A.P. photo/ Mohammed Ballas -- UNRWA food at Jenin refugee camp
Prof. Nitza Nachmias of the Jewish-Arab Center in Haifa University says that UNRWA perpetuates notions of a no longer extant Palestinian refugee problem. She explains that most of the so-called refugees were integrated into other countries. “Only in Lebanon are there refugees who are not allowed to work in certain professions; they are a small fraction of the total.” UNRWA has become the major employer of Palestinian Arabs, 30,000 of them, directed by 100 international experts.
“If people would stop calling the places in which they live ‘refugee camps,’ then they would see that these places are just like villages and towns anywhere else, and the inhabitants are totally rehabilitated.” Real refugee camps are obviously transitory facilities, as in Haitian camps or former camps for Jewish refugees from the Arab world.
Prof. Nachmias thinks that Israel’s policy on this is short-sighted. “We can’t simply push it off to the ‘final status talks’ and say, ‘We don’t accept the demand for the right-of-return because it will destroy the Jewish character of our state;’ what do they care about our Jewish character? If they (the Arabs) deserve to be here, then it’s tough luck on us! Rather, Israel should take a pro-active approach, basing itself on international law and precedents, and declare that the Palestinian refugee issue no longer exists.”
“According to international law,” Nachmias explains, “a refugee is an individual or family that was forced to run away – but this definition does not extend to children [of the original refugees], a community or a group.” For the Palestinian Arabs, the UN makes an exception. Why?
“Israel must nullify the status of Palestinian refugee camps; there is no other place where the UN controls territory [aside from its headquarters in New York?]. We must send the UNRWA out and transfer the control of these places to the Palestinian Authority, and then when the status of each individual resident there is reviewed, we will see that none of them match the legal definition of a refugee, and they are established citizens.”
Despite the UNRWA’s power and well-oiled financial network, “the world will support Israel in this case because it will also remove the onus of the refugees, and also because Israel can show, if it makes the effort, that it [the proposal] is rooted in international law.” (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/, 2/8).
The proposal describes conditions as they are, as they are pretended to be, and they should be. I doubt that “the world” would support Israel in anything. “The world” cares about neither the welfare of the Arabs nor international law. The pretense of caring is a pretext to oppose Israel. The Arab states use the refugee issue as a spearhead against Israel and a diversion from their own failings.
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