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Palestinians Are Tired of Being the Only Refugees Denied the Right to Resettlement
(JNS) Evelyn Gordon - Hundreds of Palestinian refugees demonstrated outside the Canadian Embassy in Beirut on Sept. 5 to request asylum in Canada or the EU, the second such protest in the last month. After more than 70 years, Palestinians are publicly protesting the fact that they alone, of all the world's refugees, are denied the right to seek resettlement in a safe third country. All other refugees worldwide are handled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which resettles tens of thousands of refugees in third countries every year. But Palestinian refugees are handled by UNRWA, an agency created exclusively for them, which hasn't resettled a single refugee in 70 years. The only option it offers the refugees and their descendants is eternal limbo: awaiting a "return" to Israel that will never happen. The West has deprived Palestinian refugees of their basic right to resettlement in order to hold a gun to Israel's head. It's long past time to stop treating millions of Palestinians as nothing but political pawns in a war to destroy Israel.