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UNRWA Has Done Nothing to Build a Sustainable, Peaceful Palestinian State

(Jerusalem Post) Liat Collins - Britain ended its rule of India and Pakistan in 1947 and of Israel in 1948. An estimated 15 million people were uprooted in Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Between one million and two million were killed. Seventy years on, India and Pakistan have an uneasy relationship that occasionally flares into conflict, but there is not a "refugee problem." The Hindus and Sikhs who fled Pakistan and the Muslims who escaped in the other direction have not spent the past seven decades constantly being sold the illusion that they will move back and destroy their enemies. Similarly, the 850,000 Jews who left/fled Arab countries do not consider themselves "refugees" in Israel. Strangely, there are only "Palestinian refugees." When the UN uniquely granted the Palestinians "perpetual refugee status" that is passed down through the generations, it ensured the perpetuation of their plight. UNRWA's mandate to resettle the Palestinian refugees was rescinded in 1965. UNRWA is not the solution to the Palestinian refugee problem; it is the reason the problem still exists. Funding that could go to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to help the Rohingya or the millions made homeless in the civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or throughout Africa is instead being spent on the great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees of '48. I can't help wonder whether the preferential treatment of the Palestinians over millions of their Muslim brethren is because they point a judgmental finger at Jews as the source of their sorrows.
2018-01-12 00:00:00
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