Al Hayat reports that UNRWA is planning to cut the free food it provides to Gazans by about one third over the next six months, reducing the number of welfare recipients from 180,000 families (900,000 people) to 120,000 families.
The move is necessary, according to the report, because of UNRWA's budget crisis and the refusal of Arab countries to pay their pledges.
The report claims that UNRWA has already created lists of families that will not be getting food. The criteria include families that own cars,TVs, refrigerators and microwave ovens. Also in their calculations are whether there are other NGOs in the area that can fill the gap.
The cuts reportedly will come in two phases.
Rumors like this in the past have been vehemently denied by UNRWA, but even slight cuts in services inevitably result in riots.
UNRWA, of course, is an organization whose main purpose is to perpetuate the "refugee" problem rather than solve it. Since there is no mechanism in UNRWA for people to go off its rolls, the organization will remain responsible for an ever-increasing number of people, forever. Yet its international funding will not grow forever, meaning that unless it changes its definition of "refugee" to be more in line with the standard definition used everywhere else in the world, and unless it resumes the efforts it used to exert in the 1950s to actually help these people integrate into their host countries rather than teach them dependency, the problem will only continue to get worse.
Maybe a first step would be for UNRWA to stop teaching generations of Palestinian Arabs that they will "return" to Israel, which is a major part of UNRWA's school curricula, which can be seen on the web today Telling them the truth can prepare the next generation for self-sufficiency and to shame the Arab world to accept them as citizens rather than discriminate against them.
Telling the truth is apparently also against UNRWA policy.
