International refugee industry heads are spinning as the Trump team has withheld funding for UNRWA. That is the United Nations special agency that we have funded for more than 60 years that supposedly takes care of those who were displaced when the modern state of Israel came into being.
They should have long ago been resettled in other Sunni Arab countries, but their demand for a “right of return” to the land Israel occupies is responsible for the continued unrest in the Middle East.
If they want a “right of return” then Christians and Jews can demand a “right of return” to all the places (they once lived) that have been taken over (through violence) across the Middle East and North Africa by marauding Muslim hordes.
As I said in a previous post on the topic—tell me at what time in world history were the lands of the world fairly distributed.
Believe it or not, the New York Times has a fairly balanced article on the subject once you get past the usual sob-story about a hungry ‘refugee.’ (Is this J-school 101: start with a sob-story to emotionally soften up readers?).
Here are a few paragraphs, you can read the rest yourself. Of course they found someone willing to call the President “ignorant.”
The United States, its [UNRWA’s] biggest donor, announced this week that it was withholding $65 million from a scheduled payment of $120 million. The Trump administration said it was pressing for unspecified reforms from the agency, while also seeking to get Arab countries to contribute more. [US taxpayers want to know why any of this is our financial responsibility!—ed]
[….]
The Trump administration’s move, which added to a deficit of around $150 million on the agency’s budget of nearly $1.25 billion, brought new attention to a sprawling agency that functions as a quasi-government in some areas of the Middle East and has courted controversy throughout most of its history. And it revived politically loaded questions about just who should qualify as refugees — and what is the proper role of the organization charged with caring for them.
The agency, known by the acronym Unrwa, was set up in 1949 to aid those who fled or were expelled from their homes during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Meant to be temporary, it defined refugees loosely and expanded that definition over time. One key difference between it and the office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, critics say, is that the agency routinely allows refugee status to be passed down for generations. Another is that it does not remove people from its list who have acquired citizenship in a new country, so the number always increases.
Further down there is an explanation about why Lebanon won’t give citizenship to Palestinians.
Very few have been granted Lebanese citizenship for fear that taking in so many Sunni Muslims would upset the country’s delicate sectarian balance. And many Lebanese have long argued that giving them rights and services would lessen the pressure on them to return to what is now Israel.
That is it in a nutshell! No country (either Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Shiite) wants large numbers of Sunni Muslims as citizens!
Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia don’t take them either, why…..
….because by leaving the Palestinian Arabs in perpetual limbo the pressure continues on Israel.
Read the whole story here.
In my view, it is this type of dramatic move by the Trump Administration that could finally force a resolution to the conflict. At least it is worth a try!
See my whole category ‘Israel and refugees’ here.