This is a continuation of yesterday’s discussion.

Today, we are going to examine the concept of Palestinian refugees.  Oh, yes they are real, they exist.  But not the way you may be considering.

This analysis is going to rile a whole bunch of you.  But, it will address truths that must be comprehended, to better understand the dynamics of Israel and Palestine.

Let me first start by saying that I am a firm believer in the two state solution.  I have been such for decades.  And, as many of you may recall from reading my blog, I was working with Prime Minister Rabin to develop high tech industry and manufacturing along the green line (the original border between Israel and Jordan before the 6 day war), up until the moment a WrongWing Orthodox Jew murdered the prime minister.

This telling goes back to the original wars that established the State of Israel.  The Arab nations (yes, all of them) were warring with the nascent state of Israel to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state.

The Arab nations told the residents within the Partition plan to exit the lands during the war,  They would be able to return after the war was over, when the Arab coalition eradicated the nascent state.  Most of the Palestinian refugees from 1948-49 wer among this contingent.  Additionally, Jewish residents within the Partition cajoled andimpressed other folks to leave the area.  (No promise of return was made by the Jews.)

 

(By the way, there were two winners in this armistice plan.  Israel, which clearly garnered more land than offered in the partition plan (although it lost access to Jerusalem), and King Abdullah of Jordan, who now controlled the entire West Bank as part of his country.)

This led to the formation of a specialized agency- the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) in 1949 to service the refugees from the War of Independence.  The number of refugees at this time were 750,000, 200K of which took up residence in Gaza.

After the 6 day war, when Israel took over the Transjordan region (the West Bank)  from Jordan, the Golan heights (from Syria), and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt (which was returned when the peace treaty was signed), Israel had a much larger land mass.

The Palestinian refugees are the only peoples to have their own UN agency.  The rest of the world’s refugees are the responsibility of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (also know as the UN Refugee Agency), which deals with all the rest of the world refugees.    And, we should comprehend the vast differences between these two agencies.

(1) UNWRA has NO mandate to resettle the refugees.  (2) UNHCR has 18000 employees and a mandate to repatriate and resettle some 59 million refugees from around the world.  Total budget $ 11 billion.  (3)  UNWRA has 30000 staff members; almost all are local recruits  And (4)  UNWRA gets $ 344 million from the USA alone (Largest donor), with a total budget $ 1.6 billion.

UNWRA is the only agency that allows parents to pass on refugee status to their children.  No other agency so allows.  That’s why there is a claim that there are 5.9 million refugees.

The UNWRA also hires “refugees”  as employees.  No other refugee NGO has such a policy.

This may explain why UNRWA schools teach children that Israel will be destroyed- so the land from the river to the sea will become the property of the Palestinians.