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Reveal UNRWA's Bluff

(Israel Hayom) Einat Wilf - During the fighting in Gaza, Israeli forces were fired at from UN facilities. Now that the fighting over, Israel should recognize UNRWA as a hostile Palestinian organization that perpetuates the dream of the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel - and treat it accordingly. Even if UNRWA itself does not attack the IDF directly, it ensures that there will always be someone to do so in the future. Under a thin veil of humanitarian activities, UNRWA acts with a clear political agenda, aimed at perpetuating the situation of Palestinian refugees and fostering the dream of their return to Israel. UNRWA is directly responsible for the fact that 5 million people are registered as Palestinian refugees, a large number of whom continue to live in refugee camps. UNRWA works to inflate the number of registered refugees in two ways. First, the descendants of refugees from 1948, already the fifth generation, are automatically "entitled" to refugee status. And second, UNRWA thwarts any attempt to absorb refugees where they currently live or in third countries. If UNRWA operated the same way as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is responsible for all other refugee groups in the world, today there would be only tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees, rather than millions. UNRWA's continued existence depends on donations totaling $1 billion per year from Western nations, including $250 million from the U.S. and more than $500 million from Europe. Why do Western taxpayers fund an organization which acts in stark contrast to the policy of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The writer, a former member of the Knesset, is a senior fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute.
2014-09-05 00:00:00
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