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Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22674/unrwa-palestinians
The Palestinians Are Fighting to Save UNRWA as the Guardian of the "Right of Return"
(Gatestone Institute) Khaled Abu Toameh - The furious Palestinian reaction to the recent declaration by the "Board of Peace" that the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) "has no place in the new Gaza Strip" has once again exposed a fundamental truth. For the Palestinians, UNRWA is a political institution that keeps alive the dream of the "right of return" - a demand that would overwhelm Israel's population with millions of supposed "refugees," which would effectively bring about the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Ahmed Abu Holi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, denounced the "Board of Peace" for allegedly attempting to "liquidate the Palestinian refugee issue." "Any attack on UNRWA or attempt to dismantle it constitutes a direct assault on Palestinian national identity...and an undermining of the right of return." The issue is not schools, food distribution, or medical clinics. The issue is politics. More than seven decades after the 1948 war, the number of registered Palestinian refugees has expanded from roughly 700,000 to several million. Instead of solving the refugee problem, UNRWA's function is to perpetuate it. The Palestinian insistence on the unrealistic "right of return" remains one of the principal obstacles to any peace agreement. Palestinian leaders are lying to their own people by telling them that one day they will return to their families' former homes inside Israel. So long as UNRWA continues to institutionalize that dream, it will remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution. If the goal is a different future for Gaza - one based on reconstruction, coexistence, and stability rather than perpetual conflict - then eliminating UNRWA is not only justified, it is long overdue.