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The Refugee Curse

(New York Post) Daniel Pipes - How do Palestinian refugees differ from the other 135 million 20th-century refugees? In every other instance, refugees either resettled, returned home, or died. Their children - whether living in South Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Germany, or America - then shed the refugee status and joined the mainstream. The UN High Commission for Refugees defines "refugee" as someone who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted...is outside the country of his nationality." Cubans who flee the Castro regime are refugees, but not so their Florida-born children who lack Cuban nationality. Afghans who flee their homeland are refugees, but not their Iranian-born children. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), an organization set up uniquely for Palestinian refugees in 1949, defines Palestinian refugees differently from all other refugees and considers the children of just one Palestinian refugee parent to be refugees. The High Commission's definition causes refugee populations to vanish over time; UNRWA's causes them to expand without limit. The High Commission definition would, according to a demographer, apply to about 200,000 of those 1948 refugees who remain living today, a total less than 5% of the 4.25 million refugees by the UNRWA definition. By international standards, those other 95% are not refugees at all and who never fled anywhere. It's high time to help these generations of non-refugees escape refugee status so they can become citizens, assume self-responsibility, and build for the future. Best for them would be for UNRWA to close its doors and transfer its responsibilities to the UN High Commission, as called for by Rep. Tom Lantos. Other Western governments should join with Washington to solve the Palestinian refugee problem by withholding authorization for UNRWA when it next comes up for renewal in June 2005.
2003-08-20 00:00:00
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