Document at UNRWA site admits UNRWA's definition of "refugee" is not valid in international law

The UN Human Rights Council issued a document last week by its reliably anti-Isrsel team of "experts" demanding that Palestinian "refugees" have the right to "return" under international law. 

Right of return of Palestinian refugees must be prioritised over political considerations: UN experts 

2022 marked the largest ever increase in the number of forcibly displaced persons worldwide, with over 108 million people across the globe uprooted from their homes, more than half are women and girls....

This reality is all too familiar for the Palestinian people, 75 years since the Nakba - the event that shattered Palestinian lives and severed their ancestral connection to their land during the establishment of the State of Israel. Since then, they have endured forced displacement, dispossession, and disenfranchisement, with their rights to self-determination, restitution, and compensation repeatedly denied. For 75 years, their cry for justice, embodied in the demand for the right to return, has resounded with unwavering determination.

For Palestinians, forced displacement has become part of their life for generations, tracing back to 1947-1949 when over 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee massacres and mass expulsions and forcible transfers during the birth of the State of Israel. The majority, along with their descendants, are still in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, while 40 per cent of them remain under occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. Progressively, Palestinian exile has scattered them across various nations globally.

 Since 1948, both the General Assembly and the Security Council have consistently called upon Israel to facilitate the return of Palestinian refugees and provide reparations. Despite these repeated appeals, Palestinian refugees have been systematically denied of their right to return and forced to live in exile under precarious and vulnerable conditions outside the borders of Palestine.   

The thing is, even the UN admits that these Palestinian Arabs are not legally considered refugees.

The UNHCR's Refugee Survey Quarterly in 2010 has an article by Riccardo Bocco, a professor at the University of Geneva, looking at the history of UNRWA. It is hosted at the UNRWA website, today.  ASnd it admits what we have been writing here for years: the UNRWA working definition of "Palestine refugee" has nothing to do with international law.

In looking at who is a Palestinian refugee, there is no definitive response. The definition and the number of Palestinian refugees can differ according to the approach (administrative, juridical, political) used to define Palestinian refugees and also according to the social context of interaction between Palestinians (registered refugees or not) and others and the actors defining them. UNRWA, particularly at the beginning of its mandate, lacked a fixed definition; this changed mainly due to a need to delimit the number of relief recipients. When the Agency began its activities, it inherited a legacy of inflated registration: the United Nations Economic Survey Mission recorded approximately 720,000 people, while the number of recipients on the ration rolls of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees (UNRPR) surpassed 950,000. It is the 1952 definition that has become the accepted one and has remained virtually unchanged: “a Palestine refugee shall mean any person whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period June 1, 1946 to May 15, 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict”.

Some remarks should be noted.... [T]he descendants of original registered refugees inherited UNRWA’s administrative title independently of the fact that they may have obtained a nationality and/or left the Agency’s fields of operation. 

It is important to emphasize that the UNRWA definition of a Palestine refugee is an administrative one and does not translate directly into recognition by international law. Furthermore, a tacit understanding seems to prevail: UNRWA’s continued existence (and the associated Palestine refugee status) is directly linked to the realization of a permanent resolution to the Palestine refugee issue.

Four crucial facts are listed here:

1. Over 30% of the original "refugee" population UNRWA registered were not refugees, and took that status illicitly. They have never been purged.

2. The UNRWA definition of "refugee" is administrative, not legal, and has nothing to do with the legal definition of refugee under international law and the Refugee Convention.

3. UNRWA "refugees" and their descendants are still considered "registered refugees" even if they move away from UNRWA areas, even if they obtain citizenship elsewhere - not only Jordan but also EU countries and the US. This is a truly absurd situation that is impossible for any real refugee; it is axiomatic that one cannot be a refugee while simultaneously being a citizen of a state. But  millions of Palestinians are.  So we have an absurd situation where American multi-millionaire supermodels (whose father's family voluntarily walked away from their home in Safed in 1948) are still considered "Palestine refugees." 

4. UNRWA has a conflict of interest between staying in business and a sane definition of "refugee." . This is a major reason why it does not have any cessation clauses as UNHCR does. "Palestine refugees" are forever.

All of these facts are damning,. And they are on UNRWA's own website, today. 

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UN accuses Israel a brand new crime - "domicide" - because Israel must be the worst violator of EVERY crime!

The UN's antisemitic Special Rapporteur for Attacking Israel, Francesca Albanese, tweeted this:

The systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, erection of illegal Israeli settlements & systematic denial of building permits for Palestinians amounts to “domicide”. This is nothing but Israel’s attempt to curtail Palestinians’ self-determination & threaten their very existence.   

She links to a report from the viciously anti-Israel Human Rights Council which says:

The international community must take action to stop systematic and deliberate housing demolition and sealing, arbitrary displacement and forced evictions of Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank, UN experts* said today.

In the month of January 2023 alone, Israeli authorities reportedly demolished 132 Palestinian structures across 38 communities in the occupied West Bank, including 34 residential and 15 donor-funded structures. This figure represents a 135 percent increase, compared to the same period in 2022, and includes five punitive demolitions.

“The systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, erection of illegal Israeli settlements and systematic denial of building permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank amounts to “domicide”.

Here's the interesting part. The word "domicide" was coined last year by Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. 

In his report he defined the term this way:

“The attacking, bombing and shelling of civilian targets, the razing of entire cities and villages – displacing millions into homelessness – have continued unabated despite the development of modern human rights and humanitarian law,” the UN expert said.

While international law outlaws all forms of arbitrary housing destruction, deportation, displacement and forced eviction, the Special Rapporteur noted an alarming continuity of gross violations of the right to adequate housing in times of conflict.

In a path-breaking report, Rajagopal urged States to recognise “domicide” - the systematic or widespread violation of the right to adequate housing – as an international crime of its own standing.

Rajagopal created the term to describe a much bigger issue than just destroying houses here and there. He's discussing the systematic destruction of entire cities and making thousands of people homeless just to hurt people:

“How many more Aleppos, Saanas and Mariupols must we endure? We must not allow those responsible for such egregious crimes to remain in positions of power. They must face international justice,” Rajagopal said.

This scene in Aleppo is what he means by domicide:

In the 17 or so years I've been reading Palestinian media, I have not once seen an article about a homeless Palestinian in the West Bank. 

Those who are building illegal houses in Area C already have houses in Palestinian administered areas. They aren't homeless! They are building these illegal, dangerous shacks in order to grab land from Israel - with European support. It is a purely political move. But they have a place to sleep at night even after Israel demolishes their homes. No one is living in a tent or in a car that I have seen.

This is not at all what Balakrishnan Rajagopal had in mind when he created the term.

Once the UN describes a new crime, the modern antisemites must hijack the term to apply it to Israel, of course, and pretend that Israel's demolishing illegally built houses - which is an obligation under the laws of occupation! - is the worst possible example of this crime.

And, let's face it, saying that Israel is guilty of "domicide" sounds so much more dramatic than "enforcing zoning laws."

By hijacking the issue, the UN's "experts" and Albanese have now cheapened the actual crimes of Syria, Yemen and Russia. Because antisemites insist that Jews are the worst people on Earth. 

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UN COI "expert" really said that social media is controlled by the Jewish lobby and pro-Israel NGOs

We've written previously about the kangaroo court, open ended "commission of inquiry" of the UN Human Rights Council designed to declare Israel a violator of every law known to man plus a few that they will make up themselves. 

One of the members of the commission, Miloon Kothari, gave an podcast interview with Mondoweiss (naturally) that was so absurd that it is beyond parody. He spouted explicit antisemitism. He spread lies about international law. 

It is something to hear.

The goal of this commission is to gather evidence to take Israel to the International Criminal Court and possibly expel it from the UN.

Kothari complained about how the US was working against the obvious bias of the commission, saying that it was very disrespectful for the US to point it out.

You might know at this session of the Council when we presented our report, the United States, which is you know, become a member of the Council again, circulated a statement signed by 22 countries objecting to our mandate and that actually shows great disrespect for the body that the United States is a member of.  Because once you're a member of a body and a body has adopted a mechanism, you have to, you have to respect it. 

....We had overwhelming support of the UN Member states. the US got, you know, 22 states signed, but that's 22 out of 193. That's not very much.

Also I think that it's not only governments, but we are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it's the Jewish lobby or it's very specific NGOs. A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.

According to Kothari, the majority must always be right. And Jews control social media and they are throwing a lot of their Jew money at trying to silence the esteemed UN commission that is beyond reproach or criticism.

That's not even an exaggerated version of what he is saying.

Kothari also says the "occupation" has been illegal from the beginning. Even if you say that Israel occupies the West Bank, occupations aren't illegal. There is no concept of an illegal occupation in international law. Kothari's ignorance of the basics of the international law that supposedly is the basis of this inquiry says volumes. 

And then he says, "I would go as far as to raise the question is why are they [Israel] even a member of the United Nations?"

Listening to this podcast, this is a very good question.  Why should any decent country give legitimacy to what is so obviously a joke?

Kothari did say one thing that was 100% accurate, though, even though he meant it in a different way:

If people feel that we are biased, then we are biased. But but for us, that's that's the job we've been given to do. And that's what we're doing. 

Exactly. The job they were given was to be biased, and that is precisely what they are doing.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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