Amb. Alan Baker: UNRWA Condemns the Palestinians to Refugee Status in Perpetuity
The “United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East” (UNRWA) was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1949 as a distinctly temporary entity to assist in reintegration, repatriation, or resettlement, with a view to furthering peace.UNRWA closes Hamas tunnel detected under two of its Gaza schools
But according to UNRWA’s mandate, refugee status extends to cover all future generations of Palestinians, and specifically “descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948.” Rather than narrowing the problem, this definition has extended it, with refugee status now applying into the fourth generation of Palestinians, exploding the number of registered refugees from an estimated 700,000 back in 1949 (per UNRWA’s claims) to 5,000,000.1
This UNRWA mandate is far beyond the accepted international definitions and criteria for refugees that are the basis for the much more successful model for international refugee relief – the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), formed in 1950. The UNHCR seeks to resettle refugees, not perpetuate their camp existence.
The UNHRC operates on the basis of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which does not say a word about passing refugee status to descendants. Refugee status, according to the convention, is not permanent.
Refugees who become naturalized in their host countries, according to the convention, lose their refugee status. In contrast, in the UNRWA system, a Palestinian refugee who was born in Zurich and has a Swiss passport is still defined as a refugee.
Any attempt to reach a final Israeli-Palestinian peace must require a complete suspension of UNRWA funding and financing with a view to dissolving the agency and dismantling the refugee camps. New housing should replace them. Funding should be transformed into direct assistance to the appropriate agencies to carry out this task. If the goal of a future agreement is to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all, then UNRWA’s current configuration makes a final peace impossible to achieve.
UNRWA announced Monday it sealed a Hamas tunnel found two months ago that the terrorist group had built under two of its school in the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.Palestinians: The Honeymoon with the US is Over
Canada’s Representative to the Palestinian Authority Scott Proudfoot congratulated the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees Monday for taking care of the tunnel.
“Visited school in Meghazi #refugee camp #Gaza; bravo @UNRWA for upholding neutrality & protecting children by detecting & filling in tunnel,” he tweeted.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness confirmed UNRWA had closed the tunnel, which it discovered at the beginning of June after the Maghazi Elementary Boys A&B School and the Maghaz Preparatory Boys School had been closed for the summer.
In a press release written in June, Gunness said, “UNRWA can confirm that the tunnel has no entry or exit points on the premises nor is it connected to the schools or other buildings in any way."
“UNRWA condemns the existence of such tunnels in the strongest possible terms. It is unacceptable that students and staff are placed at risk in such a way,” he said.
“The construction and presence of tunnels under UN premises are incompatible with the respect of privileges and immunities owed to the United Nations under applicable international law, which provides that UN premises shall be inviolable. The sanctity and neutrality of UN premises must be preserved at all times,” Gunness wrote
The Palestinians have a condition for the US to be accepted by them as a mediator in the conflict with Israel: bias in favor of the Palestinians. This is the Palestinian state of mind: If you are not with us, you are against us.
In the Palestinian logic, the US administration must endorse the Palestinian narrative and comply with all their demands if it wishes to broker "peace" with Israel. The Palestinians do indeed want the US to be involved – as an axeman for their execution of Israel.
The Palestinians are prepared to cooperate with any US administration, on one condition only: that it forces Israel to withdraw fully to the 1949 armistice lines and allow the incompetent and discredited Mahmoud Abbas to establish a corrupt, undemocratic and failed state, one that would set its predatory sights on the now-much-harder-to-defend State of Israel.
Until recently, Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank believed that the new president would swallow their fabrications and perhaps collude with them to bring Israel down. At one stage, Abbas even instructed his aides and spokesmen to avoid making any criticism against Trump or his administration, toward just this goal.
However, the Palestinian tone has changed in recent weeks. Palestinian officials and factions and political commentators are no longer concealing their distrust of -- and disdain for -- the Trump administration. The "honeymoon" between the Palestinians and the Trump administration is over.