’re tasked with doing: looking after refugees and relocating them whenever and wherever possible.
The Arabs won’t resettle their Palestinians. Lebanon can’t without triggering a civil war.
You suggestion presupposes a rationality that Arabs do NOT have.
UNRWA was said to have been created to be a source of TEMPORARY assistance to the Palestinian Arabs displaced by the war attending the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel.
The agency began operating on 1 May 1950, with figures grossly over-inflated from the beginning: to allow for large numbers of non-refugees whose only claim was need — even if their residency in pre-1948 Palestine had been as brief as two years. 62 years later, the UNRWA, staffed largely by other Palestinian Arabs, continues to be the primary provider of basic services (“education” — including the teaching of Jew-hatred — health, welfare, aiding-&-abetting of terrorists, etc).
In the immortal words of Pali chronicler Sa’id Abourish in reference to the largest of the UNRWA refugee camps, “For twenty years, they didn’t have a single death.”
Translation: All the dead were buried surreptitiously, so as to keep them on the welfare rolls.
Here he was, knowingly or otherwise, echoing the much earlier observation of Dr Rees, who had cooperated closely with UNRWA, but who remarked that, as a result of Arab “chicanery,” the agency was effectively “feeding the dead,” and who noted further, that “by political pressure it [UNRWA] is feeding non-refugees.”
But then, why not keep the dead on the rolls? — when the UN’s own aid estimates indicate that each-&-every “refugee” receives in handouts a supplemental income of over $300 per year [even more now] — a hefty chunk of change in today’s M-E, and the highest figure given any refugees anywhere in the world? Why spoil a sweet deal? — especially when the great bulk of it comes courtesy of that reliable old freier: that easy touch, that sucker, Uncle Sugar?
More from Peters:
This was confirmed by the leader of World Refugee Year, Dr Elfan Rees, who observed, in an interview that year in the New York Post, that actually the Palestine Arab refugee dilemma should be — of ALL such problems throughout the world — the easiest to solve: inasmuch as there existed in countries like Syria & Iraq “a developing demand for the manpower they represent, and their new settlements would be distinct economic assets.” Nevertheless, lamented Rees, “the organized intransigence of the refugees and the calculated indifference of the Arab states concerned have brought all… plans [for resolution of the problem] to naught.”
[Interview of Dr Elfan Rees, New York Post, 11 June 1959; cited in Rael Jean Isaac & Ruth King, “Putting First Things First — Solving the Arab Refugee Problem,” Mideast Outpost, 30 Aug 09]
And a year earlier still, Ralph Garroway, former director of UNRWA, vented his exasperation & disgust:
“The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die. The only thing that has changed since [the UNRWA was created] is the number of Palestinians cooped up in these prison camps.”
[cited in Hon. Terence Prittie, “Middle East Refugees,” in Michael Curtis, Joseph Neyer, Chaim Waxman & Allen Pollock, eds., The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ, 1975), p. 71]
Thus do the Palestinian Arab refugees continue to stew in their own toxic & putrescent juices. But the stewpot is entirely of Arab — not Israeli — construction.
In 1996, a few years before his death, King Hussein, father of Jordan’s present monarch, observed, “Since 1948, the Arab leaders have approached the Palestinian problem in an irresponsible manner. They have used the Palestinian people for political purposes; this is ridiculous, I might even say, criminal…”
Indeed, said senior Fatah Central Committee member, Sakher Habash during a 1998 lecture at An-Najah University in Nablus, “To us, the refugee issue is the winning card which means the end of the Israeli state.”
Moreover, the wider Arab world has been more than content with the prospect of keeping these wretched creatures penned up indefinitely in some 60 miserable camps in Syria, Jordan & Lebanon as well as the disputed territories — and has, like the Palestinian Arab leadership, made no bones as to its reason. Joan Peters, who had been a CBS News correspondent & a M-E consultant to the Carter Administration (and who had made her bones as a reporter doing an undercover expose of the Ku Klux Klan), recalled some exchanges that occurred while she was researching From Time Immemorial [quoted below from the book]:
@ BethesdaDog:
Part of the confusion was due to the way UNRWA defined a “refugee” from the conflict:
— If you had lived in the Palestine area for as little as 24 months prior to the War of Independence, and then left, you were a “refugee.”
No matter that it was quite common for migrant Arabs to spend time in the Hauran (of Syria) or the Sinai or Transjordan, and then in Palestine — then back to the Hauran, etc — depending on weather, food, working conditions, etc.
Given that kind of basis, it’s hard to believe the organization was ever even set up to be anything OTHER than a massive scam — even from Day One.
The so called “UN Partition Plan” was never but a political proposal which the Arabs rejected, and still reject. The proposal never became law. The Mandate for Palestine and the peace treaties after WW1 are still the only pieces of valid international law regulating the question of settlement rights in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The solution is simple: Eliminate UNRWA, and turn its duties over to UNHCR. It’s called eliminating redundancy; and it’s used all over the world to tighten belts and balance budgets. Just don’t resettle the “Pals” in my back yard. They are Arabs, and the Arabs need to take care of their own.
I believe it was back in the early 1970’s that I read an interview with David Ben-Gurion. He stated that the number of Arabs who actually left Israel was much smaller than had been claimed. I believe he said the true number was closer to 100,000. He said that the claims were so misleading that even Jews had fallen for it. He said he intended to write a book about it, but I don’t think he ever did. I believe he died a year or so after the interview.
I don’t know if Joan Peters addressed the true number in her study of the refugees. I never read her book. I’ve always suspected it was wildly inflated.
I just never understood how the number of refugees climbed from the alleged several hundred thousand (or even less) in 1948, to two or three million, by the 1970’s. I suspect this is one of the biggest hoaxes ever.
These aren’t competing goals. They have only one goal, being the destruction of Israel. Establishment of the Palestinian state is simply a ruse. Did they even mention one when Jordan and Egypt controlled the Territories? In fact the very concept of a “Palestinian people” was an artificial construct developed soley for the destruction of the Jewish state. So much so that had Israel not been re-established, the world would never have even heard of a “Palestinian people”.