(Times of Israel) Haviv Rettig Gur - At a small gathering last week in New York City's Harvard Club, speakers criticized the international community's tacit acceptance of the UN Relief and Works Agency's definition of a Palestinian refugee. UNRWA refugees are the only refugees who automatically inherit that status in perpetuity, even when they obtain permanent residency or even citizenship in other countries. "Without talking about this problem, there won't be peace," said Israel's ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor. "The UN mandate for UNRWA was 'the reintegration of the refugees into the normal life of the Near East,'" said Steve Rosen, a former top AIPAC official now with the Middle East Forum. But while the number of refugees worldwide dropped from over 100 million sixty years ago to under 30 million today, the figure for Palestinian refugees ballooned from under 700,000 in 1949 to over 5 million today. Of those 5 million UNRWA-registered refugees, fewer than 50,000, or 1%, are original refugees from that 1948 war and would be considered refugees under the rules of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that govern other refugee populations. As many as 40% of recognized Palestinian refugees are citizens of Jordan. Prosor noted: "Many UNRWA camps are decorated with keys. Young Palestinians are taught that these keys will one day open doors for them. But in reality these keys lock them in, in perceptions of the past and frustrations that they will never be able to realize." Last year Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) proposed an amendment specifying that the U.S. will only consider a Palestinian refugee someone who was personally displaced as a result of the 1948 or 1967 Arab-Israeli conflicts.
2013-03-13 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive