The New York Daily News has published a terrific column by Asaf Romirowsky that tells you what you need to know about Palestinian “refugees” and the Arabs’ demand for their so-called right of return as part of a peace agreement with Israel. The headline says it: “UN refugee agency poisons the push for Mideast peace: UNRWA only furthers Palestinians’ suffering.”
The “right of return” is a big deal to the Arabs, which is why–
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out of his lengthy sitdown with President Obama, he focused as much on the question of the right of return of Palestinian refugees as he did on the dispute over the 1967 boundaries. “It’s time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly it’s not going to happen,” said Netanyahu – and with good reason, for within a matter of just a few years, an influx of refugees would effectively erase Israel as a Jewish state.
If Obama agrees, there is a significant step he can take now – namely, working to dismantle the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), whose very existence has been built around perpetuating this so-called right.
The call for a Palestinian right of return is based on a highly specific – and discredited – reading of history, which assumes Israeli responsibility for creating the refugee problem via “ethnic cleansing.” Restitution from the allegedly guilty party, then, involves the eventual return of the refugees and their descendants, even when they are generations removed from the initial “crime” of Israel’s founding.
He goes further into the reasons for dismantling the terrible UN agency UNRWA, concluding:
A UN agency that’s invested in perpetual conflict will not help bring about peace.
Amen. We’ve written a lot about the Palestinian “refugees” and UNRWA. See this search page or click on our “Israel and refugees” category in the column on the left. But the Romirowsky piece summarizes most of the issues in this complicated subject that most of the world’s media distorts out of ignorance or ill will or both.