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UNRWA Is a Nursery for Growing Palestinian Refugees
(Jerusalem Post) Itamar Marcus - Is funding UNRWA good for the Palestinians? Even if UNRWA fixed its schoolbooks and guaranteed that UNRWA schools will no longer hide terror tunnels, it will still remain possibly the most human rights abusing institution funded by the international community. Prior to the Trump administration, the U.S. was the largest donor to UNRWA. During the Obama administration, the U.S. gave UNRWA over $2 billion. During those years, the number of refugees increased by 700,000. The U.S. investment did not rehabilitate even one refugee. Moreover, the core UNRWA budget since Obama's first year has risen from $545 million to $806 million today. By refusing to resettle the original refugees, UNRWA turned a limited problem into permanent misery, including for the 5.5 million people who were born refugees. UNRWA is the real Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe). For all other refugees, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has helped resettle over 50 million refugees in the same period that UNRWA didn't resettle even one. UNRWA imposed refugee status on millions of children, some born 72 years ago, trampling their right to be born into freedom. Funding UNRWA is not only a waste of limited international resources but is funding an organization that is fundamentally a human rights abuser. It is not intended to help the refugees but to preserve them as refugees serving the PA's goals. The UNRWA infrastructure must be closed and its administration transferred to UNHCR - free of the dictates of the PA. UNHCR will be tasked with solving the problem instead of perpetuating the problem. UNHCR will use its billions to train them, create jobs and give them homes in the countries where they were born and lived their entire lives. Resettling these people is a human rights imperative.