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| UNRWA's "Amman New Camp" in Jordan, whose residents are Jordanian citizens, paid for by you |
From the European Commission:
Today the European Union has made available €82 million for the 2018 operating budget of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).Here's an idea for those who really, really care about helping Palestinians: Drastically cut UNRWA services to Jordan.
High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission Federica Mogherini said: "Millions of people – men, women and children – depend on UNRWA for vital services: education, healthcare and social services, humanitarian assistance and employment. Supporting UNRWA is a humanitarian and political duty. It is in our collective interest of building peace and security in the Middle East and for the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution. I have shared this message of urgency with our partners participating in today's meeting in Rome, dedicated to UNRWA's funding crisis. As the Agency faces difficult times, we are – and we will continue to be – strong, consistent and reliable supporters of its work".
In 2016 and 2017, the EU and its Member States together provided €424 million and €391 million respectively to UNRWA, making the European Union by far the largest and most reliable donor to the Agency. Today's €82 million support is allocated as a part of the EU's regular annual contribution for 2018, and has been made available through a sped-up procedure.
The €82 million in funding was announced today during a meeting between High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini and UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl in the margins of the extraordinary UNRWA Ministerial Conference in Rome. The Conference focussed on solving the acute funding crisis the Agency is facing and on moving forward necessary Agency reforms.
About 40% of UNRWA's "Palestine refugees" live in Jordan, over 2 million people. The vast majority of them have been Jordanian citizens for nearly 70 years!
For 70 years, the world has funded a housing, medical and educational system for millions of Jordanian citizens that is completely separate and parallel to the existing Jordanian system. They are not refugees by any conceivable definition. The only reason that they are treated differently from any other Jordanian is because some of their ancestors happened to live a few miles away in 1947.
There is no moral, legal or historic reason why these Jordanian citizens need to have their housing, education and medical needs filled by the UN instead of the country that they are citizens of. Nowhere else in the world are people who are full citizens of the country they live in given unending "refugee" aid.
Hundreds of thousands of Jordanian citizens live in camps. Why?
The EU disingenuously has said for years that UNRWA "provides a political space for the efforts to conclude a peace deal and the creation of the future Palestinian state."
Hundreds of million of euros are spent to maintain an apartheid system between two different classes of Jordanian citizens. And not one person who attended this conference in Rome has a problem with that, instead insisting that UNRWA's services and its bizarre definition of "refugee" is sacred.
About 40% of UNRWA's budget can be cut today by noting that citizens of Jordan are not, by definition, refugees.
The only political purpose to providing Jordanian citizens with "refugee" status is to use them as cannon fodder to help destroy Israel. The EU and the rest of the world have a message to two million Jordanian citizens: They are not "real" Jordanians after generations of living there and that they should really move to Israel in order to destroy the Jewish state.
That is not exactly a formula for peace.
European citizens should be outraged that so much of their money is being worse that wasted: it is being used to perpetuate an apartheid system in Jordan and to prolong a "refugee" crisis.
If you care about peace and equal rights, shame Jordan into mainstreaming its own citizens into its own social service programs, and pay Jordan to integrate UNRWA facilities and employees into a single, unified Jordanian system.