Pro-Palestinian Frauds: UNRWA Called Out For Lying About Its Own Definition Of ‘Refugee’
On Thursday morning, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — which exists as a discrete group solely to support those whom UNRWA identifies as Palestinian-Arab "refugees" resulting from Israel's 1948 War of Independence — claimed that it defines "refugee" in precisely the same manner as does its sister organization, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR, in contrast to UNRWA, exists to support "refugees" resulting from every other conflict in the world besides the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Kohelet Policy Forum: UNRWA's Hereditary Refugee Status for Palestinians Is Unique (pdf)
The main problem, as the inestimable Hillel Neuer of UN Watch tweeted, is that this is a bald-faced lie.
Your former General Counsel says you're lying.
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) February 21, 2019
"UNRWA is the only refugee organization in the world that considers citizens of a state to be refugees, and there are many of these—1.8 million in Jordan—oxymoronic 'citizen-refugees' on UNRWA rolls..."
—> https://t.co/Np4O1dMaIh https://t.co/58mDjCEJbw
As Neuer claims, UNRWA's very own former General Counsel, James Lindsay, confirmed in a 2012 Middle East Quarterly essay that UNRWA calcualtes its "refugees" in a very different manner than does UNHCR:
The UNRWA definition makes no mention of citizenship, and UNRWA makes no effort to de-register persons who were formerly refugees but are now citizens of a state. As such, UNRWA is the only refugee organization in the world that considers citizens of a state to be refugees, and there are many of these oxymoronic "citizen-refugees" on UNRWA rolls.
As Lindsay noted in his essay, UNRWA's lack of mention of citizenship is hugely consequential — and it differs from UNHCR's definition of "refugee," which "specifically does not apply to any person who 'has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.'"
Therefore, all the millions of descendants of the Palestinian-Arabs displaced by Israel's 1948 War of Independence — a genocidal war launched by the Jewish state's Arab neighbors only after those neighbors flatly rejected the incipient United Nation's previously proffered two-state partition proposal — who have since acquired citizenship in a distinct sovereign nation, such as the 1.8 million Jordanians Neuer references, would not be considered "refugees" under UNHCR's definition but are considered "refugees" under UNRWA's definition.
For almost 70 years, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has created a unique category of "registered refugee" status under which the children and grandchildren of a Palestine refugee, and all their descendants thereafter, are automatically considered "refugees from Palestine."
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is responsible for all refugees except those from Mandatory Palestine. UNHCR does not define as refugees people who acquired new citizenship. More than 2 million "Palestine refugees" hold Jordanian citizenship, most of whom have been born in Jordan and have lived there their entire lives. In addition, 2/3 to 3/4 of the 1 million refugees registered by UNRWA in Lebanon and Syria have left those countries over the decades, with many acquiring citizenship in Western countries. But UNRWA's numbers never decline.
UNHCR does not define as "refugees" people who are internally displaced, that is, who have moved within the same territory. "Palestine refugees" living in the West Bank or Gaza were in fact internally displaced since they have never crossed the internationally recognized border of Mandatory Palestine. According to the rules applied by UNHCR, these people are not refugees. UNRWA is not a neutral humanitarian organization but rather a political actor aimed at perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem.
Hebrew Origins of Palestinian Arab Towns in Judea-Samaria
It is absurd to claim that the Arabs are the indigenous peoples of Israel because virtually all the place names used by local Arabs are non-Arabic in origin, and derived either from biblical Hebrew names or from later Greek or Roman names. The Romans renamed the entire region Syria-Palestina (named for the Philistines and Assyrians) after they destroyed the Second Temple so as to erase its Jewish roots. This was later shortened to Palestina, and it eventually became known as Palestine.
The region commonly referred to as the "West Bank" was known for three millennia as Judea and Samaria. Indeed, Jews derive the very name of their religion and peoplehood from the name Yehuda, the fourth son of Jacob, whose tribe settled in that region. In fact, UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947) referred to the region as Judea and Samaria, as do all maps published before 1948.
Israeli scholar and later president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi wrote in 1932 that west of the Jordan River, 277 villages and sites had names that were similar to or the same as Jewish villages in these locations during Second Temple times. Moreover, 1/4 of the 584 Arab localities in Israel and beyond have ancient biblical names. So, to counter those who attempt to disassociate the Jews from the Land of Israel and claim that they are colonizers, the proof is in the names