The fact that the Palestinian refugee conundrum has become a central obstacle to peace in the Middle East was proven quite clear in the talks at Camp David in the summer of 2000. The Palestinians surprised the Israelis and the Americans in their uncompromising demand for a total ‘right of return’ for the 5-6 millions refugees (according to their estimate) to their previous homes in Israel. Even the political left in Israel expressed his indignation and shock, saying that such a demand is tantamount to the end of Israel as a Jewish state. For many years the conventional wisdom among many Israelis was that when an agreement is reached with the Arabs and the Palestinians on borders, security and other outstanding differences on the ‘normalization’ of relations, the issue of the refugees will find a solution in the framework of the new Palestinian State. The shock brought many to reevaluate the role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), which was established in 1949 following the Arab rejection of the partition resolution and their failure to defeat Israel in the war of Independence.

The Arab Strategy

The fallacy about UNWRA lies in the failure to understand that the UN agency was an integral part of a long-term Arab strategy to perpetuate the misery of the Palestinians and to keep this humanitarian burden at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. During the years of the Arab total control in the West Bank and Gaza, till 1967, there was no attempt to bring a decent humanitarian option to the Palestinians. Just to the contrary, the Arabs rejected several international and UN initiatives to resettle and rehabilitate the Palestinian refugees outside the camps. In June 1957 the chairman of the Middle East Sub-Committee of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee reported at the end of an illuminating survey:
“The fact is that the Arab States have for ten years used the Palestinian refugees as hostages in their struggle with Israel. While Arab delegates in the United Nations have condemned the plight of their brothers in the refugee camps, nothing has been done to assist them in a practical way lest political leverage against Israel be lost.”1

Two years after the failure in Camp David, in October 2002 Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian authority repeated his demand: “No one can abolish the right of return.”2

The damage caused by keeping UNWRA as an agency dedicated to preserve the refugees in their misery had serious global implications that go far beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict. The treatment of the Palestinian refugees by the UN has become a major impediment in the world war against terrorism and is the central cause for the UN’s colossal failure to address and confront the problem of international terrorism. In its efforts to appease the Arab/Muslim group on the Palestinian refugees the UN sacrificed many important principles in the field of international security and human rights. Some of the UN resolutions on Israel and the Palestinians represent a clear departure or even violation of other security and human rights principles enshrined in the UN Charter.

Efforts to draft conventions and resolutions on terrorism since the early 1970s always fell victim to the cynical statement that ‘one’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter’; the tendency was to justify terrorism as a valid response to the “root causes” of misery, occupation, oppression and desperation. UNWRA is an historic model of a consistent human effort to perpetuate the tragedy of the refugees and to encourage, under the guise of humanitarian assistance, the development of a culture of misery and terrorism. It has, of course, been extensively proved that the vast majority of the people who are in misery, are desperate or oppressed have never resorted to the means adopted by Palestinian terrorists, with the cognizance and support of a large part of the international community. UNWRA has created a process which allowed to combine the misery with genocidal hatred preached at its camps and taught in its school’s system. Given the fact that members of the terrorist organization were part of UNWRA staff made the camps a natural target of the worst incitement of the Arab/Islamist Jihad and suicide culture directed against Israel, Jews and Western civilization.

UNWRA is a unique institution with no other parallel in the UN system. All other millions of refugees in the world (there were over 130 million since the end of World War II) were dealt under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which aims to resettle and rehabilitate the refugees. Only UNWRA, according to its self-declared mission (as announced in its website), does not aim to solve the problem of the refugees, but to keep them in the camps. Only UNWRA defines its refugees in a clear attempt to inflate their numbers. According to UNWRA’s definition, the refugees are all Arabs who lived in Palestine “between June 1946 and May 1948’ who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.” Unlike other refugee population who were born after the conflict and outside their countries, UNWRA extends the refugee status to “all descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948.”3 This includes today all third generations of refugees even children of just one Palestinian refugee parent.

For the Arab countries the establishment of the agency in 1949 had a clear mission: to achieve through diplomatic means what they had failed to achieve on the battlefield in their war against Israel. In 1949 this was expressed in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Misri: “It is well known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the Homeland and not as slaves. With a greater clarity, they mean the liquidation of the State of Israel”4 Yasser Arafat was even more explicit in 1996, in violation of the spirit and letter of the Oslo agreements which he signed and which brought him a Nobel Peace Prize, when he spoke in a closed meeting to Arab Ambassadors in Stockholm and explained the motive behind the demand for a right of return:
“Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living on the West Bank and Jerusalem. All Palestinian Arabs will be welcomed by us. If the Jews can import all kinds of Ethiopians, Russians, Uzbeks, and Ukrainians as Jews, we can import all kinds of Arabs. We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs…They will give up their dwellings and leave for the United States. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all Jerusalem.”5

The political objectives of UNWRA were clear: to create a permanent reminder of Israeli ‘atrocities’ in order to keep the Palestinian issue alive. In August 1958 the former director of UNWRA in Jordan said: “The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”6

More than fifty years after the establishment of UNWRA, in the year 2000, an official document of the PLO reaffirmed the Arab strategy to perpetuate the refuges misery by keeping them in the camps:
“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.”7
UNWRA and Lebanon

The bankruptcy of UNWRA as a humanitarian institution was clearly proven outside the territories under Israeli control and it was registered at the UN by an Arab country, Lebanon, in one of its last desperate calls for international help before losing its sovereignty to the Syrian forces of occupation. In the autumn of 1976 the Ambassador of Lebanon to the United Nations Edward Ghora warned the international community of the dangers posed to his country by the UNWRA camps, making a dramatic appeal to the world to save his country’s independence. In his letter to the UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim the Ambassador described in detail “the constant Palestinian intervention in internal affairs of Lebanon and the intolerable encroachment on its sovereignty.” At the Ambassador’s request, the letter was circulated as a UN official document among all the member states. The Lebanese statement accused the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for violating the many accords that have been concluded with them in order to limit their presence and military activities in Lebanon. Ambassador Ghora described the PLO behavior in very clear terms:
“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 conglomerations.”

At the same time, the Lebanese Ambassador enclosed a copy of a letter from his Deputy Prime Minister to the nonaligned summit meeting of the Third World countries in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in which he reiterated his complaints that the Palestinian Arabs have violated the agreement signed with his government in 1969, brought heavy weapons to the camps, and took over the UNWRA offices within the camps.8
The transfer of control in the camps in southern Lebanon from UNWRA to the PLO was an open secret which was obvious to every visitor there. Except for a few dozen members of the “international team”, the entire UNWRA apparatus of 20,000 employees was under the PLO control.9 For many years the UN declined to answer its critics and did not admit that the UNWRA camps were entirely run by the PLO who had the sole control there. On June 18, 1979 the New York Times reported that PLO terrorists controlled three refugee camps in Lebanon. The camps flew the United Nations flag but were to all intents and purposes military bases run by the PLO. The UN provided a cover for the PLO to run a military operation which included the recruitment of terrorists, military training and political indoctrination.

The Lebanese cry was completely ignored by the UN and the International community. Only in 1982, after the Israel Defense Forces had entered Lebanon, following numerous terrorist attacks against civilians in Israel, were senior UN officials willing to admit how much the agency had aided and encouraged PLO terrorism. In October 1982, UNWRA released a comprehensive report, which described in great detail how the “educational” institution at Sibliun near Beirut, which was under UNWRA supervision, was in reality a training base for Palestinian terrorists. The report indicated that, acting against UNWRA’s official policy, the PLO had turned the institution into a military installation complete with arms warehouses, and that it had been used for military training including the use of weapons and explosives to the members of the camp.10

Terror from the Camps

In October 2004 Peter Hansen, UNWRA’s Commissioner General, said in public, for the first time, that there are also Hamas members on the UNWRA payroll adding that “I don’t see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.” The Canadian government reacted to Hansen statement, which was given to Canadian TV, by saying that Hamas is defined as terrorist organization. Several North American charities linked to Hamas were outlawed by the federal government11. Hamas is officially sworn to Israel’s destruction, and several governments designated it as a terrorist organization. Article 28 of the Ha-mas Charter says: “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims.” The Charter includes anti-Semitic blood libels and references to the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and it quotes the Quran on the duty to kill Jews.12

Hansen was trying to minimize a problem that is critical to the peace efforts, and he did not reveal in his interview that the Hamas control the UNWRA workers union, following the union elections in 2003. Since the UNWRA budget is based on contributions from governments, and mainly from Western states, it means that the US and EU taxpayers are footing most of the bill for salaries paid to terrorists and their collaborators on the UNWRA payroll. The canard of the distinction between military and political wings of terrorist organization was widely used in the campaign of terrorism against Israel. Only after the September 11th attacks and the following Islamic terrorist attacks around the world did several nations adopt measures to deny this distinction and began to curtail to transfer of funds to charities that provided assistance to terrorism. The United States, the European Union, Canada and Australia, have banned both the military and civilian “wings” of Hamas. As reported by Matthew Levitt from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Hamas and other terrorists organizations are exploiting UNWRA and other relief organizations for their military operations. In one instance UNWRA’s director of food supplies for Gaza refugees admitted to using his UN vehicle on multiple occasions during summer 2002 to transport arms, explosives, and members of terrorists groups to the Gaza strip.13
The UNWRA system is deeply flawed and largely responsible for corrupting the Palestinian Arab leadership who have never faced the real concern of the refugees but only tried to exploit them for their own political and financial interest. Although there are certainly people of good will working for UNWRA, the good humanitarian work provided by UNWRA cannot atone for the destructive role that the agency plays both in the short and long term. The way UNWRA’s mandate is defined plays into the hands of militants and armed groups in the camps. The literature on humanitarian aid refers to this situation as a “refugee-warrior” community, which transforms the camps into military bastions whose populations seek to fight and destabilize their neighbors. Instead of reducing the suffering, it fuels violence and exacerbates misery. Indeed, the inherent link between refugee camps and terror in general was recognized by the UN Security Council in 1998, when, in discussing refugees in Africa, it affirmed the “unacceptability of using refugee camps…to achieve military purposes.” This was followed by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who urged in his report to the Security Council in 1998 that “refugee camps…be kept free of any military presence or equipment.” This principle was never applied to the camps of UNWRA areas where a terrorist network has taken root, where suicide-bomb belts are prepared, car bombs are built, and terrorists are trained.

The Forgotten Refugees

UNWRA is also a critical element in the creation of the Palestinian narrative that denies the legitimacy of Israel, ignores the fact that there was an exchange of refuges between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, and is exploiting the personal tragedy of the captives in the refugee camps for terrorist operations. The Arabs and the Palestinian leadership opposed the partition and the establishment of a Jewish State as called for in 1947. They opposed the measures of conciliation and settlement provided in Resolution 194 adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 11, 1948. At this stage, following the invasion of the Arab armies in Palestine under Mandate, the Israeli War of Independence was going on, Jerusalem was under siege, and the Arabs’ declared aim was to liquidate Israel. Despite their rejection of the resolution, after failing to achieve their military goals, the Arabs would later rely on it heavily as recognition of an imaginary wholesale right of repatriation: the so-called “right of return”. The resolution does not recognize any “right” but recommends measures to permit the return as part of a peace settlement. At the same time, and part of the settlement, the resolution recommends the “reintegration of the refugees into the economic life of the Middle East, either by repatriation or resettlement”.

In its discussions of the refugee problem in the Arab-Israeli conflict the UN completely and deliberately ignored the plight of the Jews brutally expelled from their countries of origins in the Middle East. One day after the declaration of independence of Israel, on May 16, 1948, the New York Times published a report with the following headline: “Jews in grave danger in all Moslem lands.”14 The paper reported that for nearly four months, the United Nations has had before it an appeal for “immediate and urgent” consideration of the case of the Jewish population in Arab and Moslem countries.” The paper says in is sub-headline: “Nine Hundred Thousand [Jews] in Africa and Asia Face Wrath of their Foes” and cites reports about the serious deterioration in Jewish security in Arab countries, including violent incidents. The New York Times reports that according to the text of law drafted by the Political Committee of the Arab league all their Jewish citizens would be considered “members of the minority Jewish state of Palestine.”

In the same Assembly of the United Nations, death threats to the Jews were aired without too much ado. The Egyptian delegate to the UN Heykal Pasha threatened as early as November 24, 1947, that the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine would cause the massacre of Jews. Pasha warned that the “United Nations…should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million of Jews living in Muslim countries…creating anti-Semitism in those countries even more difficult to root out than the anti-Semitism which the Allies tried to eradicate in Germany…[making] the UN …responsible for very grave disorders and for the massacre of a large number of Jews”15 The Palestinian delegate to the UN Jamal al-Hussayni said that the situation of the Jews in the Arab world “will become very precarious. Government in general have always been unable to prevent mob excitement and violence.”16

In Iraq the threats were publicly aired, and a similar statement by the Foreign Minister, Fadel Jamail, was made in the United Nations.17 The Prime Minister of Iraq Nuri Sa’id was pursuing special efforts to expel Iraqi Jews and have raised in different political channels the idea of an exchange of populations. Specifically, according to a diplomatic report, he suggested ‘a forced exchange of population under UN supervision and the transfer of 100,000 Jews beyond Iraq in exchange for the Arab refugees who had already left the territory in Israel hands.“18 The case of the Jews of Iraq is a documented record of extreme violations of their rights before the expulsion. Through pogroms, discriminatory legislation, and public executions, the Iraqi government succeeded in carrying out the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the most ancient Jewish community in the Middle East.19

Unlike the Arab refugees, the Jewish refugees, who exceeded the numbers of the Palestinian refugees, are a forgotten case. While the Palestinian refugees stand at the very heart of the peace process with huge UN bureaucratic machinery dedicated to keep them in the camps, the 900,000 Jews who were forced out of Arab countries have not been refugees for many years. Most of them, about 650,000 went to Israel because it was the only country that would admit them. Israel was their “asylum” from persecution. They resided in tents that were after several years replaced by wooden cabins, and stayed in what was actually a refugee camp for up to twelve years. They never received any relief or even attention from UNWRA, the UN Commissioner for Refugees or any other international agency. Although their plight is raised every year at the UN by the representatives of Israel, there was never any reference to their case.20

At the end of October 2003 a resolution was submitted to the American Congress, co-sponsored by a bi-partisan group of members from the House of Representatives, which recognized the “Dual Middle East Refugee Problem”. The resolution (H. Con. Res. 311) speaks about the forgotten exodus of 900,000 Jews from Arab countries who “were forced to flee and in some cases brutally expelled amid coordinated violence and anti-Semitic incitement that amounted to ethnic cleansing” Referring to the population exchange which took place in the Middle East, the resolution continues and deplores “the cynical perpetuation of the Arab refugee crisis” and criticizes the “immense machinery of UNWRA” which only “increases violence through terror.” The resolution called UNWRA to establish a program for resettling the Palestinian refugees.21

Rejecting the existence of Israel

The legacy of UNWRA — perpetuating the misery of the Palestinian tragedy — is the most critical element in the Arab strategy and had serious implications for the UN discussions on the Middle East and its paralysis in the fight against international terrorism. Since UNWRA was born as a “temporary” organ for the refugees, at the beginning there were several initiatives to develop a comprehensive refugee resettlement scheme in the Middle East, including one by the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. Following fierce Arab opposition, the plans were dropped. After 1967 the UN has become, as a result of Arab success in controlling its majority, an agency devoted to promote the Palestinian refugees case at the expense of Israel’s legitimacy and existence.
By the end of 1974 the UN General Assembly has become a rubber stamp of Arab League decisions and hatred against Israel, adopting exclusively the Palestinian narrative on the refugee issue. Resolution 3236 on Palestinian rights, adopted in November 1974, can be seen as recognition of the PLO aims in its covenant, and an attempt to turn back the resolution of 1947 that referred to two states, recognizing the rights of Jews in Palestine. The PLO national covenant spoke in unequivocal terms on the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. Resolution 3236 undermines the sovereign right of Israel and its rights under the UN Charter to live in peace. The resolution ratified the rights of the Palestinian people to independence and sovereignty in Palestine, without even a reference to the existence of a Jewish nation there.

After one year the UN made this more explicit, when, after reaffirming Resolution 3236, the General Assembly adopted in November 1975 the infamous resolution 3379 that defined Zionism as racism, which has only one meaning: an official denial of Israel’s right to exist. By equating Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, with racism, the Jewish state and the Jewish people were placed beyond the pale of civilized society.22 The American Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan, called the resolution a “terrible lie… an infamous act” and later explained that the resolution puts the United Nations “on record favoring the annihilation of a member state. For racism…can deprive a state of legitimacy— even legality…This is singularly the case with Israel, for it was founded to be a Jewish nation.”23 The resolution caused a terrible damage to the reputation of the United Nations and even critics of the policies of Israel could not deny that the UN obsession with Israel and its one-sided approach to the Palestinian refugee problem led the organization to complete moral bankruptcy. It took the UN 16 years and the collapse of the Soviet Union to revoke the 1075 vote in an unprecedented move in the history of the UN.
The vote in 1991 to revoke the Zionism=Racism resolution (which was done in a very technical fashion without spelling out its significance) represented a very short period of grace for Israel. The UN continued its annual march of anti-Israeli resolutions and continued to defend Palestinian acts of terrorism, even when international human rights bodies, such as Amnesty International, termed the Palestinian suicide bombings as “crimes against humanity.” Despite the breakthrough in the Oslo Agreements of September 1993 between Israel and the Palestinians, the UN continued to discuss the refugee problem as a UNWRA item, without reflecting the changes in the relations. UNWRA and the issue of the refugees remained ‘untouchable’ despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority was now in control of all the areas with UNWRA camps in the territories. The Palestinians and the Arabs rejected even a report by the European Union that indicated that the assistance to the Palestinian refugees on the West Bank is undergoing “a profound transformation” in helping to integrate refugees and non-refugees. The EU report was challenging certain concepts and vested interests, arousing Palestinian protest and reservations by UNWRA Commissioner General. This UN-PLO coalition felt threatened by the idea of solving the refugee problem through integration in host countries.24

Furthermore, the spirit and the letter of the Oslo agreements were not reflected in the educational system run by UNWRA. Israel’s name does not appear on any of the maps in the schools and the textbooks refer only to the glorified Jihad, without mentioning peace with Israel. By encouraging the “right of return” in their school curriculum, and in statements made by their officials, UNWRA is taking a clear political stand. Peter Hansen, the Commissioner General of UNWRA, has rejected all discussions on resettling and rehabilitating the refugees. In 1999, he said that “the Palestinians refugees will not be compromising on the right of return. This is basic to their perception of themselves and to their history.”
The battle in Jenin between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in April 2002 brought to the front the problematic nature of UNWRA: the transformation of its camps into terrorist bases and the clear anti-Israel bias of UNWRA officials who became active participants in the Arab propaganda warfare against Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces entered the UNWRA camp in Jenin following the horrifying massacre at a Passover Seder at Netanya’s Park Hotel by a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed 29 civilians, including children during their ritual holiday meal. The Fatah, the military arm of the PLO called the Jenin camp as the “suicide [bomber] capital… a place with an exceptional presence of fighters that nothing can beat them; nothing bothers them.” It was reported that the camps served as centers of bomb-making, indoctrination, recruiting, and dispatching suicide bombers. Peter Hansen, who never reacted to the terror activities in his camps, joined the Palestinian propaganda machine and accused Israel of perpetrating a “massacre” of hundreds and perhaps thousands of Palestinians. In dozens of interviews regarding the battle in Jenin, Hansen told the media: “This is pure hell…it is not any exaggeration to call this a massacre. Previously I have abstained to use the word, but as I have seen it, I really cannot call it anything else…Jenin camp residents have lived through a human catastrophe.”25

When the dust settled it became evident that there had been no massacre, and the UN Secretary General himself Kofi Annan acknowledged that there had been a fierce fighting in the camp and that the IDF encountered heavy Palestinian fire. The battle took place in a very small section in the camp, where almost all the houses and buildings were booby- trapped and Palestinians were shooting at the Israeli soldiers, sometimes using civilians — women and children — as human shields. Hansen did not retract his defamatory accusations, which amounted to a blood libel against Israel and were followed by violent anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims against Jewish communities in Europe.
Refugees and Terror

Instead of dealing with the threat of terrorism in its camps, the UN did the opposite and went to condone it as legitimate weapon. For many years, and particularly because of Palestinian terrorism, UN members could not agree on combating terrorism and instead expressed understanding to it as reflected in its annual cumbersome resolutions passed since December 1972 till 1989: “Measures to prevent international terrorism which endangers or takes innocent human lives or jeopardizes fundamental freedoms, and study the underlying causes of those forms of terrorism and acts of violence which lie in the misery, frustration, grievance and despair and which causes some people to sacrifice human lives, including their own, in an attempt to effect radical changes.” The built-in contradiction in the language is indeed the reflection of the UN policy to perpetuate the misery in UNWRA camps and later under its watching eyes to allow these camps to be transformed into terrorists bases (whether in Lebanon or in the West Bank).

The legitimization of Palestinian terrorism by the United Nations and later by European governments, the Vatican and the international media, made terrorism a popular tool of choice by numerous groups around the world. According to the RAND-St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism “the number of organizations engaged in international terrorism grew from only eleven in 1968 (of which just three were ethno-nationalist/separatist organizations, the remainder radical Marxist-Leninist, or left-wing groups) to an astonishing fifty-five in 1978)…all [the ethno-nationalist/separatist movements] seeking to capitalize on the PLO’s success.”26

The United Nations General Assembly was legitimizing and encouraging Palestinian terrorism directed against Israeli and Jewish civilians. In 1979 it approved an exception to the international convention against the taking of hostages, saying that it will not apply in cases where “hostage-taking” is part of the fight “against colonial occupation and foreign occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.” This has become in the UN the well-known code words for justified Palestinian terrorism by all means. Following the change in the international system in 1989, no resolution on terrorism was adopted at the UN on 1990, and a year later the title was shortened to a more rational definition: “Measure to eliminate international terrorism”. But still, with the Arab pressure, the legitimization of terrorist acts by liberation movements found its way into the preamble. In 1994-5, the UN moved further to condemn all acts of terrorism, adding the formula: “whenever and by whoever committed,” and expressly excluding all kind of “good causes” by stating that terror for political purposes “is in any circumstance unjustifiable”27 But the Arabs did not give up and succeeded to circumvent the world efforts against terrorism. Even after September 11, 2001, they could use the Israel and UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, hostile to the US, to justify Palestinian terrorist acts. On April 15, 2002, the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution that supported the use of any means in the struggle against Israeli occupation — which basically means legitimizing terror in all its forms, including suicide bombing directed against civilians and children. Prof. Anne Bayefsky of Columbia Law School points out that, according to the UN Human Rights Commission, Israel is “the world’s archetypal human rights villain which received for the last 40 years almost 30 percent of [the UN] resolutions condemning specific states. Israel has been the only state to which the commission has devoted an entire item on its agenda.”28

Similar innovation and reinterpretation of the Charter was done by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the legal arm of the United Nations. Facing the same dilemma of defining indiscriminate and brutal terrorism vs. Israel’s right to self-defense, the Court introduced a radical and far-reaching interpretation of the UN Charter in order to avoid any reference to Palestinian terrorism, with many of its attacks coming from UNWRA camps. The terms of reference for the Court’s advisory opinion were spelled out in the General Assembly resolution from December 2003 on “the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying power in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and around East Jerusalem.” The UN General Assembly referred deliberately to the “wall” instead of a “fence” as part of the Arab propaganda that made a comparison to the Berlin Wall and the apartheid regime of South Africa. Following the guidelines of the Assembly, the Court did not even consider the rights of Israel, constantly violated by indiscriminate terrorist attacks on its citizens. The human rights of Israelis and Jews were not under consideration and are not part of the equation. There was no reference to terrorist suicide bombing which violates the rights and freedoms of Israelis which are derived from international treatises: the right to life, freedom from torture, freedom from persecution, security of the person, protection of family and child, etc.

Even worse, in a radical re-interpretation of the Charter, the Court clearly denied Israel’s right for self-defense. The advisory opinion by the Court claimed that Article 51 of the UN Charter that legitimizes the right to self-defense against armed attacks is limited only to attacks initiated by a sovereign states and not non-state groups because they don’t represent a State: “Article 51 of the Charter…recognizes the existence of an inherent right of self-defense in the case of an armed attack by one state against another State. However, Israel does not claim that the attacks against it are imputable to a foreign State.”
In his minority opinion the American judge in the Court, Thomas Burgenthal, stated that there was no basis for the attempt to restrict article 51 in this way: “the United Nations Charter, in affirming the inherent right of self-defense, does not make its exercise dependent upon an armed attack by another State”. He also points out that the Charter is very clear in Article 51 that stipulates that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations…” As shown by the American judge, the Court provided in its opinion a contrasting view to the resolution by the Security Council of the United Nation following the September 11, 2001 attacks in America (which were also executed by terrorists). In its resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (2001) the Security Council made clear that “international terrorism constitutes a threat to international peace and security” while “reaffirming the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations.”29 The Judge also added that it is clear that the attacks coming from across that line must therefore permit Israel to exercise its right of self-defense against such attack.

The Emergency session of the General assembly convened on July 20th 2004, accepted the anti-Israel Court opinion and voted, by 150 against 4, to approve it. The American Ambassador John Danforth clearly rejected the radical interpretation of the Court:
“So the Court opinion, which this resolution would accept, seems to say that the right of a State to defend itself exists only when it is attacked by another state, and that the right of self-defense does not exist against non-state actors. It does not exist when terrorists hijack planes and fly them into buildings, or bomb train stations, or bomb bus stops, or put poison gas into subways… I would suggest that if this were the meaning of Article 51, then the United Nations Charter could be irrelevant in a time when the major threats to peace are not from states, but from terrorists.”

Professor Alan Dershowitz compared the International Court in the Hague to an all white Mississippi court in the 1930’s making decisions against blacks, while excluding blacks from serving on it. Israelis cannot serve on the international Court, says Dershowitz, while its sworn enemies can, several of whom represent countries that do not abide by the rule of law. The case was even clearer, says Dershowits, in the vote of the General Assembly in December 2003, which asked the International Court for his opinion. At this point, explains Dershowitz, “Virtually every democracy voted against that court’s taking jurisdiction over the fence case, while nearly every country that voted to take jurisdiction was a tyranny.”30

A New Approach

As shown, the special treatment of the Palestinian refugees as institutionalized by UNWRA has had a negative effect on many other aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the international campaign against terrorism. The international community has allowed the Arabs to pursue their deliberate and cynical scheme for too long. They have been encouraged to perpetuate the misery in the camps and to reject resettlement and rehabilitation. This logic must be turned on its head, and the refugees’ resettlement must precede final political settlement. A process of rehabilitation of refugees should be viewed as a major “confidence-building” measure between the parties. A major reform of UNWRA and the creation of new machinery that will promote concrete measures to resettle and rehabilitate the Palestinians refugees should be a prerequisite to any peace process.

The current mandate of UNWRA reinforces an anti-peace strategy which is reflected in the writings of many Palestinians who oppose the two-state solution and prefer to keep the refugees as a demographic ticking bomb which will comprise the majority in one, single, so-called “secular and democratic” Palestine. Only a dramatic shift in the treatment of the refugees will reflect a real change of heart on the part of the Arabs and will signal the abandonment of the refugee issue as a political-military device. The challenge for the UN now is to untie the Gordian knot it has created between UNWRA, the Palestinian refuges, and Arab leadership. This is central to the peace in the Middle East, as well as to the more important task of fighting international terrorism.

About the author

Dr. Avi Beker is teaching International diplomacy and is the head of the project on Jewish policy at the school of government at Tel-Aviv University. He is the former Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress and in this capacity he negotiated with heads of governments the Holocaust restitution agreements, the fight against anti-Semitism and the plight of the Forgotten Exodus-the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. He appeared before the American Congress on the Issues of refugees and UNWRA. He was a member of the Israeli Mission to the United Nations and he published several books and numerous articles on international security and world Jewish affairs. He writes a regular column for Ha’aretz and he is a member of several public and economic boards.

Notes

1. See Speech by Abba Eban, Israeli Ambassador to the UN General Assembly Special Political Committee November 17, 1959.
2. Interview with Yasser Arafat, Al-Hayat, London, 5 October, 2002 (Memri)
3. Don Peretz, Palestinians, Refugees, and the Middle East Peace Process Washington, D.C. 1993, pp11-12
4. Al-Misri, October 11, 1949
5. Norwegian daily Dagen February 6, 1996, and Jerusalem Post, February, 23, 1996
6. See: Terrence Prittie, “Middle East Refugees”, in Michael Curtis, Joseph Neyer, Chaim I. Waxman and Allan Pollack (eds.), The Palestinian: People, History, Politics New Brunswick:Transaction Books, 1975, p.71
7. “The Palestinian Refugee” Factfiles, PLO, Ramallah, 2000, p.22
8. Letter from the Ambassador of Lebanon to the United Nations, Edward Ghora, to the Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, 17 October 1976, General Assembly Official Records, A/31/179
9. “Hoe the UN aids Marxist Guerilla Group”,” background report of the United Nations Assessment Project Study Washington, DC. Heritage Foundation, April 1982 p.6
10. “PLO used a UN facility to Train Guerillas,: International Herald Tribune, 28 October 1982
11. “Members of Hamas ‘On UN payroll’ National Post Canada, October 04, 2004
12. Kenneth R. Timmerman, Preachers of Hate-Islam and the War Against America, New York: Crown Forum, 2003 p.325
13. Matthew Levitt “Terror on the UN Payroll?”, Peacewatch 475, October 13, 2004, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
14. “Jews in Grave Danger in all Moslem Lands” New York Times, May 16, 1948 and “Protection of UN sought for Jews” New York Times, May 17, 1948.
15. United Nations, Official Records of the Second Session of the Generall Assembly, Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Summary Records of Meetings, 25 September to 25 November 1947, Lake Success, New York, p.185
16. Ibid
17. Official Records of the Second Seession of the General Assembly, Verbatim Record of the Plenary Meeting, Vol. 2, 110—28th meeting, November 16-29 1947. p.1391.
18. For the sources see Ya’akov Meron “Expulsion of Jews from Arab Countries”, in The Forgotten Millions-the modernJewish exodus fron Arab Countries, ed. Malka Hillel Shulewitz London: Casel, 1999 pp 88-89
19. Carole Basri, The Jewish Refugees From Arab Countries: An Examination of Legal Rights-A Case Study of the Human Rights Violations of Iraqi Jews” Fordhan international Law Journal, vol.26 (3) March 2003
20. For more on the UN and the Palestinian Refugees see:
Avi Beker “Perpetuating the Tragedy: The United Nations and the Palestinian Refugees” in Shulewitz (ed.) The Forgotten Million, op.cit. pp142-152 and on the absorption in Israel: Yehuda Dominitz “Immigration and Absorption of Jews from Arab Countries” op. cit. pp155-184
21. See “Move in US Congress on Jews from Arab Countries…also calls on UNWRA to resettle Palestinian refugees Globes Oct0ber 30, 2003 and Jerusalem Post October 31 and Samuel G. Freedman “Are Jews Who Fled Arab Lands to Israel Refugees, too?” New York Times, October 11, 2003
22. See Avi Beker The United Nations and Israel-From Recognition to Reprehension, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1988.
23. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, On the Law of Nations, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990 p.164
24. Shamay Cahana, Differing and Converging Views on Solving the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Jerusalem, Leonard Davis Institute of the Hebrew University, 1996, pp.20-22
25. Hansen was quoted all over the world. See for instance: The Guardian, April 21, 2002, Politken (Copenhagen), April 19, 2002, Jyllaads Posten (Denmark) April 19, 2002.
26. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p.75
27. UN GAOR res. 49/60 of February 1995, annex
28. Anne Bayefsky “The UN and the Jews” Commentary, February 2004, p.44
29. See in the Website of the Court: www.icj-cij.org/July 13, 04 and Leanne Piggott “Judges ruling rewrites the UN Charter on self-defence” The Australian, July,12,2004 and Avi Beker “We saw the signs already in 1994” Ha’aretz 7/9/04 and Thomas Franck, “Terrorism and the Right of Self Defense”, American Journal of International law, vol. 95, 2001, pp. 839-840
30. Alan Dershowitz, “Israel follows its own Law, Not Bigoted Hague Decision”, Jerusalem Post. July 11, 2004

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