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Inflated Numbers for Palestinian Refugees

(Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University) Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Israela Oron - According to UNRWA, Palestinian refugees and all their descendants today number over five and a half million. Citizenship in another country, for example, Jordan, does not cancel their refugee status. For Israeli governments, the Palestinian demand for the "right of return" of refugees remains a red line supported by a majority of Israeli citizens from all parts of the political spectrum. The expanding numbers of refugees from the Middle East and Africa challenge the uniqueness of the Palestinian situation. Today there are 60 million displaced people, including 17 million refugees. Thus, with the growing numbers of refugees worldwide, the value of refugees as the Palestinians' main bargaining chip appears to be ebbing. In contrast to figures on UNRWA's official site, which cite 526,700 registered refugees in Lebanon, newly published figures based on a Lebanese census conducted in cooperation with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimate their number at 175,000. In the Shatila camp in Lebanon, for example, 57% of the refugees are from Syria, while only 30% are Palestinians. The gap in the figures strengthens the assumption that the numbers on the UNRWA site do not reflect reality - not only in Lebanon, but also in other countries. The writer served as Deputy National Security Advisor at Israel's National Security Council.
2018-02-20 00:00:00
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