Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: unrwa reports

Showing posts with label unrwa reports. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

UNRWA spreads bogus statistics to other NGOs

This is a strange one.

The Development Initiatives website used to have very extensive statistics on aid given, both from donors and to which recipients. But its latest report only discusses the top ten recipients, and this year the Palestinians are not listed among the top ten - they had been at or near the top from the early 2000s to at least 2015.

But it does mention the Palestinians in a different context.

In "Figure 2.6: The numbers of forcibly displaced people across the globe increased by almost 20% between 2021 and 2022, to more than 100 million people," it gives numbers of "forcibly displaced" people in "Palestine" for 2021 and 2022:

It says that the number of "forcibly displaced" Palestinians in the territories increased from 2.4 million to 2.9 million in only one year.

The footnotes say that it got these statistics from UNRWA: "Data is organised according to UNHCR's definitions of country/territory of asylum. According to data provided by UNRWA, registered Palestine refugees are included as refugees for Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. UNHCR data represents 2022 mid-year figures, and UNRWA data for 2022 is based on internal estimates."

First of all, it is absurd to say that the number of UNRWA registered refugees in the West Bank and Gaza increased by 21% in one year. There was no new influx of refugees to the territories and natural growth increase is nowhere near that number.

Secondly, to call people who pretend to be "refugees from Palestine" but who live in Palestine "refugees," and not even "internally displaced persons." is equally absurd.

Thirdly, UNRWA themselves publishes these statistics, so there was no reason for UNRWA to provide an "estimate" for 2022. According to them, in the fourth quarter of 2021 there were 2,400,208 "registered refugees" in the territories, in the fourth quarter of 2022 there were 2,454,903. That is an increase of 2%, not 20%.

It is possible that someone made a mistake - if a decimal point moved from an increase of 50,000 to 500,000, that would explain this discrepancy. But still, this is something that should have been checked.

One other interesting anomaly: according to this chart, a small but not insignificant number of "refugees" are seeking asylum in the Palestinian territories themselves. Where are they from? They couldn't be Palestinian - are they Africans who managed to make it to Gaza or the West Bank? The Palestinian Basic Law does not have any section about asylum seekers, and gives only a general statement about citizenship being regulated by law.

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UNRWA gives free services to 775,000 who aren't refugees even by its own definition!

This table is from the UNRWA Registered Population Dashboard, showing who receives UNRWA services.

We've discussed many times how the UNRWA definition of "refugee" is completely at odds with the official UN definition of refugee, drastically inflating the number of real refugees they raise funds for. They include descendants of refugees that UNHCR would never consider refugees, they include two million Jordanian citizens, they include well over two million Palestinians who are citizens of the Palestinian Authority.

We've seen how their "registered refugee" metric includes hundreds of thousands of people who no longer live in their areas of operation but whom UNRWA still counts as receiving services.

We've seen how hundreds of thousands of today's UNRWA "registered refugees" were not even refugees under their own definition when it started, but UNRWA registered them anyway and today hundreds of thousands of UNRWA's "Palestine refugees" didn't even descend from real refugees in 1948.

But this chart shows even more duplicity.

According to UNRWA, they provide services to over 770,000 people who aren't refugees even according to its own bizarre and counterfactual definition.

Doing some digging, I found the definition of "non-refugee" spouses and children.

UNRWA definition of “other eligible population” includes: (i) “Non-Refugee Wives” – women who are (or were) married to registered Palestine refugees, and as such are eligible to register to receive UNRWA services; (ii) “Non-Refugee Husbands” and “Non-Refugee Descendants” (including legally adopted children) – husbands and descendants of women who are Registered Refugees and are (or were) married to a non-refugee. They are also eligible to register to receive UNRWA services. Once they are registered with UNRWA, persons in this category are referred to as Married to Non-Refugee (MNR) Family Members.

So being married to a "refugee" makes one eligible to access free UNRWA health and housing. Which would have made Palestinian "refugees" very attractive marriage partners! According to this, some 450,000 non-refugees have married UNRWA aid recipients - an astonishing number.

Moreover, even if the spouses get divorced, he or she can keep getting those benefits forever - and so can their descendants! Not a bad deal!

What about "frontier villagers," "Jerusalem poor" and "Gaza poor"?

UNRWA’s Commissioner-General (then Director) stated in his annual report to the General Assembly in 1961: "The Agency’s definition of a refugee eligible for assistance is narrowly drawn and stipulates the loss of both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 hostilities. Substantial numbers of Palestine Arabs do not qualify for Agency relief on the technical grounds that they did not lose both home and means of livelihood, i.e. they may have lost their source of income and may be wholly destitute, but did not lose their home. This category has become known as 'economic refugees' and includes frontier villagers in Jordan, some destitute inhabitants of Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and certain Bedouin expelled after 1948. The General Assembly has more than once confirmed that, despite the undoubted need of these unfortunate people, the Agency’s mandate does not extend to them.

That was 1961. Since then, "The present Agency position is that, while registered for the purposes of receiving UNRWA services, these persons are not counted as part of the official registered Palestine refugee population. Except for descendants through the male line, UNRWA does not accept new applications from persons wishing to be registered in these categories.

So if a person was considered a "frontier villager" or "Jerusalem poor" in 1950, even though they weren't refugees and the UN consistently said they are not to receive UNRWA services during the 1950s, today their descendants can continue to receive UNRWA benefits as a poverty stricken Palestinian - even if they live in a mansion in Ramallah.

Do the UNRWA donors even know that UNRWA spends 11% of its budget on people who aren't "refugees" even under its own definitions?

The problem is, as we've mentioned before, that, unlike UNHCR, UNRWA has no means to remove anyone's "refugee" status. The vast majority of UNRWA's "Palestine refugees" are not refugees in any sense. And now we see that even non-refugees continue to receive UNRWA services forever.

There are more non-refugees under UNRWA's own definition receiving services today than there were real refugees in 1948. That shows, in a nutshell, why UNRWA must be abolished.

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When UNRWA tried to resettle Palestinian refugees

The 1952 UNRWA annual report includes sections on all areas where it had operations - Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

And Iraq.

And Libya.

And, for the last time, Israel.

We've discussed Israel before. In UNRWA's words, "Late in June, an agreement was concluded with Israel whereby that Government assumed responsibility for the care of the remaining 19,000 refugees in that country as of 1 July, 1952." Israel naturalized its Palestinian Arab refugees, unlike most Arab nations.

But why did UNRWA have operations in Iraq and Libya?

Because, back in its early days, UNRWA actually tried to help resettle refugees anywhere it could, much like UNHCR has done ever since.

Here's what it said:

5. IRAQ

73. There are approximately 5,000 refugees under the care of the Government in Iraq. UNRWA has an office in Baghdad which serves as a placement centre and a point of contact with technical assistance experts working on Iraq's great schemes of economic development.

74. The Agency understands that the doors of the country are open to Palestinians with skills who wish to go there without prejudice to their political position. In fact, the Government advises that there has already been some movement of this nature. This opportunity for refugees to improve their living conditions is of special interest to the Agency in connexion with the new programme plans for large scale vocational training.

6. LIBYA

75. The Agency is advised that there are opportunities for refugees in Libya and has received many requests for help from Palestinians who wish to go there. The new Government of Libya has suggested that initially 1,200 families of agriculturists and artisans might be taken care of. The Agency has already made preliminary surveys and is now ready for active operations.

So what happened?

The 1953 report is not available online any more. The 1954 report added no new information but it stilll mentioned them.

The 1955 report shows that UNRWA still supported the idea of the refugees moving elsewhere, even if it was starting to give up on finding those places themselves:

A total of 221 refugees who had secured immigration visas through their own efforts had their fares paid by the Agency and received installation grants during the year under review. They went to Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Kuwait, Liberia, El Salvador, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Tanganyika, the United States of America and Venezuela.

The 1956 report showed that UNRWA similarly helped about a thousand refugees move to some 13 countries including the US, UK and Canada.

But by 1957, UNRWA gave up, as quoted here:

[I]n spite of the fact that many are establishing themselves in new lives, the refugees collectively remain opposed to certain types of self-support projects which they consider would mean permanent resettlement and the abandonment of hope of repatriation. They are, in general, supported in this stand by the Arab host Governments. On the other hand, the Government of Israel has taken no affirmative action in the matter of repatriation and compensation. It remains the Director's opinion that, unless the refugees are given the choice between repatriation and compensation provided for in resolution 194 (III), or unless some other solution acceptable to all parties is found, it would be unrealistic for the General Assembly to believe that decisive progress can be accomplished by UNRWA towards the "reintegration of the refugees into the economic life of the Near East, either by repatriation or resettlement" in line with General Assembly resolution 393 (V) of 2 December 1950.

The idea that the refugees themselves opposed resettlement in other countries is one of those factoids that UNRWA asserted from the beginning but without ever actually doing a survey. By 1957, the organization simply decided that the Arab world would never integrate the Palestinians, so all pressure would henceforth be directed at Israel for accepting the mythical "right of return."
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The "resettlement" that was envisioned by the UN and that was part of UNRWA's mandate was simply swept under the rug. And UNRWA silently stopped providing monetary support for refugees to move outside its areas of operations, a policy that remains in place today.

Nowadays, UNRWA actually tries to use the fear of more Arab refugees going to Europe as an excuse to raise money to keep them stateless and living in miserable camps in the Middle East - the exact opposite of what a proper refugee agency would do.

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Hamas health ministry refusing to buy polio, other vaccines; UNRWA downplays the story

UNRWA released a statement to several Arabic newspapers warning of serious health crisis on the horizon in Gaza.

There is a severe shortage of vaccines in Gaza, and those for polio, the mumps, rubella and meningitis have been completely depleted, while those for tetanus and whooping cough are dangerously low.

UNRWA warned that polio is starting to spread again in the Middle East because of the Syrian war.

As of this writing, this statement is not found at UNRWA's website. Their Twitter account only links to an Al Jazeera Arabic version of the story - a story that implies that Israel is responsible for the shortage, as it reports this story together with the launch of a "Popular Committee Against the Siege on Gaza." Even that is only mentioned in Arabic.

Why is UNRWA so reluctant to publicize this story of an impending heath catastrophe in English?

Perhaps their statement to Ma'an sheds some light.

In that statement, the UNRWA spokesperson Abu Hasna says that the responsibility of purchasing vaccines rests with the Gaza Ministry of Health and that UNRWA has warned them about this looming crisis for months.

Israel does not, and never has, restricted vaccines into Gaza. The Al Jazeera story, and the reporting of other Arabic media outlets, imply that this is part of the "siege" - but they are lying.

The looming health crisis is purely the result of Hamas either not caring about the health of people under its control, or a cynical purposeful creation of an epidemic by Hamas to make Israel look bad. That is not so far fetched, as Hamas has done exactly that by refusing imports of fuel to Gaza even when Israel was willing to provide it.

UNRWA, always eager to blame Israel for all problems, does not want to publicly say anything bad about Hamas. So instead of publicly shaming Hamas for refusing to allow life-saving vaccines to enter Gaza, UNRWA only discreetly planted stories about the issue in Arabic media and downplayed the reasons for the crisis, hoping that Hamas will take the hint without UNRWA having to go public to the West.

How much can UNRWA really care about the "refugees" when they are so reluctant to publicize how badly they are being treated by their Arab leaders?

Meanwhile, Israel has approved some 26 construction projects into Gaza, including 12 for UNRWA.

That isn't on their website either, because this is another story that doesn't fit UNRWA's anti-Israel agenda - and agenda that clearly trumps its mission.

(Similarly, I have not yet found this story on any of the usual "pro-Palestinian" websites.)

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

UNRWA annual report, 1952: The first signs of failure

As UNRWA passed its third year, it was starting to notice that the refugees were not quite cooperating with what UNRWA was trying to accomplish, and neither were their hosts:

13. Although they have been sheltered in their host countries, and in the notable instance of Jordan have been offered full citizenship, the refugees are people apart, lacking, for the most part, status, homes, land, assets, proper clothing and means of livelihood. Many cling to their only evidence of nationality--a worn, dogeared Palestine passport issued in Mandate days by a government that no longer legally exists. In Lebanon they cannot be issued working permits and by law cannot hold jobs; in Egypt, they cannot receive Agency relief and assistance unless they are physically located in the 5 by 25 mile Gaza strip; in Syria, although they are permitted to work when they can find jobs, they have not been offered citizenship...

Even though at this point UNRWA was still committed to reducing the numbers of refugees on its rolls, the Palestinian Arabs were not keen on losing their free services - and their host governments weren't, either:

16. The Agency has unceasingly endeavoured to limit the granting of relief only to those recipients who genuinely need it. Its field teams constantly investigate ration entitlement so as to eliminate forged ration cards and duplicate registrations, and to remove from ration rolls those fortunate individuals who have managed to obtain an income which approximates the average for the local inhabitant. Efforts along these lines have been frustrating and only moderately successful. The difficulty of obtaining accurate figures of income, when desperate measures are taken to conceal the income, is particularly unfortunate, so that the Agency's attempt to apply throughout its area of operations an "income scale" designed to eliminate from ration rolls refugees whose cash income, usually by reason of employment, is considered adequate to enable the refugee to be self-supporting has not been very effective. In addition, in Syria, Jordan and Gaza, the agreement of the government must be obtained to the removal of ration recipients for reason of income, but in these countries, due to government insistence, such a high scale has been established that seldom does removal for this reason occur. Indeed, there are numerous instances of fulltime government employees remaining on ration rolls because of the high "income scale". With sharply declining funds for relief, the Agency at the end of the year was making new plans for concentrating its limited resources on the most needy.

UNRWA at this point was still trying to find decent jobs for the refugees, but the welfare mentality was starting to strengthen:

26. The existence of vast numbers of able-bodied individuals who for four years have looked to the United Nations for the provision of all their basic needs--medical and health care, education, shelter, clothing and food--is a social and economic blight of incalculable dimensions.

And UNRWA also started to realize that its relief programs were having an adverse effect on the surrounding population, as Palestinian Arabs on the dole could afford to work for little money. In fact, they had incentive to work for low wages, because if it was found out that they were doing well they would risk losing free food, medicine and schooling for their kids:

27. The need for aggressive steps to be taken to terminate relief operations is not only emphasized by the psychologically debilitating effect of giving relief over long periods of time, with the consequent development of a professional refugee mentality, but also by the crushing economic burden--apart from the cost of the care of the individual, which the presence of the refugees has placed upon the host countries. In the absence of advanced plans for economic development, the presence of refugees has in many instances and in many areas glutted the labour market, thus depressing wages. With the assurance that his basic need for food and shelter will be met by the international community at no cost to himself, the refugee suffers less from the prevailing low wages for casual work than his indigenous neighbour. In Lebanon, despite the ban on refugee employment, much of the seasonal work in the fields is done by refugees, who are able to work for exceptionally low wages. In Jordan, the average wage level has fallen markedly in recent years, due to the presence of the refugees, who are there in such numbers that every third person in the entire country is an Agency ration recipient. In Egypt, where cultivable areas are overcrowded by Egypt's own nationals, the presence of 200,000 refugees in the Gaza strip has forced the Government not only to contribute heavily to the relief of the refugees, but also to provide relief to the non-refugee Gaza population of 80,000 who are in an even worse economic position than the refugees. Thus, in all countries where the refugees are concentrated, a heavy primary and secondary economic burden is placed upon the economy despite the fact that the basic costs of refugee care are met by the contributing governments.

No wonder the refugees would cheat to stay on the dole - they didn't want to end up as badly off as their non-refugee neighbors!

Meanwhile, UNRWA phased out its most "successful" works programs, again because they were being taken advantage of by the host countries. It's biggest success was a massive failure.

32. During the Agency's first year, work relief projects were vigorously planned and pushed forward by the Agency. Governments and refugees viewed the projects with suspicion, feared resettlement implications, and were slow in acceptance. Finally, a start was made because refugees wanted wages and governments wanted public works. At the peak of employment on those works programmes, more than 12,000 refugees were employed. As governments and refugees discovered advantages in the programme the Agency began to see liabilities. Local governments contributed no funds; the full burden of wages fell on the Agency; the cost was five times that of simple relief. The approved projects were typically roads and public structures, and when they were finished the refugees returned to tents and ration lines. In short the Agency found itself financing and operating labour camps to build public works which the governments themselves would have built the following year. There was no enduring benefit for the refugee nor financial relief for the Agency, and the programme was gradually brought to a conclusion as funds ran out.

So, UNRWA started a "new programme" that tried to eliminate the shortfalls of its earlier works program:

46. The objective is to be accomplished through the following activities:

(1) Helping refugees find employment where there is need for their services;
(2) Training refugees for occupations where there is a shortage of trained workers;
(3) Making loans or grants to refugees to enable them to establish small enterprises to improve their economic position;
(4) Building houses in or near urban areas where employment is available;
(5) Establishing rural villages in areas where land is available for cultivation;
(6) Developing agricultural lands through well drilling, irrigation works, access roads and similar activities;
(7) Generally, financing economic development and providing technical assistance where there are assurances of proportionate benefit to refugees.

The Arab countries looked upon this program as an opportunity for more free money without any commitment whatsoever to permanently improve the lives of the refugees, and they agreed to this new program.

Also in 1952, some refugees moved to Iraq, and Libya expressed interest in taking some of the highly-skilled workers.

UNRWA remained cautiously optimistic in this report, but made sure that they would assure the Arab countries that they would not pressure them to do anything they were not comfortable with:

78. (3) The Agency operates with the deepest respect for the sovereignties of the governments of the area. Through its trusteeship of large contributions, and with the acquiescence of governments, the Agency has present responsibilities which it is endeavouring to discharge with the help of a small international staff and thousands of Palestinians. The Agency is looking forward to, and preparing for, the day when it may transfer this responsibility. Meanwhile, there is much that can be done by governments to smooth the way for assistance to refugees. Privileges and immunities are not aims in themselves, nor challenges to sovereignty, but rather facilitating arrangements of benefit to refugees.

UNRWA's 1951 report: The beginnings of a welfare culture

As a follow-up to my post on the 1950 UNRWA report, here are some highlights from the 1951 report.

5.... In the large towns such as Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, there was, in addition, a fairly large floating population of unskilled labourers, working in the ports, or for the oil companies, who had migrated from the country owing to the pressure on the land. Since the last census under the Mandate was taken, as far back as 1931, such persons were mostly registered in their village of origin, although for many years they had lived and worked in the large towns. The effect of this unrecorded movement of population has been to introduce a double source of error into any estimates of the number of persons who could have become refugees; since more people came out of towns in Israeli-held territory than were registered there and fewer people were actually living in the villages of the area which was later annexed to Jordan.

Here is another source of error of counting the numbers of refugees: People who really lived in Jordan and the West Bank would work in the coastal cities for much of the year. They fled along with the other Arabs, but they had homes to go to. Even so, they seem to have been counted as "refugees" anyway.

15. Today, after nearly three years, the refugees are still scattered over 100,000 square miles of territory in five different countries; still dependent on relief and without knowledge of the future; the victims of circumstances they are unable to grasp. Legally, humanly and economically speaking, they are little better off than they were when they first left Palestine, since against the sporadic and low-paid work that some of them have found must be set the exhaustion of the resources that others managed to bring out. No government, except in Jordan, has proclaimed their right to stay.

28. The number of refugees housed in UNRWAPRNE camps has risen by some twenty per cent since May 1950, and is still rising. Many thousands of new applications are received each month. These originate from (I) families who have hitherto managed to maintain themselves in lodgings but are now too poor to pay the rent however small; (II) new arrivals from Israel; (III) refugees who have been evicted for quarrelling with the villagers or for cutting down the fruit trees for fuel; and, lately (IV), some considerable movement of the population in the search of water, particularly in Jordan, as a result of the severe drought that has dried up wells and cisterns.

Why were there new arrivals from Israel in 1950 and 1951? I am not aware of any expulsions or mass flight during that time period; on the contrary, as I showed in the previous post, Israel bent over backwards to accommodate the refugees and displaced persons. My only guess is that some Arabs either wanted to go to the same camps as their families; they were disgusted at the idea of living in a Jewish state; or they decided that it would be better to move to a camp with free lodging, education and medical care than to try to find jobs in Israel.

This next section is probably the most accurate description of how Palestinian Arab refugees thought, written before UNRWA became hopelessly corrupt:

(c) The morale of the refugee

32. Owing to his intense individualism, the refugee has little sense of solidarity with his fellows. The concept of giving increased relief to the very needy is incomprehensible to him, making it very difficult for the Agency to distribute welfare goods to special cases. In the same way, much persuasion is necessary before he is willing to contribute labour for the greater good of the camp, or even for mending his own tent, unless he is paid for it.

In 1951, Arabs from Palestine exhibited zero sense of nationalism or unity. The idea that they self-identified with a nation called Palestine is a joke. To be sure, they were attached to their homes, but these ties were familial and tribal, not national. As we saw during the 1948 war, Palestinian Arabs would not fight for any other villages besides their own.

33. To his natural individualistic tendencies has now been added the characteristics of the typical refugee mentality, and its passive expectation of continued benefits. In the crowded and abnormal existence that the refugee leads, moral values tend to deteriorate and the authority of the head of the family, which would formerly have kept such behaviour in check, has seriously declined; yet, in spite of this, he has retained his inherent dignity to a remarkable degree.

A welfare state generates laziness. To be sure, many Palestinian Arabs took the initiative and started finding jobs; tens of thousands moved to Gulf states in the 1950s and helped build countries there from scratch. However, the camps tended to attract the ones who felt a sense of entitlement, and they in turn bred more of the same. This mentality infested UNRWA itself over the years, as the agency lost interest in finding jobs for the PalArabs.

34. It is probably true to say that the refugees are physically better off than the poorest levels of the population of the host countries; and in some cases better off, in the way of social services, than they were in Palestine; but, in their minds, the overwhelming fact of being uprooted from their homes, dependent and yet insecure, is more than enough to cancel out these benefits.

The mentality can be understood in 1951, but the fact that it has become institutionalized today is one of the greatest failings of UNRWA. The report mentions a number of times how its services were very attractive to neighboring Arabs who were not directly affected by the war.

35. The United Nations, in particular certain of the great Powers, are considered by the refugee to be entirely responsible for both his past and present misfortunes, and for his future fate. They say that they have lost faith in United Nations action since, after more than thirty months, the General Assembly resolution recommending their return home, although not revoked, has never been implemented and no progress has been made towards compensation.

36. The relief given by the Agency is therefore considered as a right, and as such is regarded as inadequate. Individual efforts to explain the situation to them are usually in vain; the refugee will listen politely but in the end remains convinced both of the bitter injustice done to him, and the fact that little or nothing is being done to rectify it.

37. The desire to go back to their homes is general among all classes; it is proclaimed orally at all meetings and organized demonstrations, and, in writing, in all letters addressed to the Agency and all complaints handed in to the area officers. Many refugees are ceasing to believe in a possible return, yet this does not prevent them from insisting on it, since they feel that to agree to consider any other solution would be to show their weakness and to relinquish their fundamental right, acknowledged even by the General Assembly. They are, moreover, sceptical of the promised payment of compensation.

38. This sense of injustice, frustration and disappointment has made the refugee irritable and unstable. There are occasional strikes, demonstrations and small riots. There have been demonstrations over the census operation, strikes against the medical and welfare services, strikes for cash payment instead of relief, strikes against making any improvements, such as school buildings, in camps in case this might mean permanent resettlement; experimental houses to replace tents, erected by the Agency, have been torn down; and for many months, in Syria and Lebanon, there was widespread refusal to work on agency road-building and afforestation schemes.

This mentality became institutionalized, and eventually accepted by the UN. The nadir of the same counterproductive thinking that caused the 1951 refugees to tear down houses may have occurred in 1977, with UN Resolution 32/90, in response to Israel's having built permanent housing for Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. The resolution called on Israel to return the Arabs to the camps rather than let them have real homes, thus showing how important the perpetuation of the "refugee" problem had become to the UN itself thirty years after it had started.

39. This then is rich and tempting soil for exploitation by those with other motives than the welfare of the refugee. Happily, there are defences that blunt this effort. There are enduring religious defences and there still exist resistant strengths of communal ties and leadership. There are sustaining services of food, shelter, health and education from many sources. There are refugees who left no assets in Palestine. There are refugees who wish to live in Arab countries. There are refugees who have sought and found new roots.

The refugees who no longer needed to be on the UN dole were therefore ignored in future reports, and the idea that all Palestinian Arabs are needy refugees became the conventional wisdom in part since UNRWA had no responsibility for the many who actually took control of their lives.

UNRWA's fascinating 1950 report

UNRWA's first report on its progress, A/1451/Rev.1, is a fascinating document on many levels. It describes its progress in the first six months of its existence.

Here are some excerpts:

HISTORY

6. When UNRPR was set up by the General Assembly, it was presumably with the idea that the problem would be resolved in a matter of months. During the summer of 1949 it became obvious that some other approach was needed, and the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East was dispatched to study and report on conditions and to make recommendations concerning future activity. After three months of exhaustive study in the field, the Mission's interim report to the General Assembly in November 1949(1) recommended the creation of a new agency, which would not only carry out relief on a diminishing scale, but would inaugurate a works programme in which able-bodied refugees could become self-supporting and at the same time create works of lasting benefit to the refugees and the countries concerned. The recommendations of the report were embodied in resolution 302 (IV) which provided for the setting up of UNRWAPRNE. The final report signed in Paris in December covered the subject comprehensively and has been accepted by the Agency as its guide.2

UNRWA did not intend at first to be a permanent agency. It really tried to provide jobs for the Palestinian Arabs and to work with Arab governments to help integrate them. The Arabs' recalcitrance is the single major reason we still have so many "refugees" today, and after a few years UNRWA gave up and turned into a giant, self-perpetuating welfare system.

NUMBERS OF REFUGEES

16. The Agency has accepted as realistic the figures set forth in appendix B of the first interim report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission, but recognizes that the numbers have increased in conformity with the extremely high birthrate of the refugees. There is reason to believe that births are always registered for ration purposes, but deaths are often, if not usually, concealed so that the family may continue to collect rations for the deceased.

17...The figures for Lebanon (128,000) are confused due to the fact that many Lebanese nationals along the Palestinian frontier habitually worked most of the year on the farms or in the citrus groves of Palestine. With the advent of war they came back across the border and claimed status as refugees. Only an exhaustive and expensive census, now under way although ardently opposed by those concerned, will divide worthy from false claimants.

18. The former Trans-Jordan and the portion of Palestine remaining in Arab hands and now annexed to the Hashimite Kingdom of the Jordan received the greatest influx of refugees of any of the countries adjacent to Israel -- probably more than half of all the refugees. For various reasons, the largest number of fictitious names on the ration lists pertain to refugees in this area. All earlier attempts at a close census of those entitled to relief have been frustrated, but a comprehensive survey, now under way, is achieving worthwhile results in casting up names of dead people for which rations are still drawn, fraudulent claims regarding numbers of dependents (it is alleged that it is a common practice for refugees to hire children from other families at census time), and in eliminating duplications where families have two or more ration cards. The census, though stubbornly resisted, will eliminate many thousands from the lists of refugees now in receipt of rations.

19. Unauthorized movement between camps, and sometimes across international boundaries, as well as deep-rooted reluctance of refugees to reveal personal information to census-takers, make it very difficult to obtain accurate statistics concerning them.

As far as I know, the census was never completed and the problems of exaggerated numbers of refugees remain, even today. A sense of entitlement will turn many people into lazy opportunists, and if they have no disincentive to act that way this behavior gets passed on to the next generation, and the following ones as well.

MORALE

26. Strangely enough the general morale of the refugees is higher than might be expected after spending more than two years in exile under most trying conditions. Real trouble-makers are confined to a very small proportion of the total number of refugees, and food strikes and work stoppages are generally considered to be the result of organized pressure groups.

27. During August, a campaign of bitter criticism of the Agency, its motives and personnel, was carried on in a large section of the Arab Press. The rather unvaried monotony of the charges gave indication of central inspiration. An organized series of work stoppages occurred in Lebanon in early September wherein small groups threatened the workers in such a manner that they declined to work for a time. The Syrian office of the Agency, located in Damascus, was destroyed by explosives and a bomb was thrown at a truckload of workers in Lebanon. Threats of violence have been made against individual employees of the Agency. It seems likely that the two campaigns--denunciations in certain sections of the Arab Press and violence--are closely related and spring from the same source which fostered the food strikes in the early days of the Agency.

Arab governments in general considered UNRWA the enemy, and they did everything possible to thwart any chance of solving the refugee crisis, instead wanting to use the refugees as pawns to pressure Israel. This attitude has not changed in sixty years.

REFUGEES IN ISRAEL

30. In Israel, the Agency has provided relief to two types of refugees, Jews who fled inside the borders of Israel during the fighting, and Arabs in most instances displaced from one area in Palestine to another. Jewish refugees at first numbered 17,000 but, during the current summer, all but 3,000 of these have been absorbed into the economic life of the new State. Arabs on relief were first numbered at 31,000 but many have been placed in circumstances in which they are self-supporting, so that it was possible to reduce the number to 24,000 at the end of August 1950.

31. Recent discussions with the Israel Government indicate that the idea of relief distribution is repugnant to it, and the Agency was informed that already many of the 24,000 remaining refugees were employed and that all able-bodied refugees desiring employment could be absorbed on works projects if they would register at the government registry offices for that purpose. It was stated that they all have status as citizens of Israel and are entitled to treatment as such. It was claimed that after cessation of relief, aged and infirm refugees would be cared for under the normal social welfare machinery of Israel. The Agency was requested to share financially in a programme of re-establishment of displaced Arabs now within the boundaries of Israel.

How great a contrast is there between how Israel treated its Arab refugees and how the Arab nations did! Within a short time after the war, Israel managed to fully integrate every single Arab refugee as citizens (and they eventually allowed tens of thousands more to come into Israel for family re-unification.) Not only did Israel inform the UNRWA that its services would not be needed for long, but said that the very idea of an outside agency taking responsibility for its Arab citizens is repugnant!

So while the number of Arab claimants for UNRWA services went down from 31,000 to zero in a relatively short time, in every Arab country those numbers only increased.

Fully half of the report deals with specific works projects that were attempted to allow the refugees to find jobs. As we now know, most of these projects went nowhere because of fears by Arab countries that their Palestinian Arab brethren would want to actually stay in their countries as equal citizens.

The appendix of charity organizations and NGOs that contributed to help the Palestinian Arabs does not mention a single Muslim charity.

UNRWA just had a meeting where they described their financial problems in providing services - works programs are now tiny initiatives run by UNRWA itself, and in many ways UNRWA itself is a Palestinian Arab work program as it employs many descendants of refugees. It has become rabidly anti-Israel and intensely political.Even though there are far more "refugees" today than could ever fit in a nascent "Palestine," UNRWA still refuses to request that Arab governments do their part to reduce the number of stateless Arabs.

Jordan hosts some 41% of all "refugees" today. Yet Jordan was the only Arab country to extend citizenship to non-Jewish Palestinians. One must wonder, why there are still refugee camps in Jordan 62 years after 1948? The vast majority of camp residents are full Jordanian citizens! Yet, because UNRWA is now a mere self-perpetuating technocracy, Jordan has no incentive to integrate these citizens into its population even today - 60 years after Israel did exactly that.