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Resources updated Tuesday, February 20, 2018

February 20, 2018

An UNRWA building

"The news is abuzz with the decision of the United States to withhold 65 million dollars from the United Nations Relief Agency ('UNRWA') that was created supposedly to help Palestinian Arab refugees. Like many United Nations activities, this so-called 'relief agency' was set up for the wrong reasons and has become a tool of third world terrorists.
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The Arab refugees who were created by the 1948 war were totally and completely the responsibility of the multitude of Arab nations that attacked the Jewish State in 1948 and tried to drive the Jewish people into the sea. Less spoken about are the 1 million Jewish refugees kicked out of Arab countries from North Africa through to the Middle East. All of those nations had sizeable Jewish populations dating back to Biblical times, and virtually every one of those nations seized Jewish property and threw those Jews into the street.
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How did the Arabs treat the refugees they created? They put them in refugee camps and created UNRWA to feed them. UNRWA of course has not been funded very much by the Arab world, but rather by the United States and the West. We have been complicit in creating several generations of new terrorists because the Arabs wanted pawns who would become soldiers in their war against the presence of Jews and Christians in the Middle East.

However, the facts are far uglier than that. UNRWA has been used repeatedly as a disguise for terrorist indoctrination. UNRWA schools teach a revisionist history that claims the Holocaust against the Jews never happened and to deprecate Western values at every level. In subsequent Arab attempts to kill Jews, UNRWA schools and facilities have essentially been safehouses for terrorists, in which missiles and munitions were stored. There have been some feeble attempts by the United Nations to address this, but unfortunately the United Nations today is nothing more than a clearing house for those third world nations who are hostile to the West..."

U.N. Relief and Works Agency: Savior or demon? Article

Palestinian UN representative, Abdallah Abushawesh

"A recording surfaced last week of a Palestinian diplomat, Abdallah Abushawesh, member of the Palestinian Authority delegation to the UN, telling a group of students from Canada: 'We are very clever and very expert at throwing the stones,' as well as: 'We are very proud that we are stone throwers. I'm one of them.' Following is a transcript of the recording:

'We are very clever and very expert at throwing the stones. We are very proud to do that. We will not stop to learn our kids. We are very proud to say that every catching a Palestinian throwing a stone we go to the jail. We are very proud that we are stone throwers. I'm one of them. Now I became a little bit older, but I still resist in the name of my kids.'
[Ynet, Feb. 13, 2018]

It does not come as a surprise that a Palestinian UN diplomat openly praises rock throwing. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA and Fatah openly encourage rock throwing. For example, a poem in a Palestinian youth magazine partially funded by the PA teaches children that throwing rocks at Jews is something mandated by Muhammad, Islam's Prophet..."

Palestinian UN diplomat caught on tape glorifying children's rock throwing Article

Palestinian children attend a class at the UNRWA elementary school

"The Palestinian refugee issue has been seen for some seventy years as a principal obstacle to a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. However, the expanding numbers of refugees from the Middle East and Africa today challenge the uniqueness of the Palestinian situation. In fact, the issue of Palestinian refugees is perceived more as the reflection of an ongoing lapse by Arab countries, Israel, and the international community, which have been unable to separate the solution to this problem from the greater political arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians. Despite the ongoing distress of the refugees, the subject is still seen as the Palestinians' main bargaining chip in peace negotiations with Israel. However, the value of this historical card appears to be ebbing with the growing numbers of refugees worldwide and the absence of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After seven decades and many changes in the Middle East, perhaps this complex issue should be disconnected from the greater political settlement.

The decision by US President Donald Trump to freeze a third of the United States' contribution to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, has brought renewed attention to an organization whose very existence and activity arouses harsh criticism in Israel. UNRWA was established in 1949 after the War of Independence to deal solely with Palestinian refugees. As with the question of Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugee issue has been seen for some seventy years as a principal obstacle to a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. For the Palestinians who have been raised on the Nakba heritage, any compromise on this issue is an attack on Palestinian national identity.

The number of individuals forced to leave their homes during the War of Independence is estimated at 720,000. Most of them settled in refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. According to UNRWA, all the descendants of Palestinian refugees are considered refugees, and therefore today they number over five and a half million. Citizenship of another country, for example, Jordan, does not cancel their refugee status. In other words, only the return of the refugees and their descendants to their homes can cancel this status.

For Israeli governments, the Palestinian demand for the 'right of return' of refugees was and remains a red line. This position is supported by an absolute majority of Israeli citizens from all parts of the political spectrum, because the return of such large numbers of Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel would have far reaching consequences for the character of the state. However, all the attempts by the State of Israel over the years to change UNRWA's definition of refugees have failed. Israel's efforts to change UNRWA's status as an independent entity and subject it to the UNHCR, which handles all other refugees worldwide, has failed as well. This is largely because the Arab countries believe that such a change would make it impossible to pass on refugee status to the descendants of Palestinian refugees and thus weaken the Palestinian position in negotiations..."

The Palestinian Refugees: Facts, Figures, and Significance Article

UNRWA employees in Syria

"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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Given the increasingly important role played in UNRWA from the 1950's onward by members of the Arab League and given the League's ability to assert itself in the UN system, no serious questions were raised by anyone about the fact that there were no efforts to integrate Palestinian refugees into the countries in which they lived under UNRWA auspices. The claim of a 'right of return' was full justification for maintaining refugee status for refugees served by UNRWA.

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.

It is clear that no government of Israel will be prepared to enter into an agreement under which its country would be liquidated. The question is, therefore, whether the Palestinian negotiators would be prepared to sign an agreement under which they give up their claim for a 'right of return.' Mahmoud Abbas has made it clear that he would not do that..."

UNRWA as an Obstacle to an Israeli/Palestinian Peace Agreement Article