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Friday, December 04, 2009

Hamas:"UNRWA aid should have no strings attached"

I mentioned the other day about UNRWA's budget shortfall, how it is partially the fault of Arab states that never paid their already pitifully small pledges to UNRWA, and that if the West truly wants to solve the "refugee" problem, it should shame the Arabs into shouldering their own responsibilities for the issue.

Hamas, predictably, has a different take on the issue.

Commenting on the UNRWA budget crisis, Hamas' minister of refugee affairs Hussam Ahmed says the the UNRWA budget deficit is a political issue, and that UNRWA is trying to use it to impose a political agenda on Palestinian Arabs.

He said "We are against the policy of Arabization of UNRWA because it pushes the international community to abandon its responsibilities towards refugees, and support towards making the refugee issue an Arab issue and not an international one."

Ahmed further said that since the "international community" (meaning the Western world) is responsible for the Balfour Declaration, the Sykes Picot agreement and the 1947 partition plan, then it is wholly responsible for the "refugees" and must pay them forever, without ever asking for anything in return.

It is almost as if he is worried that the West would one day do exactly as I suggested. Which is the best proof that it would work.