Whither UNRWA?

By JPOST EDITORIAL 08.13. 2014

 http://tinyurl.com/kmxphuo

UNRWA has never been impartial. Its interest in self-preservation rules out fairness. Its existence hinges on keeping the flames of conflict burning.

UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, has joined Hamas’s clamor for lifting Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip forthwith. This is the gist of what UNRWA’s Gaza spokesman Chris Gunness demands. No surprise here; UNRWA has never been impartial.

Its interest in self-preservation rules out fairness. Its existence hinges on keeping the flames of conflict burning.

That its facilities served as rocket arsenals is one aspect of a greater travesty. The rockets were apparently handed back to Hamas on at least three occasions and UNRWA appears complacent about the fact that its buildings were used to launch rockets at Israel and to fire on Israeli troops (thereby inevitably drawing counter-fire on supposed havens).

Many UNRWA personnel, moreover, are closely tied to Gaza’s powers that be and are not the do-gooders they purport to be. Twenty-five of the 27 members of the UNRWA executive in Gaza are Hamas activists. The agency’s schools are infamous for facilitating Hamas indoctrination.

Gunness’s demand is disingenuous for failing to mention cause and effect. It accuses Israel of “collective punishment of the 1.8 million Palestinians packed into Gaza.” To the uninitiated, it sounds as if this is a product of Israeli malevolence.

There is no mention of what caused Israel to impose a blockade, nor of what happened when no such blockade was in force. The fact that Israel allows food, medication, electricity and water into Gaza at the very time in which Gaza’s rulers fire rockets at Israeli communities is also missing from Gunness’s presentation of the situation.

UNRWA’s mandate is an aberration. The UN established a special agency in 1949 for those deemed to be Palestine refugees. Every other refugee in the world, regardless of objective hardship, is to be looked after by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

UNRWA works to prevent refugees’ offspring from losing their refugee status, thereby creating the greatest obstacle to the ostensibly desired peace. UNRWA fans the ambition to inundate Israel with millions of so-called refugees, while paying lip-service to a two-state solution.

This becomes evident when we consider the different definitions for “refugee” to which UNHCR and UNRWA subscribe. UNHCR’s refugee is one who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted... is outside the country of his nationality.” By this definition, the refugee’s descendants are not refugees. Florida-born children of Cuban refugees are no longer considered homeless.

The only exceptions are the Palestinians. UNRWA classifies as refugees any Arabs, native or not, who sojourned “in Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, and lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Not only could any itinerant foreign Arab laborer claim Palestinian refugee status, but UNRWA stipulates that the condition extends to “descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948.” One refugee parent suffices to inherit the distinction – even when the inheritor is not “outside the country of one’s nationality.”

By UNHCR’s yardstick, more than 97 percent of those whom UNRWA regards as refugees are nothing of the sort. In 1948, there were some 600,000 self-styled Palestine refugees. UNRWA now boasts that it cares for 5,000,000 people. Its budget for 2014 is $14 billion, versus $5b. for UNHCR (saddled with the rest of the world’s refugees, including those from Syria and Iraq). UNHCR has 5,000 employees; UNRWA has 30,000 (90 percent of whom are Palestinians).

Members of the US Senate this week demanded an independent investigation into UNRWA’s role during Operation Protective Edge. Accusing the agency of maintaining active ties with Hamas and of supporting its activities throughout the war, Senate Foreign Relations Committee members Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) wrote a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry accusing the UN agency of bias and characterizing its role in the conflict as “troubling.”

The senators noted that the US is the single largest donor to UNRWA, providing the agency with $294 million in 2013 and a total of $5b. since 1950.

With so many layers of hypocrisy cynically contributing to the perpetuation of misery instead of assisting the cause of peace and prosperity, perhaps it is time to regard UNRWA as a problem in and of itself. Unless UNRWA institutes radical changes, the region would be better off without it. 

How UNRWA Steals Money from Those Who Need It Most

Evelyn Gordon 04.18.2013 http://tinyurl.com/cfpmpok

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is threatening to end relief operations for Syrian refugees - who currently number 1.3 million and counting - if it doesn’t receive the necessary funds soon. The agency says it has received only a third of the $1 billion it needs to mfund its work through June, and only $400 million of the $1.5 billion donors pledged earlier this year. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned explicitly that without more funds, UNHCR will have to stop distributing food to refugees in Lebanon next month. And Jordan, which has the largest largest of Syrian refugees, is threatening to close its borders to new entrants unless more aid is forthcoming urgently.

Meanwhile, another UN agency enjoys comfortable funding of about $1 billion a year to help a
very different group of refugees - refugees who
- generally live in permanent homes rather than flimsy tents in makeshift camps
- have never faced the trauma of flight and dislocation,
- having lived all their lives in the place where they were born often
 - have jobs that provide an income on top of their refugee benefits
- enjoy regular access to schooling, healthcare and all the other benefits of non-refugee life.

In short, these “refugees” are infinitely better off than their Syrian brethren - yet their generous funding continues undisturbed even as Syrian refugees are facing the imminent loss of such basics as food and fresh water. I am talking, of course, about UNRWA.

It has long been clear that UNRWA - which deals solely with Palestinian refugees, while UNHCR bears responsibility for all other refugees on the planet - is a major obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace. Since, unlike UNHCR, it grants refugee status to the original refugees’ descendants in perpetuity, the number of Palestinian refugees has ballooned from under 700,000 in 1949 to over five million today, even as the world’s non-Palestinian refugee population has shrunk from over 100 million to under 30 million. Moreover, while UNHCR’s primary goal is to resettle refugees, UNRWA hasn’t resettled a single refugee in its history: by its definition, refugees remain refugees even after acquiring citizenship in another country. It has thereby perpetuated and exacerbated the Palestinian refugee problem to the point where it has become the single greatest obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Quite simply, Israel cannot absorb five million Palestinian refugees (though it could easily absorb the fewer than 50,000 original refugees who still remain alive); yet under UNRWA’s rules, refugee status can’t be ended except by resettlement in Israel.

But an even more basic reason for abolishing UNRWA is the harm it does to the world’s most vulnerable people - real refugees like the Syrians. Were the Palestinians handled by UNHCR like all other refugees are, UNHCR would have the budgetary flexibility to temporarily divert aid from the Palestinians who need it far less to people who need it more, like the Syrians today. Instead, it is forced to watch helplessly as Syrian refugees go roofless and hungry while $1 billion in aid is squandered on Palestinians with homes, jobs, and all the comforts of settled life.

Anyone who claims to have a shred of genuine humanitarian concern for refugees ought to be agitating for UNRWA’s abolition and the Palestinians’ transfer to UNHCR’s auspices. Unfortunately for the Syrians, it seems that many of the world’s self-proclaimed humanitarians prefer harming Israel to helping those who need it most.