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Mordechai Nisan
A Palestinian State west of the Jordan River: Its Dangerous Dynamic
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Yashiko Sagamori
This letter has been written on Nov 6, 2002
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Joel S. Fishman
Ten Years Since Oslo: The PLO's "People's War" Strategy and Israel's Inadequate Response
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Daniel Mazin (Adam Ben-Israel)
Chronology of Stupidity or the Road to Destruction
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Frank Gaffney
A Troubling Influence
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Mordechai Nisan
A Radical Approach to the Arab-Israeli Conflict
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Paul Eidelberg
The Clash Between Two Decadent Civilizations: Toward An Hebraic Alternative
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Frank Gaffney
Alternatives for a Just and Durable Peace in the Middle East
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Rand H. Fishbein
The folly of snubbing Israel
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K.P.S. Gill
The Moslem World: Prospects of democratization
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Light unto the Neighbor
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Alexander Bligh
The Final Settlement of the Palestinian Issue and the Position of the Israeli Arab Leadership
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Christopher Barder
“Peace”, the Politicians, the Press, and the Public: Israel’s Portrayal “Always in the Wrong” and How to Reverse It
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Benyamin Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before the US Senate, Washington, DC – 10 April 2002
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Occupation V. Genocide
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Benyamin Netanyahu
America does not want a new terrorist state to emerge. How to prevent it
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Aharon Lev-Ran
A Disaster Foretold: the Strategic Dangers of a Palestinian State
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Applying Herzl's Vision to the Arab-Israeli Conflict
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Modern Israel’s Role in World’s Spiritual
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Closing Remarks. Jerusalem Summit Asia.
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Case of Ptech
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Anne Bayefsky
Fatal Failure. The U.N. won’t recognize the connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
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Caroline Cox
Award Acceptance Speech
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Parvin Darabi
Islam and Oppression of Women
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Nonie Darwish
The Daughter of a "Shahid" Speaks out for Change
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Nonie Darwish
Forbidden Country, Beautiful People: An Arab-American Discovers Israel
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Boaz Ganor
Transition from “International Cooperation” to a “Joint Counter-Terrorism Campaign
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Manfred Gerstenfeld
Anti-Semitism: Integral to European Culture
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Mordechai Kedar
Terror as commanded by Allah. Terror and Islam, an inextricable connection?
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Kenneth Meshoe
Keys to Open Closed Societies
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Khaleel Mohammed
For Whom the Holy Land? A Qur'anic Answer
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Barry Rubin
Arab Liberalism and Democracy in the Middle
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Shabtai Shavit
Defeating International Terrorism
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Martin Sherman
The Palestinian Predicament: Changing the Paradigm Reframing the Problem in a Humanitarian Terms Rather than in Political Ones
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Avi Beker
UN revisiting history in the Middle East: The case of the Refugees
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William Tucker
Terrorism and Polygamy
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Xu Xin
Jewish Culture - a Value System Shared by All Mankind: a Chinese Perspective
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David Bukay
Islam, the Holy Land, Abrogation and Tolerance
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Terror Financing: Myth and Reality
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Caroline Cox
The UN Debate in the House of the Lords
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Dore Gold
The U.N. at Work
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Martin Sherman
Like any other people?
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Washington Times. U.S. companies and Islamic law
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Saudi Dollars and Jihad
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Cure for the Wahhabi Virus
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Nightmare of Hamastan
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Saudi Accountability?
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Another Free Pass to The Palestinians
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Suing the PA
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The PA's New Terror Law
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Terror Rising
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Iranian Intentions
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Buying Fox News
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Daniel Pipes
[Kofi Annan and] Eliminating Israel Politely
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Herbert Zweibon
POLITICALLY CORRECT ‘SHOCK AND DISMAY’
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Islam’s Religious Intolerance
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Paul Vallely
Enlisting the State Department
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Saudi Interest in America
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Caliphate is Coming
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Clash to End All Clashes?
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Hamas Will Not Change
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Youngsters and Jihad
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Europe’s Last Chance
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Welcoming Terror to U.S. Ports
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Hamas-Russia Connection
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Economic jihad and U.S. ports?
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Protecting U.S. Strategic Assets
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Funding Jew-Killers
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Dollars For Terror
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Russia after dark
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Truth about the Muslim Brotherhood
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Saudi Charity Begins...Nowhere
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
ISRAEL THE LIBERATOR
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Different Shades of the Same Enemy
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
The Big Four Lies of Anti-Zionism
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
A 'political party' unveil
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Israel has to take the lead
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Israel needs Perestroika
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Jerusalem’s Alternative to UN
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Jewish Revolution in Consciousness
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Rachel Ehrenfeld
Why Tariq Ramadan lost
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Benny Elon
Misguiding our children
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Benny Elon
Time to fight back
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
The Infantile Disorder of the Left
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
A Vow Before the War
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Dmitry Radyshevsky
Ten Plagues, All at Once
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| UN revisiting history in the Middle East: The case of the Refugees |
Just before the collapse of the Camp David talks in July of 2000, President Bill Clinton noted that the refugee problem in the Middle East is two-sided as it includes both Arab and Jewish refugees. The President spoke about compensating the Jews that were expelled from Arab lands: “ [the}fund [should] compensates the Israelis who were made refugees by the war, which occurred after the birth of the State of Israel. Israel is full of people, Jewish people, who lived in predominantly Arab countries who came to Israel because they were made refugees in their own land.”
Exchange of Refugees
The Jews that became refugees in their own land and yet it is a forgotten exodus-why?
There are several social and psychological reasons but essentially we are dealing with forgotten refugees. They are no longer Jewish refugees and thank God for that. Today, these former refugees feel that their story must be told and transmitted to the next generation.
We are here to tell this story.
Israel was established and populated by several waves of refugees. There were refugees of persecution in Eastern Europe, refugees victim to the Nazi regime, holocaust survivors and almost parallel to them were the Jews from Arab countries. Israel- tiny, arid, practically devoid of natural resources, always under war conditions and security threats- has done its utmost to take in and rehabilitate its refugees, multiplying its population by eight between 1948 and 2000.
Why is it that of the approximately 135 million refugees created over the last century, only the Palestinians have retained a dismal, nationless status?
This is the paradox.
The attempt to perpetuate the Arab refugee problem lies in the essence of hatred in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is the tragedy of the Palestinians and the source of the endless, most vicious terrorism we face today in the Middle East.
Professor Bernard Lewis, a leading scholar on Islam and Arab history at Princeton University, points out the sad paradox giving examples of two cases of refugees under British rule in the late forties. One conflict is that between India and Pakistan and the other is the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In 1947, while Britain was disengaging from Palestine, it was also withdrawing from India which lead to the birth of independent Pakistani and Indian states. Whereas the Arab-Israeli conflict created hundreds of thousands of refugees, the Indians and Pakistanis wisely agreed to transfer millions of their people across the border in order to defuse ethnic and religious tensions. India sent Muslims to Pakistan which, in turn, sent Hindus to India. Both states granted citizenship to these refugees.
The much smaller and perhaps more easily remedied problem of Arab refuges is a sad paradox- it has cost the Western world so many billions of dollars in humanitarian aid that only perpetuates the refugees’ plight. This has monopolized its media attention for over half a century when alternatives in refugee transfers, such as the one between India and Pakistan, have proven effective.
Exploiting the Refugees
From the very beginning, the persistent Arab strategy was to keep the refugees in the camps. An official PLO document from the year 2000 explains: “In order to keep the refugee issue alive and prevent Israel from evading responsibility for their plight, Arab countries-with the notable exception of Jordan- have usually sought to preserve a Palestinian identity by maintaining the Palestinians’ status as refugees”(The Palestinian Refugee Factfiles, PLO, Ramallah, 2000, p.22)
In 1958, former director of UNWRA Ralph Garroway explained:
“The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore… and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”
This is a statement about UNWRA far before Israel took control of the territories, in 1967.
On November 17, 1958, Abba Eban, the then Israeli ambassador to the UN, made a statement to the Special Political Committee of the United Nations General Assembly:
“…the perpetuation of this refugee problem is an unnatural event, running against the whole course of experience and precedent. Since the end of the Second World War, problems affecting forty million refugees have confronted governments in various parts of the world…In every case but that of the Arab refugees now in Arab lands the countries in which the refugees sought shelter have facilitated their integration. In this case alone has integration been obstructed.
“The paradox is the most astonishing when we reflect that the kinship of language, religion, social background and national sentiment existing between the Arab refugees and their Arab host countries has been at least as intimate as those existing between any other host countries and any other refugee groups. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the integration of Arab refugees into the life of the Arab world is an objectively feasible process which has been resisted for political reasons…”
In 1993 Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi-born political scientist and powerful critic of Saddam Hussein’s regime wrote about ‘the Palestinian right to be left alone’. While explaining that the problems of occupation create legitimate demands on Israeli democracy, Makiya rejected the way the Arabs exploit the Palestinian issue at every convenient opportunity:
“Whenever the ‘crisis in democracy’ in the Arab world gets wedded to ‘the struggle against Israel’ one knows in advance that nothing is going to change for the better in Arab politics. A fondness for weapons of mass destruction and leaders like Saddam Hussein is invariably the outcome.”
The championing of the Palestinian cause has always served as a source of legitimacy for the, manifestly illegitimate, governments of many Arab countries. Several weeks ago, reports began to surface that the royal family in Saudi Arabia is concerned that the war in Iraq may bring pressures for democracy in the Arabian Peninsula. Whenever Arab regimes need to escape a confrontation from the extensive corruption and suppression of human rights in their own homes, their leaders focus on the Palestinian problem. Accordingly, any planning regarding the post-Iraq war situation must take the reality of the Arab condition as a point of departure.
Recent developments within the Arab League demonstrate shaky foundations in Arab unity. In meetings prior to the war against Iraq, the Arabs could not agree on a common policy. As always they could only agree on their contempt for Israel. All their regimes, kingdoms, Shekdooms, and other forms of dictatorships are clearly against reforms and a movement toward democracy.
UNWRA and Terrorism
The misery of the Palestinian refugees in the camps must be understood and approached against this background. Even before Israel entered the territories in 1967, Arab countries did not allow Palestinians to settle permanently and rehabilitate in their new countries of residence. The Palestinian misery, as an instrument in the war against Israel, had to be maintained. In all the countries in which they arrived, Palestinians were barred from holding many jobs and denied basic rights.
At the center of this strategy was the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) in 1949 which was designed exclusively for Palestinian refugees. Unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees which deals with every other group of refugees, UNWRA blocks any kind of rehabilitation plans. Camps that were built as “temporary” facilities by UNWRA have become a pathetic part of a plan designed to perpetuate the refugee problem and to serve as painful testimony of the barbarity of “the Zionist entity.”
In 1959 the United Nations, headed by its Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, introduced initiatives to develop a comprehensive refugee resettlement scheme in the Middle East. They encountered fierce Arab opposition; consequently, the project was immediately dropped.
The UNWRA system is deeply flawed and is largely responsible for the corruption which characterizes the Palestinian leaders. These leaders were never forced to face the real concerns of the refugees and have exploited them for their own political-financial interest. The definition of UNRWA’s mandate plays into the hands of the militants and armed groups in the camps. The society in the camps have become what literature on humanitarian aid refers to as a “refugee-warrior” community – a community which transforms the camps into military bastions perpetually involved in attacks against their neighbors in efforts to destabilize them. Instead of reducing suffering, the refugee communities fuel violence and exacerbate human misery.
For example, in 1976, the Lebanese ambassador to the UN warned that UNWRA camps in his country had been taken over by terrorist organizations. In an official letter to the Secretary General of the UN, Ambassador Ghonra described in detail ‘the constant Palestinian intervention in the internal affairs of Lebanon and the intolerable encroachment on its sovereignty’. And he continued:
“The Palestinians acted as if they were a state within the State of Lebanon, flagrantly defying the laws of the land and abusing the hospitality of its people. .. The PLO steadily increased the influx of arms into Lebanon… They transformed most, if not all, of the refugee camps into military bastions around our major cities, in the heart of our commercial and industrial centers, and in the vicinity of large civilian conglomeration.”
From the UN Secretariat to the PLO, the transfer of control in the camps in South Lebanon was an open “secret” known to everyone involved. In reality UNWRA was run entirely by the PLO in Lebanon; this was reported in the NYT in June 1979. Furthermore, in 1982, UNRWA formally admitted that its education institute near Beirut was in reality a military training base for PLO fighters.
The problematic link between the refugee camps and terror was recognized by the UN Security Council in 1998 when, in a discussion concerning refugees in Africa, the Council affirmed the “unacceptability of using refugee camps… to achieve military purposes.” This Security Council debate was followed by a call from Secretary General Kofi Annan urging “refugee camps… to be kept free of any military presence or equipment.” This principle was never applied in the UNRWA camps in territories now under control of the Palestinian authority. Full-blown terrorist networks have been established in these camps within which suicide-bomb belts are prepared, car bombs are built and terrorists are formally trained.
Reforming UNWRA
The treatment of another group of refugees involved in this conflict only highlights the way in which the Palestinians have been exploited. The Arab-Israeli conflict started as a war against the very existence of the State of Israel even before its independence was declared in 1948. The initial war involved a major exchange of population between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. During the first years of Israeli statehood, more Jewish refugees were expelled or driven from their homes in Arab countries than were Arabs who left homes within, what had been, British Mandatory Palestine. Just like their Palestinian counterparts, many of these Sephardic Jewish refugees lived in actual camps (ma’abarot) for several years until Israel’s developing economy and society were able to provide for their integration among the general population.
As it was in the Oslo accords of 1993, the basic flaw with the current American/Middle East Quartet “Road Map” lies in continuing decades-old policy which deliberately neglects the Palestinian refugee problem and defers its resolution until some far-off future date. Any comprehensive peace plan dealing with Israeli withdrawal into new borders must, as a major component, include a thorough political and humanitarian solution for the Palestinian refugees. The explosive issue of the refugees’ ‘right of return’ cannot be left in limbo and loom over every peace initiative; it must be addressed first and in a balanced manner, along with the issues of security, borders etc. Only a dramatic shift in their treatment of the refugees will reflect a real change of heart on the part of the Arabs and only such a shift will signal the abandonment of the refugee issue as a political-military device.
In its activities, UNWRA plays a destructive role by encouraging the dream of the ‘right of return’ which is a deliberate euphemism for the destruction of the State of Israel. The education and cultural programs sponsored by UNWRA focus on the right of return with special emphasis on the return to pre 1948 villages and cities. UNWRA is not humanitarian aid or assistance to refugees; rather, it is a political indoctrination program. UNWRA was recently part of programs that brought busloads of Palestinians from refugee camps to see their homes in Israel. Even after Oslo, UNWRA refused to encourage the refugees to see their future within the political Palestinian entity. This distorted logic affects the bureaucracy of the organization which has become completely politicized.
In May 199, Peter Hansen, the commissioner General of UNWRA said that “The Palestinian refugees will not be compromising on their right of return. This is basic to the perception of themselves and to their history”. Hansen, protecting the reason d’etre of his own bureaucracy, demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of this institution. He himself reached his personal low point in April 2002 when he accused Israel of the blood –libel in the Jenin massacre which, as proven even by a UN committee, never took place. It is not surprising then that there are SHAID (martyr) posters on the walls of the schools and in the homes of UNWRA workers.
In June 1945 the Charter of the UN was negotiated and signed here in the city of San-Francisco. The UN Charter was, to a very large extent, outdated a few days after its conclusion and approval. The parties of the Charter had a vision of a new and better world; however, they were not aware that a new weapon system was being developed that would dramatically affect international security. The UN succeeded to exist not because it created a machinery to deal with nuclear weapons, but because the cold war created a new mechanism of deterrence and provided a system of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) which created a balance of fear to avoid wars.
With the end of the cold war, the breakdown and collapse of the Soviet Union, there is a great need to update the Charter of the UN and to change some of its agencies. Primarily, there is a need to make changes in the system of the collective security, namely the Security Council. There is also a necessity to change other assumptions and structures. For instance, the UN commission for Human Rights in Geneva is currently under the chairmanship of Libya. And of course UNWRA, the only Agency for refugees, refuses to improve their human condition. UNWRA is part of the MAD mentality which was developed in the cold war. The Middle East has become a battlefield for the superpowers, precisely because of the limits created by the nuclear race. Since the superpowers could not fight each other directly, they were engaged in the Middle East war by proxy. That is why the Soviet Union financed and armed the Arabs all along. UNWRA was a central element in perpetuating the conflict and keeping the Arab system at war with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
Today, UNWRA stands as a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
The reform of UNWRA and the measures that are needed to improve the life conditions of the refugees must precede the final political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. There assumption in the Oslo agreement signed in 1993 that by solving the central issues: borders, security, Jerusalem etc., the refugee issue would be solved by itself- This assumption is wrong.
The current system of donors are providing the annual budget of UNWRA which, together with the emergency aid, exceeds half billion dollars. UNWRA is corruptive and in final analysis worsening the refugees condition. It is the system built to maintain Palestinian misery and dependency in order to continue Arab- Israeli conflict. UNWRA stands in the way of a better Palestinian future. The leaders of the Arab world and the Palestinians should be forced to work out a plan that will focus exclusively on the rehabilitation of the Refugees in the territories under the Palestinian Authority and in the countries of their residence. Why should we continue to maintain the grievances, the incitement, and the blackmail under the cover of UNWRA which is fertile grounds for terror and suicide bombers?
Traditionally, Arab countries and Arafat oppose this kind of solution because they undercut their strategy of using the Palestinian misery as a strategic weapon against Israel. This is a major challenge for the new Palestinian leadership, for the post- Saddam Arab leadership, and for the UN and the international community that maintained this rotten system of UNWRA for so many years.
The saga of the forgotten exodus is something that we must pass to our children and grand children. It is part of our history and part of our narrative in the unfolding rebirth of the state of Israel post World War II. The ingathering of exiles in the new State of Israel brought together Jewish refugees from Europe and from Arab countries, communities which were not in contact for 2000 years. They were refugees who were brutally expelled, but they returned to their historic homeland. This was recognized by the UN and the international community and it is these rights that the Arabs, in the company of the machinery of UNWRA are trying to reverse.
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