Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, described the special situation of Palestinian refugeeson the recent World Refugee Day:
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Unlike other refugees, the Palestinians have their own set of rules, their own funding and even their own international agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA. To paraphrase George Orwell, all refugees are equal, but some refugees are more equal than others.
In 2012, the United Nations spent six times more on every Palestinian refugee as compared to all other refugees. Like a favored child, the Palestinians have been on the UN’s permanent payroll for over 60 years and are entitled to every service from healthcare to housing and from food rations to education. When it comes to refugees from Syria or Somalia, responsibility falls to the host country to provide basic assistance.
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While UNHCR’s approach teaches independence, UNRWA’s approach prepares the Palestinians to be lifelong dependents. Under UNRWA’s framework, Palestinians can continue to be called refugees long after they acquire citizenship and find permanent housing.
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UNRWA’s humanitarian mission is undoubtedly important. However, it is being marred by its unspoken political motto of “once a refugee, always a refugee.” By allowing refugee status to pass to Palestinian children and grandchildren, the number of Palestinian refugees has ballooned from a few hundred thousand in 1948 to over five million today. Left unchecked, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will continue to be added to the UN’s permanent payroll every year.
Let’s apply some simple arithmetic. If about 650,000 Arabs fled Palestine in 1948 (I’m ignoring the smaller number of 1967 refugees in the interest of simplicity) and there are 5 million today, that represents a truly remarkable growth rate of 3.2% per year (the population of India, by contrast, is growing at about 1.7% per year, and that of the US, including immigration, at about 1.1%). If the current trend continues, then, in ten years there will be 6.8 million. The 10 million mark will be reached in 2035, when a Palestinian child born today will be 22 years old. And in 100 years, there will be 116 million Palestinian refugees!
This is clearly unsustainable, but the only ‘solution’ acceptable to the Arabs, to supporters of BDS, to a majority of UN members, and even to our local “Peace Fresno” organization is that all of these Arabs will ‘return to their homes’ in what is today Israel. In the meantime, their ‘oppression’ qualifies them to engage in violent actions.
Prosor continued,
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Instead of extending their hand in friendship, the Arab states employed the NIMBY strategy – Not In My Back Yard. Believing that the creation of UNRWA absolved them of any responsibility to their Palestinian brothers, the Arab states passed discriminatory laws. In Lebanon for example, Palestinian refugees are barred from working as doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers or accountants.
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By making the Palestinians the poster children for international victimhood, the Arab states believe they hold a permanent trump card to defame and pressure Israel. While the Arab states are saturated in petrol dollars, the funds mysteriously dry up when it comes to assisting Palestinians and subsidizing UNRWA.
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Scan the list of UNRWA’s top contributors and you’ll find it’s exclusively North American and West European countries.
To put it more bluntly: the US and the Europeans are contributing more than $650 million a year (2011 figure) to help the Arab nations build a weapon to use against the Jewish state. And the Arabs pay almost nothing! What a deal.
And it is more than simply a demographic weapon. UNRWA in Gaza supports Hamas in several important ways, particularly by way of its educational system. Teachers — who are all Gaza Palestinians — use books and materials supplied by the Hamas regime. Many Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, are graduates of UNRWA schools, and teachers sometimes moonlight as terrorists.
The question of refugees is just one area in which the UN (and its budget) is grotesquely deformedin the direction of the Palestinians. Everyone knows about the unbalance in General Assembly resolutions, and the biased Human Rights Commission. But don’t forget the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People (SCIIHRP), not to mention the Division for Palestinian Rights (DPR), which is responsible for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, held every year on November 29, the anniversary of the Partition Resolution of 1947.
This is strange since, at the time, the Arabs opposed the resolution, which would have created an Arab state. Of course it also called for a Jewish state, so maybe they are mourning a loss rather than celebrating an offer.
The unique outpouring of love and money for the Palestinians can’t be because the other Arab nations care for them. If they did, they wouldn’t treat them so badly whenever they come in contact with actual Palestinian Arabs. And it certainly can’t be because they are such exemplary world citizens: Palestinian Arabs popularized airline hijacking and suicide bombing (the main ingredients of the worst terrorist attack ever), and have been responsible for several wars in Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, etc., not to mention terrorism against Israel. How many people are dead that would be alive were it not for Palestinians and their Cause?
I think the explanation is simple: the world loves the Palestinians because of their choice of enemies!
CuriousAmerican Said:
Close your mouth!!!!!!!!Sugar,you keep tripping over yor tongue!!!!
I never said the Jews were Nazis. I was comparing the condition of the Palestinians today to the Jews in the 1930s, prior to the start of the Final Solution, in 1942.
yamit82 Said:
Old joke: Why does the French Army were brown uniforms?
@ CuriousAmerican
Your comparison to Nazis is very misguided:
Nazis believed that Jews were demonic race. Their goal was extermination of Jews. Even as they were losing the war, they irrationally put substantial resources into exterminating Jews. For example in Lodz they killed Jewish population that with their slave labor provided 10% of the clothing for their soldiers.
Even more absurd, at the end of the WWII SS learned that there were 2000 Jews left on the Greek island of Rodos. So they made a special action to get them. They could have used these soldiers for more important things.
With us it is very differently. We don’t have any need to exterminate “Palestinians”, we don’t see them as demonic race. I personally don’t think they are any lower than you, and I have no desire to exterminate you.
We just want them off our land. They are occupiers of our land, and as it happens, the so called “Palestinians” are culturally, linguistically, religiously and ethnically almost identical to the surrounded Arabs who already occupy territory several tens of times larger than the tiny Jewish homeland.
The difference between “Palestinians”, “Jordanians”, “Syrians” and the “Lebanese” is not bigger than the difference between Oregonians and Washingtonians. Even Iraqis are very closely related, though the dialect is slightly different.
Personally I have not yet met a single Jews (and I have talked to several hundreds about this subject)who believes that we should kill the Pals. Not one. And I am convinced that even Yamit82 is probably just posturing and speaking figuratively.
Another thing is that overwhelming majority of the Pals do actually have citizenship. They even have their own entity that is recognized by almost as many countries as Israel. They issue their own passports, their own money. Also millions have moved to Western countries and have acquired citizenship there. They are returning the favor by raping their women. The more politically correct the country, the more women they rape: E.g. especially Sweden I guess this is the price you have to pay for political correctness. Now Swedes are feeling really sorry for the poor Pals and other musloids because the poor things are so disturbed, and so alienated that they have to rape native Swedish women to express their frustration. So Swedes build more community centers for their musloid to burn, and they also are more diligent in their condemnation of Israel, to make the poor Pals feel good. But this is digression….
However consider for the sake of intelligent discussion, it is best if you don’t make inappropriate equivocations.
The New French Look!!!!!!!
Why does the world love the “palestinians”? Because the world hates the Jews.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Sometimes that is true. I have seen thinly veiled anti-Semitism from the pro-Palestinian crowd. And I have called them out on it on other websites (using a different handle).
Sometimes it is not anti-semitism. Sometimes, the pro-PLO crowd is deluded.
Sometimes they are upset at what they perceive as injustice; not recognizing the greater crimes of the Arabs.
It is not that easy.
We should not forget the fact that the Palis are extremely unpopular in the Arab countries where they reside. Remember how the local population turned against them in Iraq when Sadam Hussein was toppled. And how the Jordanian king killed thousands of them and sent many into exile, after the Palis got involved in an insurrection in 1970. Palis in Syria have also been very unpopular and they’ve felt it during these turbulent times. Palis themselves hate each other with a passion. ~~~~ So all this loveliness about the Palestinians and their “peoplehood” is a Western construct aimed at destroying the state of Israel. That’s why it is so offensive when the Israeli govt says these people deserve another state of their own using Jewish land. Two states for two peoples, repeats the PM.
BTW – Two obvious issues that are never raised: One is that they consider themselves “Arabs”. The word Arab denotes an origin in Arabia – not in Judea. Duh! The other is how the west speaks about “a Pali state” in reverent tones reserved for motherhood, apple pie and other sacred notions. But has anyone asked Kerry or the EU, what good does a state do to the Lebanese, the Syrians, etc., etc., etc. All Arab states are extremely dysfunctional, oppressive, either in internal conflict, or just about to erupt – and all of them invariably very backward and violent. So what will a Pali state do for regional peace? Explain that, Kerry, Blair, and all the rest in the Pali Fan Club.
The parallels between the Jews and the Palestinians is scary
Today, the West says the Palestinians are murders and troublemakers
In 1936, the Europeans said Jews were leftist revolutionaries, and troublemakers.
The West/Arabs do not want Palestinians today.
The West/Arabs did not want Jews in 1936
Palestinians have no citizenship today.
Jews were stripped of their citizenship.
Palestinians had their property seized and were ethnically cleansed. Some Jews advocated mass murder of Palestinians
Jews had their property seized, were ethnically cleansed, and later mass murdered.
And finally, there is Yamit82, who takes this to a whole new level.
Adolf was willing to offer better accomodations:
If you do not see the irony, then ethnocentricity has blinded you.
This is a tragicomic on a grand scale. Mostly tragic.
The past is the future.
The short answer is the Joos.
If Palestinian Arabs were like the Egyptians or the Syrians no one would give a damn! They are fortunate in their having Jews as their enemy.