Once upon a time, @UNRWA helped resettle Palestinian refugees in other countries - and removed them from their "refugee" counts ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, December 09, 2024

Once upon a time, @UNRWA helped resettle Palestinian refugees in other countries - and removed them from their "refugee" counts

Browsing through old UNRWA annual reports, I saw this from 1954:

At one time, UNRWA would remove refugees from its rolls if they emigrated to other countries - and even if they made money on their own.

And UNRWA encouraged both. It created works programs (the "W" of UNRWA) to help Palestinians find work and become self-sufficient. Over time, those programs disappeared.

When it came to emigration, the same thing happened. Its 1956 report says that UNRWA provided grants to those who managed to obtain visas but couldn't afford travel: "1,040 refugees who wished to emigrate, who had obtained visas on their own initiative and who had requested assistance from the Agency have been given travel grants when they demonstrated that they would otherwise not have been able to use their visas."

UNRWA continued to give such grants for the rest of the decade, although it doesn't seem to have publicized that too well. The number of people who took advantage of it went steadily down. (Only Jordan and Lebanon allowed the refugees to leave; those in Syria and Gaza were not allowed to emigrate - for their own good, of course.)

South America was the preferred destination for most of the Palestinian refugees.

By 1962, the budget for paying for Palestinians to go elsewhere was slashed. The program wound a year or two afterwards, although UNRWA doesn't explain why.

This chart can help explain it, though:

By 1961, over 99% of UNRWA staff were Palestinians themselves. These were the ideologues who wanted to ensure that the population would stay put to pressure Israel with the threat of "return." It is no wonder that UNRWA funds to emigrate dried up - these Palestinian UNRWA employees would pressure, and probably threatened, anyone who wanted to find a better life in the West, where they would no longer be stateless.

It was not long after this that UNRWA decided that the definition of "refugee" would include their descendants, forever, and when UNRWA changed their policies to ensure that "refugees" can never be taken off their rolls even when they leave UNRWA areas of operation.

UNRWA transformed from an agency that actually tried to help Palestinians into an agency that only wanted to keep them miserable and stateless for political reasons. The statistics of those that UNRWA helped emigrate elsewhere is another piece of evidence for how the agency went from a group of people who really wanted to help into a political organization hell bent on using the "refugee" issue as a means to destroy Israel.