Canada Leads the Way
By Sarah Stern & Kyle Shideler, with Special Thanks to Arlene Kushner of the Center for Near East Policy Research
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees, had been established on December 8th 1949 to “carry out…direct relief and works programs” for Palestinian refugees by the United Nations General Assembly, (resolution 302-IV). Its establishment came about because of the displacement of thousands of Arab refugees, many of whom had been incited to leave by their own leaders who highly exaggerated fears of the brutality and lethality of the Israeli “aggressor.”
The exact number of refugees in 1948 varies. According to the UN Mediator on Palestine, Ralph Bunche, the figure was 472,000. The Israeli estimate, according to the Mideast Web is 520,000 and in 1949, the United Nations Conciliation Commission put the number at 726,000.
Approximately eight months after UNRWA began its operations, on December 14, 1950, the United Nations General Assembly established another office for all refugees, The United Nations High Commission of Refugees (UNHCR). According to the UNHCR website, “The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country.”
UNRWA, however, was not folded into this new agency. This was due, for the most part, because of pressure coming from the Arab nations. According to an explanation that had appeared on the UNRWA website, that was because Arab states, “feared that the non-political character of the work envisioned by the nascent UNHCR was not compatible with the highly politicized nature of the Palestinian question.”
The problem of the Palestinian refugee could have easily been resolved years ago, had UNRWA been folded into the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, particularly since the UNHCR is committed to “resolving refugee problems”, and part of the resolution of the problem is “integrating locally or resettling in a third country.”
That however, would not fit with the agenda of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, (now the Palestinian Authority). According to their own internal documentation “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.” [1]
According to Arlene Kushner of the Center for Near East Policy Research, “As a matter of deliberate policy, most Arab nations have deliberately declined to absorb the refugees or give them citizenship, and have instead focused on the right to “return” to Israel.”
One is entitled to ask the question, is this actually a “right” due to the Palestinians or on excessive handicap that interferes with the individual’s ability to integrate into his host nation and get on with his life?
Attempts by Israel to provide permanent housing to Palestinians have in the past been meet with condemnation by the U.N General Assembly, and efforts by Israel to improve housing for Palestinians have led to threats by UNRWA to revoke refugee rights for any Palestinians that would chose to accept such infrastructure improvements. Why has the PLO /Palestinian Authority insisted on using the Palestinian refugees as pawns, keeping them in squalor, and not allowing them to re-settle into Arab lands?
The obvious answer is that they have deliberately exploited them for political gain. My family does not try to regain its European citizenship that it lost as a result of World War II. There are certain realities and facts on the ground. There should be no more of a chance that a Palestinian will return to his grandfather’s orchards and vineyards in Haifa, than I will go back to our family’s estate in Europe.
It is clear that UNRWA has a fundamental focus on prolonging, rather than improving the Palestinian refugee problem.
UNRWA’s educational programs are similarly designed to oppose integration and resettlement, and to foster hatred. In a 2008 survey, The Committee for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, surveyed Palestinian textbooks, including those used at UNRWA administered schools. They found that Israel and Israel cities were absent from maps and charts, that Jerusalem was described as a Palestinian city. They also found, praise for jihad, holy war and martyrdom, and a continuous war against Israel as the occupier was encouraged. In an update in 2009, the committee announced that while some improvements had been made in areas noted in their survey, the fundamental nature of the text books had remained the same.
UNRWA’s ideological focus has also blinded the organization to the problem of terrorist infiltration into their bureaucracy.
The schools are one of the primary ways in which terrorist organizations have infiltrated and co-opted UNRWA. Reports of UNRWA schools decorated with pro-Hamas and pro-Islamic Jihad posters and propaganda abound. The Hamas-affiliated Islamic Bloc has dominated the UNRWA union teacher’s section since 1990, gaining all available seats via election in 2003.
In many cases UNRWA buildings or personnel have been directly involved in terrorist activities. Examples abound. These include: teachers of UNRWA schools being none Hamas terrorists, UNRWA schools being places of refuge for Hamas terrorists using UNRWA youth clubs as terrorist meeting places, UNRWA employees have served to transport weapons and explosives via UNRWA ambulances, weapons and explosives have been manufactured on the premise of UNRWA buildings. Videotaped footage of terrorists using UNRWA ambulances as troop carriers, and UNRWA schools as mortar launch sites is easily available for viewing. (Please see our EMET seminar on our website at www.emetonline.org entitled, “Ethics in the Field” with Colonel Bentzi Gruber which clearly explains this).
Such infiltration and war crimes have been extensively documented. Yet, UNRWA remains heavily funded by the western nations, even though these countries are engaged in their own struggles against Islamic terrorism.
UNRWA and its operations have certainly turned a blind eye to the fact that a large base of these terrorists operations are emanating from these camps, and the Western powers, for fartoo long, have been turning a blind eye toward them.
Fortunately, a recent development has occurred that give us a bit of optimism that some governments have begun to get wise to the unsavory ways of UNRWA.
The Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper has led the way in confronting the multitude of problems that exist within UNRWA. It announced in January that Canada would no longer transfer funds to The UNRWA, instead choosing to allocate its funds instead as ”direct food aid to the Palestinians.” In the past Canada has provided as much as 5% of UNRWA’s annual budget. The announcement was made by President of Canada’s Treasury Board, Vic Toews, who stressed, “Canada is not reducing the amount of money it gives…but it is now being redirected in accordance with Canadian values.”
In Canada, the issue of UNRWA’s behavior came to the fore in 2004, after UNRWA Head Peter Hansen told a Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) reporter, “I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don’t see that as a crime… we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.”
Since then, the extent to which UNRWA has consistently violated Western democratic values has been extensively documented, and the Canadians decided to take action.
Canada’s decision to remove funding from UNRWA, and to reallocate its funding in another manner has been a long time in the making. Other Western nations, such as our own, should follow Canada’s courageous lead, and once and for all stop blindly aiding and abetting the scorpion pit of terrorism that UNRWA has become. There is no accountability as to where America’s precious tax payer money goes, once it leaves for these UNRWA camps.
There should, at the very least, be an independent system of transparency and accountability as to what happens in the UNRWA camps. We should with-hold our taxpayer’s dollars until the many problems of UNRWA are fixed.
UNRWA remains an impediment to the Palestinian people’s ability to successfully integrate into their host nations and to promote peace and their own economic and social development rather than focusing on the “right of return,” which is not at all grounded in reality. This denial of reality forms an ideological basis in the incitement to hate and kill. As long as these impossible expectations are not fulfilled, the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis will continue for generations.
Canada’s decision should form the basis for a similar reappraisal by the United States and European countries. We should not continue funding UNRWA, until it eviscerates the stranglehold on the economic and educational development of the Palestinian people through feeding the people fantasies, rather than reality.
Like the wives of alcoholics who daily place whisky as an item on their shopping lists, as long as we continue to fund UNRWA without any conditionality, we are enabling the problem to continue.
For far too long UNRWA’s political policy of using the people they keep as refugees has been a weapon against Israel, to the great and lasting harm of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
This article is indebted to the extensive and preeminent research of Arlene Kushner in her seminal report, “UNRWA: Overview and Policy Critique,” Center for Near East Policy Research, October 2008.
[1] The Palestinian Refugees FACTFILES, Palestinian Liberation Organization, Department of Refugee Affairs, Ramallah, 2000, p.22.)
Food Aids are badly needed by third world countries like in Africa in Asia.;~;
food aids are badly needed by third world countries and we really need to give something to the poor.`~~