A great solution to the Palestinian refugee problem

A member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) has suggested that members of the European Union resettle Palestinian refugees within their countries, reports the Jerusalem Post.

Meretz MK Yossi Beilin on Thursday called on European countries to declare how many Palestinian refugees and their descendants they would be willing to absorb as part of any future peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

“It is important that we know now how many Palestinian refugees [third] countries are willing to absorb, so that when we get to the critical moment [of a peace agreement] we will be prepared for such an eventuality, and be able to carry it out,” Beilin said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

The dovish lawmaker made the remarks one day after he told a group of European ambassadors at a closed-door meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that each of their countries needed to decide what their quota would be for absorbing Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

A spokesman for the EU said it was “premature” to respond to such a proposal at this time.

Beilin is described as “dovish.” A “right-wing” member of the Knesset said the issue of the refugees should be dealt with now, not as part of a peace agreement.

“It has been a big mistake not to deal with the issue of the Palestinian refugees,” said [Benny] Elon, who advocates dealing with the issue head-on for humanitarian reasons.

A cornerstone of the hawkish parliamentarian’s recent diplomatic initiative includes dismantling the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the mammoth UN body that deals with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and resettling the Palestinian refugees into countries outside of Israel, in keeping with long-standing Israeli government policy that an influx of refugees would demographically damage Israel’s character as a Jewish state.

I’m all for Elon’s suggestion to dismantle the UNRWA. At the same time, I think all Israeli government officials, of whatever political persuasion, should join Beilin’s call for a committment by EU countries. Most of these countries frequently indulge in moral grandstanding about the Palestinians, while they vilify Israel. Let’s see how many are willing to take in these “refugees” who by a large majority support the most horrendous terrorist acts and have voted extremist politicians into power. Or is it only Israel who is supposed to welcome these moral degenerates?

In fact, here’s another idea. Why don’t Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Cambridge Massachusetts, Madison Wisconson and similar communities offer to take some Palestinians?

What happened to the Jewish refugees?

Richard Z. Chesnoff wrote a good piece for the Huffington Post a couple of weeks ago contrasting the fate of the Palestinian refugees with that of the Jewish refugees who were forcibly pushed out of their homes in the Middle East when Israel was founded.

Thanks to the most successful propaganda campaign in history, we are continually reminded of the sorry circumstances of the Arabs who fled at the founding of Israel. (Even their name, “Palestinians,” is part of that campaign, since the name used to refer to anyone who lived in what used to be Palestine, including Jews. It implies they are a separate people who used to possess what is now Israel, which is false. They are simply Arabs, some of whom lived there, but many of whom migrated to that area  in the first half of the 20th century after European Jews developed the barren land and built an economy that provided jobs.)

No Arab state has ever granted them a permanent home, let alone citizenship . Instead, masses of Palestinian refugees have been kept permanently penned up inside overcrowded refugee camps, living off massive international welfare doles, playing the political pawn, and waiting for Israel to die so they can invoke their “Right of Return”. According to UN sources, Palestinian refugees now number more than 4 million.

Here is what has long been little known by the world, so successful has the propaganda campaign been at portraying the Palestinians as the sole victims:

Compare that to the other, lesser known refugee crisis that coincided with Israel’s birth - the forced exodus of some 900,000 Jews from their centuries old homes in the Arab world; from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Aden, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia , Algeria and Morocco.

These were communities rich in culture, with their own Judeo dialects and traditions, their own rich religious literature, thought and scholars.

To be sure, Jews in the Arab world were occasionally subject to outbreaks of violence, forced conversion and never accepted as anything but Dhimmi - protected second class citizens. Still, this vast Jewish community flourished, most especially in the late fifteenth century when thousands of Sephardic Jews fled the persecutions of Spain and the rest of southern Europe for the relative peace of the Islamic world.

By 1947, close to a million Jews lived in the Arab world. Many played primary roles in local economies, global trade, and medicine. Some became senior advisors to Emirs and Sultans and helped enrich the cities of the Arab world ((EG Baghdad’s pre 1948 Chamber of Commerce was 50% Jewish).

The founding of Israel changed that.

The historic decision to establish the State of Israel changed all that. Outraged by the idea of a Jewish state in their midst, the Arab world turned against its Jews, targeting them with legislated discrimination, government sponsored anti-Semitic riots and murderous pogroms. Faced with growing threats, outright violence and government moves to completely disenfranchise them, close to 900,000 Jews were forced to abandon their ancient homes .

Almost all were allowed to leave only on condition they signed agreements never to return and - most important - to leave their property and belongings behind. Recently uncovered documents indicate that much of this massive theft was a coordinated scheme by several Arab governments to grab Jewish property worth as much as $100 billion.

Compare the outcome for the two groups. While all other refugees after WWII were resettled, the Arab nations insisted that the UN create a separate agency for the Palestinian refugees. As this post explains, the purpose of the agency was to keep these people refugees forever rather than solve the problem. The children of the original refugees get refugee status, so that there are now 4 million so-called refugees living in miserable conditions. No Arab state has ever offered to resettle these people because their existence is their greatest weapon against Israel’s existence.

In contrast, as Chesnoff points out, not one Jew who was kicked out of an Arab country is a refugee. Every one was settled, in Israel or in other countries.

While the corrupt Arab world condemned Palestinian Arabs to statelessness, squandered chance after chance to make peace with Israel and stole mega-millions in welfare funds, the Jewish state and the world Jewish community worked tirelessly to resettle its fellow Jews from Arab lands.

Here are some of our previous posts on the issue: On the numbers of Jewish refugees and the value of the property that was taken from them; on an effort by Congress to recognize these Jewish refugees; on an organization, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries; on another account of this story. Also of interest is this FrontPage interview with Ion Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service. Pacepa relates how the KGB created the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO, and how a huge disinformation campaign made Arafat its spokesman and got the United States to deal with him as a respectable statesman.

It is embarrassing and unconscionable how the world has swallowed this decades-long propaganda. Israel is a pariah nation, hated and reviled by everyone from European elites to American college faculties. Setting the facts straight will make little difference, as the left enjoys hating so much that they couldn’t give up such a longstanding target. But perhaps a few people will consider reality and place the blame where it belongs.

US Congressmen demand reform of UNRWA

The Jerusalem Post reports on a move by a American congressmen to do something about the UN agency that oversees the Palestinian refugees.

A group of bipartisan US congressmen is urging reform in UNRWA, the UN body that deals exclusively with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and calling for alternative solutions to the containment of refugees in squalid camps.

“The Palestinian refugees have been used as political pawns for the past 60 years by people who don’t want peace in the Middle East,” said Congressman Eliot Engel (D-New York) at a meeting of international parliamentarians hosted last week by the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, a bipartisan pro-Israel parliamentary group.

“The UN has been part and parcel of this conspiracy,” he said.

We agree, as we have said in several recent posts, including this one. The issue seems to be coming to some kind of head, with more written on it in recent weeks than I have ever seen before at one time, including this comprehensive report which we’ve referenced before.  The Jerusalem Post article goes on:

In contrast to the main UN refugee agency, UNHCR, which assists and resettles refugees from around the world and has an international team of around 6,300 employees, more than 99 percent of UNRWA’s 25,000-strong staff members are locally recruited Palestinians - almost all of them Palestinian refugees or their descendants, and some of them members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, groups both the US and the EU classify as terror organizations.

UNRWA, which operated on a cash budget of $487 million in 2007 - excluding special appeals for additional funding - receives most of its money from the US, European Commission, Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom.

Four years ago, amid persistent reports that the group was turning a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism, then-UNRWA commissioner-general Peter Hansen publicly admitted for the first time that Hamas members were on the UNRWA payroll.

Hat tip to Jihad Watch, where Hugh Fitzgerald has a terrific comment providing the proper historical context (scroll down to May 28, 5:37 pm).

The truth about Palestinian refugees

Our local Hagerstown paper had two scurrilous articles last week, promoting the line that Israel is an illegitimate entity oppressing the Palestinians. I wrote a letter in response that got printed in today’s paper. It’s here. The whole thing is copied below. I wanted to emphasize the refugee angle and the UN’s part in keeping the Palestinians miserable — facts I have learned as a result of working on this blog.

Saturday, May 17, must have been Palestinian grievance day. A letter from Elet Hall complained about the treatment of the Palestinians and promoted Hamas as “the Palestinian’s freedom fighters.” 

Charley Reese told us the root cause of the conflict in the Middle East is “the displacement of Palestinians by the Zionists in Palestine.” This came at the end of a week in which Israel marked its 60th anniversary of its recognition as a modern nation, and in which the Palestinians marked the “catastrophe” of Israel’s existence.

Some historical perspective, please. 

After World War II there was massive displacement of peoples. Twelve million Germans were expelled from eastern European countries. Fifteen million people were displaced in India and Pakistan. When Israel was founded, almost a million Jews were expelled from Arab countries where their communities were thousands of years old. All of these people lost their property and their livelihood. 

Contrast that with the Palestinians. Like the Germans, they were also on the losing side of World War II, although they did not fight in it. 

Their Grand Mufti was a personal friend of Hitler and spent much of the war in Berlin. He urged Hitler to implement the “final solution” - the extermination of the Jews. Nevertheless, the Palestinians were not expelled from what became Israel. They left because the leaders of the Arab countries told them to get out of the way while they wiped Israel off the map. 

The ones who remained became citizens of Israel. They and their descendants make up 20 percent of Israel’s population today. They have their own political party and representatives in the legislature and are fully part of the prosperous Israeli economy. 

Israel was created by the United Nations after WWII. The Palestinians were also given land for a state, but they rejected it. Instead, the Arab nations went to war with Israel. As Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary, many have pointed out that Palestinians could be celebrating the 60th anniversary of their state too, if they had accepted it. 

But even these facts are not the cause of the present conflict. Those millions of people I mentioned who were displaced after WWII were resettled long ago. And refugees since then have been the responsibility of an international agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Its job is to resettle refugees either in their country of origin if possible, or in other countries if not. 

The Arab refugees, however, were given an entirely separate agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, at the urging of the Arab nations. The refugees were put in camps and no effort was made to resettle them. 

Further, they were given refugee status that passes down to their children, so there are now millions of Arab refugees being supported by the UN and by donor nations. The Arab countries wanted to use the refugees as a weapon against Israel rather than helping them make new lives. Not one Arab country has offered to take them in. Naturally, the situation has been a perfect breeding ground for poverty, resentment and terrorism. 

Thus the “catastrophe” and the current pathetic situation of the Palestinian refugees are the fault of the Arab countries and the United Nations. If the Palestinians would accept the existence of Israel, they could have their own country immediately. 

They do not need “freedom fighters” - Israel would like nothing better than to live in peace with a non-hostile neighboring Palestinian state. Yet they would rather cling to their hatred, create new grievances and live in misery. 

The UN has prolonged the Palestinian refugee problem

Following up on Ann’s post of May 20, In 1948 Arab leaders created the Palestinian “refugee” problem, also see my post of May 9, The UN is blocking a solution to the Palestinian refugees which points out that the Palestinian refugees have their very own UN agency, the UNRWA, whose mission is to keep them as refugees through the generations rather than resettling them. As much as we criticize the UN’s main refugee agency, the UNHCR, at least its mission is to find refugees permanent homes, either back in their own countries or in other countries.  The UNRWA, founded at the behest of the Arab nations, is supporting millions of Palestinians classified as refugees though they never lived in Israel. See also a Daniel Pipes article from 2003 which explains the situation briefly and well.

This is the cruelest and most cynical policy imaginable. Were it not for the determination of the Arab nations to destroy Israel at the outset, and the continued refusal to recognize Israel, the Palestinians could have had their own country from the very beginning, and could have it at any time. All they have to do is recognize Israel’s right to exist. This their leaders will not allow, preferring to keep the people in misery in order to nurse their grievances.

In 1948 Arab leaders created the Palestinian “refugee” problem

Since I’ve now done two posts today on who is originally responsible for the refugee “crisis” in Iraq, it seems fitting to give you new information about who created the Palestinian refugees.

The so-called Palestinian “refugee” problem was created by Arab leaders who told Palestinians to leave the newly created Israel in order to facilitate its quick destruction.    Anyone who wanted to stay was called a traitor, according to new evidence reported today at Palestinian Media Watch (from Jihad Watch).   Read it all here. 

It occurs to me that this narrative of blaming Israel for 60 years for supposedly doing evil to the Palestinians has worked so well to keep hatred going that they are now using the same strategy on us.  Blame the US for all the refugee problems in Iraq and fuel the fires of hatred for generations to come.   The disgusting part is that Americans, especially in the NGO community are helping fan those flames by hiding the role Saddam Hussein played in the Iraqi humanitarian chaos.   And, our dhimmi leadership in Washington seems ready and willing to take the blame and guilt.

Why can’t the Bush Administration just stand up and say “look we didn’t create the entire Iraq refugee situation, we won’t take all the blame, the new government of Iraq needs to step up,  and dammit it’s about time that wealthy Arab countries like Saudi Arabia helped their fellow Muslim refugees–the Palestinians and the Iraqis!”

The UN is blocking a solution to the Palestinian refugees

We’ve often written about the UN’s refugee agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. But there is another refugee agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), that exists solely to deal with the Palestinian refugees, the Arabs who left Israel at its founding, and their descendants.

In a new report from the GLORIA Center (Global Research in International Affairs), Barry Rubin, Asaf Romirowsky and Jonathan Spyer show how dysfunctional and destructive this agency is.

On the surface, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) seems a humanitarian group helping Palestinian refugees. In reality, it actually helps destroy the chance of Arab-Israeli peace, promotes terrorism, and holds Palestainians back from rebuilding their lives.

Unique in history, UNRWA’s job is to keep Palestinian refugees in suspended animation–and at low living standards–until they achieve the goal set for them by the PLO and Hamas: Israel’s extinction. In the meantime, their suffering and anger is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward violence and intransigence.

UNRWA schools become hotbeds of anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic indoctrination, recruiting offices for terrorist groups. UNRWA’s services are dominated by radicals who staff and subsidize radical groups while potentially intimidating anyone from voicing a different line. UNWRA facilities are used to store and transport weapons, actually serving as military bases.

In this process, UNRWA has broken all the rules that are supposed to govern humanitarian enterprises. Consequently, UNRWA is the exact opposite of other refugee relief operations. They seek to resettle refugees; UNRWA is dedicated to blocking resettlement. They help refugees to live normal lives so that they can move on with their existence; UNRWA’s role is to ensure their lives remain abnormal so they are filled with anger and a thirst for revenge that inspires violence and can only be quenched by a victorious return. They try to create stable conditions for refugees; UNRWA’s mission is to enable radical political activity and indoctrination by armed groups which ensures a continual state of near chaos.

The Palestinians are the only group of refugees that were not resettled after World War II. UNRWA was set up in such a way that it discouraged the refugees from building new lives, unlike the UNHCR, which seeks resettlement if repatriation is not an option. The authors go into the historical reasons that this happened, and a great deal more.  They have three recommendations:

First, UNRWA should be dissolved.

Second, all services it provides should be transferred to other agencies within the UN, notably the UNHCR, which has a long and productive experience in this area.

Third, responsibility for normal social services should be turned over to the Palestinian Authority. Most UNRWA staff should be transferred to it. Donors should use the maximum amount of oversight to ensure this be done effectively.

People often wonder why violence and instability persists and why the Arab-Israeli conflict is so seemingly impossible to resolve. One important part of the answer is that UNRWA perpetuates the problem. All those seeking real progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians need to take a close look at this unacceptable situation. All those with responsibility for the management of these issues need to work for a change of course.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Palestinian “refugees” come up with another anti-Israel ploy

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Palestinian Authority is telling Palestinians from around the world to converge on Israel during its 60th anniversary celebrations later this month. The point of this propaganda campaign is to embarrass Israel by pretending the Palestinians want to move to Israel and live peacefully there.  They are supposed to bring suitcases and tents and go to “their former villages and towns.”

Somehow I don’t think that a wave of old people are going to be doing this, though anyone who has a “former” village or town in Israel has to be at least 60 years of age. Their fellow Arabs have refused to resettle the Palestinians since they voluntarily left in 1948, preferring to let them stay in miserable conditions in “refugee camps” (many of which are actually towns) in order to create anti-Israel sentiment throughout the world. Their descendants now call themselves refugees and claim the “right of return” to Israel.

Not often discussed is the fact that all the Arabs who stayed in Israel when it was founded became citizens, and have prospered beyond Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East. They also have more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East, and have their own political party and representatives in the Knesset, the legislature.

The idea behind promoting the “right of return” is to overwhelm Israel with Palestinians.  One idea is to get an agreement that there will be one state with Palestinians and Jews living side by side rather than a separate Palestinian state. Since the birthrate among Palestinians is much higher than among Israelis, they would soon be a majority. And it is no secret that their intention is to destroy Israel — this is just one alternative way of doing it.

The Palestinian Arabs are using Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration to dramatize their claim that Israel’s founding was illegitimate. Here is a piece by Barry Rubin that lays out the double standard the world applies to Israel over this matter.