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UNRWA's Shameful Apartheid System

(JNS) Evelyn Gordon - UNRWA's budget shortfall won't cause a humanitarian crisis. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spends $128 per capita to help non-Palestinian refugees while UNRWA spends a third more - $170. If UNHCR's budget can provide for its refugees' basic needs, UNRWA's far more generous one can surely do the same. UNRWA should stop financing Jordan's outrageous apartheid system, under which 2 million Palestinians registered with the agency receive no services from the Jordanian government, even though most are Jordanian citizens. Instead of using Jordan's health and education systems, they attend special UNRWA schools and health clinics. Clearly, people with citizenship in another country shouldn't be considered refugees at all. Under UNHCR's definition, which applies to everyone except Palestinians, anyone who obtains citizenship in another country automatically loses his or her refugee status. UNRWA should also stop financing the outrageous apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza imposed on Palestinian refugees by the Palestinian Authority. The PA refuses to provide services to either the 800,000 registered refugees in the West Bank or the 1.3 million in Gaza - 43% of the residents of its putative state. It's ridiculous that 2.1 million Palestinians living under Palestinian government should still be considered refugees. By denying Palestinians the ability to assimilate into Jordan and the PA, UNRWA effectively tells them that "returning" to Israel is their only hope of escaping refugee status. Nurturing such fantasies merely perpetuates the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
2018-03-30 00:00:00
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