UNRWA as an Obstacle to an Israeli/Palestinian Peace Agreement

"The Administration's decision to withhold some of the payments scheduled for disbursement to the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, has drawn attention to a UN body that is today one of the most important obstacles to an Arab/Israeli peace agreement.

UNRWA, we need to note, now serves 5.3 million people, less than 1% of whom are Palestinian refugees from the 1948/49 war that followed the creation of the State of Israel. More than 99% are descendants of such refugees. The claim is now made that they all have the right to live in Israel. It is called the 'right of return.' The fact is that there is no such right. But the mere claim of such a right most certainly interferes with the peace process. UNRWA plays a key role in advancing that claim.
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While Israel took responsibility for the refugees living within its territory, the same was not true of the Arab states. And here we get to the essence of the problem. Though a series of armistice agreements were signed in 1949 between Israel and its Arab neighbors, no peace agreement was signed at that time. The countries remained in a state of war and the Arab states remained committed to ending the existence of the State of Israel. If the State of Israel were to be liquidated, the refugees were quite obviously expected to return to the places where they had lived before the war. It followed that there was no good reason to seek to resettle them in the Arab states in which they were living. The 'right of return' was claimed for them.
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The claim of a 'right of return' was full justification for maintaining refugee status for refugees served by UNRWA.
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But as the years passed and refugees got older and died, the question arose as to how to maintain the claim of a 'right of return' in a way that could lead to the ending of the existence of the State of Israel. That led to the decision, again heavily influenced by the Arab League, to define a 'refugee' for UNWRA purposes as not only including people who had fled from their homes, but their descendants along the male line as well.

It is as a result of this redefinition of the word 'refugee' that UNWRA now serves approximately 5.3 million people. Let us note that the migration of these 5.3 million to Israel, if added to the 1.8 million Palestinians who now live in Israel, would turn Israel into a majority-Arab state, thus ending Israel's existence..."