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Thursday, June 18, 2015

Ma'an claims 1.1 million Gazans were driven out of Israel

Ma'an reports that UNRWA is closing its shelters for displaced Gazans, saying that they can take care of all of them by paying their rent.

It then says, "About 300,000 Palestinians whose homes were destroyed by Israeli forces have been staying temporarily in over 90 sheltering centers run by UNRWA since August 2014."

Did UNRWA find space for 300,000 people? "Have been" means that they are still currently displaced.

The answer is no. UNRWA did house 300,000 at the end of the war, but the number of total displaced has gone down to 100,000 by May.

Ma'an's background lies get much more absurd in the next paragraph:
Prior to the war, UNRWA already struggled to meet the needs of Palestinians living in eight refugee camps throughout the Gaza Strip, where 1.1 million of the 1.5 Palestinian million residents are refugees driven from present-day Israel.
1.1 million Gazans were driven from Israel? That's an amazing fact, since there were barely 1.1 million Arabs in Palestine in 1947 altogether!

This is what happens when you create a new definition of "refugee" that is at odds with reality. Ma'an needs to pretend that they are refugees so therefore it needs to pretend, presumably, that every Gazan "refugee" is over 67 years old.