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Time to Fix, Not Perpetuate, a Broken Palestinian Refugee Culture

.(Ha'aretz) Joelle Fiss - If refugee camps become a long-term institution, they place recipients in a state of dependency. In other words, they offering the opposite to what refugees need: resettlement, integration, employment and the chance to rebuild their lives. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been pumped yearly into UNRWA - but what can be seen for it? No rebuilding and no alternative future. The camps fuel unrealistic hopes of return to places of origin. Last May, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis stated that UNRWA has become "part of the problem." He was lambasted for admitting the obvious, showing how intellectual short-cuts can pollute any debate around aid to the Palestinian refugees. With the recent U.S. cut-off of nearly $300 million in aid to UNRWA, the time has come to explore how to make aid truly effective. Rather than rushing to other states to fill the funding gap for the same failed model, it's time to "spend smarter" - to make a real impact. The writer is a Geneva-based researcher on human rights
2018-10-08 00:00:00
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