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Defining a Palestinian Refugee

(AP) Donna Cassata - A simple congressional request for the U.S. to distinguish between Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict and millions of their descendants poses a high-stakes diplomatic and political challenge for President Obama. The Senate Appropriations Committee voted last Thursday to ask the secretary of state to report within a year on the number of people who have received assistance from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and "whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who were displaced as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict; and who are descendants." The UN agency counted 860,000 individuals in 1951. Those registered refugees and their descendants now total 5 million. Those who favor a distinction between the two argue that more than a half-century later, there are only 30,000 original refugees left. Since 1949, the U.S. has supported the UN agency at a cost of about $4.4 billion. In a time of budget cuts and deep reductions in foreign aid, proponents and opponents see the measure as the first step to reducing the U.S. commitment to the UN agency.
2012-06-01 00:00:00
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