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The UN’s Palestinian
Refugee Problem
In
the aftermath of World War II, when it became apparent that millions of
destitute refugees were not going to be attended to by existing organizations,
the United Nations saw fit to establish an agency–the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)–to coordinate assistance to them. The UNHCR
worked in accordance with the binding parameters and regulations of the
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted in Geneva in 1951. In the
decades that followed, as the problem of refugees increasingly took on a global
dimension, the need arose for a global organization dedicated to their
assistance. Thus did a relatively small and specialized agency expand into an
organization with offices in over 100 countries, an annual budget of $1 billion,
and the ability to provide both legal protection and emergency relief. Today,
the UNHCR’s makeshift blue tents have become immediately recognizable symbols of
humanitarian assistance to millions of displaced people around the world.
Combined with measures such as monitoring national compliance with international
refugee law, the UNHCR takes as its ultimate goal the attainment of long-term or
“durable” solutions to refugee crises, such as voluntary repatriation or
resettlement in countries of asylum or “third” countries. To date, the UNHCR has
helped over 25 million people successfully restart their lives.
There is one group of refugees, however, for whom
no durable solution has been found in the more than fifty years since their
problems began: Palestinian Arabs who fled Israel in the period 1948-1949 as a
result of its War of Independence. Originally numbering between 500,000 and
750,000 persons, there are today more than 4 million refugees, the majority of
whom live in or near one of 59 camps in five areas, making for one of the
world’s largest and most enduring refugee problems.1 There is no
practicable solution to their situation in sight.
The plight of the Palestinian refugees is, at
first glance, fairly surprising. Whereas the rest of the world’s refugees are
the concern of the UNHCR, the Palestinians are the sole group of refugees with a
UN agency dedicated exclusively to their care: The United Nations Relief and
Works Agency (UNRWA), which operates independently of the Convention on
refugees. The differences between the two agencies are striking: In addition to
classifying Palestinian refugees by a distinct set of criteria, UNRWA, through
an international aid package of several hundred millions of dollars a year,
serves as the main provider of healthcare, education, relief, and social
services for its client population–the sort of assistance UNHCR usually devolves
to refugees’ countries of asylum. Moreover, while the UNHCR actively seeks
durable solutions to refugee problems, UNRWA has declined to entertain any
permanent solution for the Palestinian refugees, insisting instead on a
politically unfeasible “return” to pre-1967 Israel.2
Given these failings, and in
light of the existence of an entirely separate and far more successful UN
strategy for dealing with refugees under the aegis of UNHCR, a serious
reconsideration of the value of UNRWA’s continued existence seems in order.
UNRWA, the first UN agency charged with the task
of aiding refugees, was established by General Assembly Resolution 302 on
December 8, 1949. The agency was tasked with directing relief and works programs
for the Palestinian Arab refugees of Israel’s War of Independence, who had fled
into the neighboring Arab regions of Gaza (then under Egyptian control), Judea
and Samaria (then controlled by Jordan), Jordan proper, Lebanon, and Syria.
From the outset, UNRWA was
granted an extraordinary degree of autonomy, largely due to pressure from the
UN’s Arab bloc. Unlike most other UN agencies, for instance, the appointment of
UNRWA’s commissioner general does not require any approval or confirmation from
the General Assembly, but is rather left to the discretion of the UN secretary
general, in consultation with UNRWA’s ten-member Advisory Committee. In
addition, UNRWA’s Advisory Committee wields no executive or operative authority.3
Bound by no existing statute or international compact, it was free to set its
own definitions and guidelines–definitions which differ markedly from those used
by UNHCR. Thus, it described “Palestinian refugees” as
persons whose normal place
of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their
homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.4
The use of this definition
is remarkable in itself, not least because its very short residency
requirement–just two years–allows the inclusion of a great number of people who
had recently arrived in Palestine, and were thus newcomers to the region;
indeed, many of the people who fled Israel at that time had only just arrived
from neighboring Arab countries in search of work.
Contrast this with the
definition provided by the UNHCR, established just two years later and charged
with functioning within the parameters of the UN’s Convention Relating to the
Status of Refugees. The UNHCR was bound by the Convention, the universal
standard for refugee status and the only definition recognized by international
law. In this version, a refugee is someone who
is outside his/her country
of nationality or habitual residence; has well-founded fear of persecution
because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular
social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail
himself/herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear
of persecution.5
By emphasizing “country of
nationality or habitual residence,” the UNHCR clearly intends to exclude the
kind of transients– for example, a new arrival to the area in question for the
purpose of employment–embraced by UNRWA’s definition.
This is not the only way in
which the two definitions differ. The UNRWA definition also encompasses many
other persons who would otherwise be excluded by the UNHCR. The latter, for
example, outlines in detail the conditions under which the status of “refugee”
no longer applies, stating that formal refugee status shall cease to apply to
any person who has
voluntarily re-availed
himself of the protection of the country of his nationality; or having lost his
nationality, he has voluntarily re-acquired it; or, he has acquired a new
nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality;
or… he can no longer, because the circumstances in connection with which he has
been recognized as a refugee have ceased to exist, continue to refuse to avail
himself of the protection of the country of his nationality.6
By excluding people who have
found legal protection from established states, or who have refused to do so
when offered, UNHCR has sought to prevent expansion of the definition in ways
that would encourage the improper use of UNHCR’s services for political ends.
UNRWA, however, has done just the opposite: Not only has it declined to remove
the status of refugee from those persons who no longer fit the original
description, such as the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been
granted full citizenship by Jordan, but it confers indefinitely the status of
refugee upon a Palestinian refugee’s descendants, now entering the fourth
generation. As the organization’s official website explains: “There are several
groups and categories of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons
(IDPs): UNRWA-registered 1948 refugees and their descendants, unregistered 1948
refugees and their descendants, internally displaced Palestinians in Israel, and
persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 war and their descendants.”7
When UNRWA was first conceived, it did not explicitly include the descendants of
Palestinian refugees; however, as its refugee population entered the second
generation, UNRWA relaxed the definition of the term “Palestinian refugee”
altogether, explaining that “for the purposes of repatriation or compensation…
the term ‘Palestinian refugee’ is used with a different, much less restrictive
meaning as compared to UNRWA’s need-based definition.”8
Certainly, despite these
distinctions in their respective definitions of a refugee, a strong case could
have been made for enfolding UNRWA into UNHCR once the latter agency had been
established. Indeed, once a broad-based refugee agency had been created, there
would seem to be no reason for an additional UN agency charged with the task of
assisting a specific group of refugees, with all the bureaucratic redundancy it
implies, to continue. Once the UNHCR was created, however, Arab states insisted
that Palestinian refugees receiving assistance from UNRWA be excluded from
UNHCR’s mandate. As the UNHCR’s website explains, Arab states “feared that the
non-political character of the work envisaged for the nascent UNHCR was not
compatible with the highly politicized nature of the Palestinian question.”9
Since the Arab states would have had to consent to be signatories for the
Convention to have achieved any effectiveness with regard to the Palestinian
Arab refugees, the matter of an organizational merger never progressed very far.
Ultimately, the Convention exempted those refugees who were under the protection
of or receiving assistance from another UN agency. Thus was the anomalous
situation of UNRWA firmly established: The sole international agency dedicated
to a single group of refugees was permitted to continue independently, marching
to the beat of its own drummer.
Whether UNRWA’s autonomy has
been beneficial to the Palestinian refugees, however, is a separate question. As
the UN acknowledged in its decision to undertake responsibility for the
protection and assistance of refugees worldwide, the situation of the refugee
involves profound suffering. Without a country to call their own, refugees are
denied the basic social, economic, and political rights that most civilians take
for granted, and without which a citizen’s ability to lead a productive and
fulfilling life is nearly impossible. For this reason, the UN has always sought
to end a person’s status as refugee as quickly as possible.
UNRWA’s handling of the
Palestinian refugee issue, by contrast, has done just the opposite. For implicit
in UNRWA’s decision to expand its already problematic definition of a
Palestinian refugee to include a mounting number of descendants is the guarantee
that the problem remains an ongoing, ever-growing, and thus ever-worsening one.
For some Arab leaders, this may be precisely the idea: So long as the
Palestinian refugee problem remains visible and acute, Israel remains a
convenient scapegoat on which the region’s political, social, and economic ills
may be blamed. Yet for the Palestinian Arabs who have remained refugees for
decades, and for their children, brought into the circle of dependence, the fact
of UNRWA’s granting special refugee status has for the most part made their
situation only worse.
If the difference in the two agencies’ respective
definitions of refugees seems indicative of different goals–one humanitarian and
the other essentially political–their records over the last half century affirm
this in a glaring fashion. Since the UNHCR’s establishment, it has always worked
toward the achievement of two fundamental aims: The protection of refugees,
which includes ensuring respect for a refugee’s basic human rights and
disallowing the involuntary return of a refugee to a country where he fears
persecution; and the resolution of refugee crises. This latter goal can be
achieved through several methods, each of which depends on the specific
circumstances of a given refugee population. Nonetheless, precluding the
existence of prolonged refugee situations–for the sake of both the refugees
themselves and their countries of asylum–has always been of supreme value to the
UNHCR.
So, too, did the General
Assembly resolution establishing UNRWA intend its mandate to be temporary: It
sought “the alleviation of the conditions of starvation and distress among the
Palestinian refugees” with “a view to the termination of international
assistance for relief” at an early date.10 The provision of direct
relief was originally set to end no later than December 1950; yet its mandate
has been renewed by the General Assembly every few years, and its current term
now runs through June 2008. This begs the question: If UNRWA was set up as a
temporary agency, why is it still operating more than half a century later?
One reason, again, lies in
its singular definition of a refugee: By conferring the status of refugee on
descendants, UNRWA has ensured an ever-growing population in need of its
services. Yet a more significant reason has to do with its policy toward the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: UNRWA refuses to consider any resolution to the
Palestinian refugee issue other than that demanded by the Arab world–the “right
of return” to Israel. As explained on its website, UNRWA claims its services to
be necessary until repatriation, “as envisaged in UN General Assembly Resolution
194 (III) of December 1948,” is enacted.11 While the legitimacy and
applicability of resolution 194, which states that refugees wishing to return to
their original countries of residence under certain conditions should be
permitted to do so, can be, and is, debated ad infinitum, the fact
remains that by staunchly adhering to this resolution, and actively encouraging
its beneficiaries to do the same, UNRWA is denying the Palestinian refugees the
one thing that the UNHCR takes as its essential purpose for existence: An end to
their unwanted status.
Now, it should be noted that
by considering a permanent solution the ultimate goal of its agency, the UNHCR
is not insensitive to refugees’ preferences. Certainly, the UNHCR recognizes
that most refugees forced into exile would prefer to return to their countries
of origin. The UNHCR thus encourages voluntary repatriation when conditions
permit, such as the cessation of conflict. By providing transportation,
financial incentives, and practical help, such as building materials and farming
equipment, the UNHCR has successfully enabled the repatriation of such recent
refugee populations as the Angolans, millions of whom fled their war-torn
country for Namibia, Zambia, and Democratic Congo during the 1990s, and the Sri
Lankans, some 300,000 of whom have been able to return to their towns and
villages since a Norwegian-brokered truce between the Sri Lankan government and
the Tamil Tiger rebels was enacted in 2002.12
When the threats that caused
refugees to leave their homes in the first place do not disappear, however, the
UNHCR looks to resettlement–whether in a refugee’s country of asylum, or a
neutral, third country–as an alternative solution. Often, these two options are
the only means of fulfilling the UNHCR’s stated goal of enabling refugees to
restart their lives and, ultimately, of ending their status as refugees
altogether.
The UNHCR’s record in the
area of refugee resettlement is impressive: Since the early 1970s, the
organization has undertaken several large-scale resettlement operations, each
with successful results.13 In 1972, for instance, when President Idi
Amin of Uganda expelled most of the country’s Asian minority, the UNHCR, along
with several other international humanitarian organizations, resettled some
40,000 Ugandan Asian refugees in a matter of a few months to 25 countries.
Likewise, following a military coup in Chile in 1973, refugees from neighboring
countries found themselves faced with a hostile regime in their country of
asylum. The UNHCR quickly established “safe havens,” or camps in which refugees
who wished to leave the country could receive assistance and protection pending
their departure to third countries of asylum. By the following year, thousands
of refugees had been successfully resettled to 19 different countries.14
Nor is the Middle East a
stranger to the policy of resettlement: In 1992, the UNHCR sought to resettle
some 30,000 Iraqis from Saudi Arabia after efforts at voluntary repatriation and
local integration were deemed a failure. Between 1992 and 1997, nearly 21,800
Iraqis had been accepted for resettlement; currently, almost all the Iraqi
refugees have found new homes.15
For the Ugandan Asians, the
Chileans, and the Iraqis, as well as many other populations for whom
resettlement is the only option, the process may entail transporting refugees
thousands of miles across the world, and helping them adapt to societies in
which the culture, language, and social structure are dramatically different.
Despite these obstacles, however, the overwhelming number of refugees,
particularly young ones, successfully overcome such challenges in order to
restart their lives in their new countries. It is remarkable, then, that the
Palestinian Arab refugees–many of whom are currently residing in countries whose
culture, language, and social structure are identical to their own–have never
been offered resettlement as a durable solution to their situation in light of
the political unfeasibility of a return to the State of Israel. Indeed, it is
widely accepted among the international community–with the exception of the Arab
nations–that an influx of over four million Palestinian refugees into Israel is
neither a realistic nor an acceptable goal. For this reason, the resettlement of
these Palestinians in neighboring Arab countries offers the only realistic hope
for a resolution to their decades-long status as refugees.
While it is true that most
of Israel’s neighboring Arab countries (with the notable exception of Jordan)
have continually denied citizenship to Palestinian refugees and their
descendants–many of whom have been born and raised in these countries–it is also
true that UNRWA itself has at no point sought to promote resettlement among the
refugee population; nor has it attempted to pressure Arab countries into
complying with their responsibilities toward these refugees under international
law. Instead, by insisting that “the Agency will continue to serve them [the
Palestinian refugees] pending just settlement of the refugee problem,”16
UNRWA has taken up the Arab bloc’s mantra as its own, putting political
considerations before humanitarian ones. While a “just settlement” could easily
be interpreted to mean, as in the case of the rest of the world’s refugees,
local integration or resettlement with an aim toward building a new, productive
life, for UNRWA the phrase “just settlement” has consistently and solely been
interpreted as repatriation to Israel–a solution which, for obvious demographic
reasons, would in effect mean the end of the Jewish state, and which therefore
is extremely unlikely to happen so long as Israel remains committed to its
Jewish character. This has, in effect, ensured the perpetuation of the
Palestinian refugee problem indefinitely.
It should be noted here that
the assimilation of Arabs who fled from Israel into surrounding Arab populations
could have been readily accomplished; repatriation was, for many of the
original refugees, not the only, or even desirable, course of action. Early
reports, such as an article in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Hayat in 1959,
claimed that the “refugees’ inclination–in spite of the noisy chorus all about
them–is towards immediate integration,” and Emanuel Marx, writing in The
Jerusalem Quarterly in the late 1970s, noted that by 1968, most of the
refugees had found work, “were involved in the economy of the host country,” and
“had become urbanized in the process.”17
Even today, UNRWA’s
unrelenting approach stands in sharp contrast to the natural inclination of the
Palestinian refugees to “get on with their lives.” In 1997, badil, a Palestinian
non-governmental agency that promotes the right of return, released a report
about the refugee camp of Balata in Nablus that expressed concern with UNRWA’s
development programs and their potential impact on the right of return.
According to the report, Musallam Abu Hilu of the Jerusalem Open University
ventured the opinion that “it may well be that development programs have an
adverse effect on the refugees’ demand for return; such programs might lead to
gradual and unconscious refugee integration and resettlement.”18
Nonetheless, the goal of
repatriation has been a cornerstone of UNRWA’s practices and policies. It was
thus, in fact, that the Arab nations, when the mandate for UNRWA was drawn up,
pushed through a reference to Paragraph 11 of General Assembly Resolution 194
(1948), which states that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and
live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest
practicable date….”19 This single phrase has since been offered as
the basis of the claim that the Palestinian Arab refugees have a right, often
described as “inalienable,” to return to Israel. This reliance on a single
clause of a resolution of the UN General Assembly–which as such has no binding
status in international law–has been the basis of UNRWA’s consistent refusal
over half a century to work towards the resolution of the refugees’ plight in
their host countries, and instead to insist upon their so-called “right of
return.” The insistence on resettlement within Israel, for example, has guided
its policy of preserving pre-1948 communal structures and reinforcing the
refugees’ collective attachments to their places of origin, in an effort to
ensure the refugees’ lasting commitment to return. Almost immediately after its
founding, for example, UNRWA established a register of refugees that assigned
every family a number. This number included a five-digit code of origin in
“pre-1948 Palestine.” As a report by badil describes it, “the village structure,
as it existed prior to the 1948 war, has thus been preserved by virtue of the
registration system.”20 Indeed, the Palestinian refugee camps, first
established in 1955, were set up according to those villages left in 1948, with
neighborhoods and even individual street names replicated, reinforcing the dream
of return.21
The message of repatriation
is reinforced in other ways as well. In the summer of 2000, for instance, bus
tours were offered for the residents of the refugee camp at Deheishe so that
they might visit the homes they left in Jerusalem in 1948. And in 2001, a
Palestinian group called the Higher Committee for the Return of Refugees was
permitted by UNRWA to enter its schools in order to sharpen students’ awareness
of the “predicament of refugees” and to bolster “their sense of belonging to the
homeland.”22 Thus, while UNHCR aims to encourage integration into
one’s new country of residence, UNRWA strives to do just the opposite: To
instill in Palestinian refugees a sense of impermanency, and to nurture their
narrative of loss.
Finally, it should be noted
that, over the years, groups of Palestinian refugees have been offered
opportunities to move into permanent housing–opportunities that have almost
always been thwarted. In 1985, for instance, Israel attempted to move refugees
into 1,300 permanent housing units constructed near Nablus with the support of
the Catholic Relief Organization–without, it must be stated, demanding that they
relinquish the “right of return.” Yet the UN intervened to prevent such an
occurrence.23 In response to Israel’s attempts to provide housing, a
General Assembly resolution was passed asserting that:
measures to resettle
Palestine refugees in the West Bank away from the homes and property from which
they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right of return…
[the GA] calls once again upon Israel to abandon its plans and to refrain from…
any action that may lead to the removal and resettlement of Palestine refugees
in the West Bank and from the destruction of their camps.24
Put simply, if UNHCR
struggles to bring an immediate end to the plight of refugees through any means
available, UNRWA’s entire efforts are geared towards a single “solution” which
is both extremely unlikely ever to happen and not in the best interests of the
refugees’ humanitarian needs. Rather it is in the interests of their political
leaders’ aims.
The difference between the
two organizations is felt also in the respective services they provide and the
extent to which they are willing to place a burden of assistance on sovereign
states. The UNHCR aims to provide basic material assistance only as necessary,
and with the expectation that host or new countries of residence will cooperate
as far as they are able in providing for refugee needs. The Convention states
clearly that UNHCR is “charged with the task of supervising international
conventions providing for the protection of refugees,”25 and the
UNHCR website maintains that “UNHCR’s main role in pursuing international
protection is to ensure that states are aware of, and act on, their obligations
to protect refugees… and cannot be considered as a substitute for government
responsibility.”26 UNRWA, by contrast, has been providing material
assistance to Palestinian refugees for over fifty years in the form of
“educational services, including general and higher education as well as
vocational, technical and teacher education” and “a wide range of health
services, including disease prevention and treatment, health protection and
promotion and environmental and family health programs”–services far beyond the
scope of “emergency relief” envisioned by UNHCR as a temporary measure on the
road to self-sufficiency.27 Indeed, Palestinian Arabs provided for by
UNRWA are the only refugees in the world to have guaranteed health care,
primary education, and welfare benefits–as befitting a quasi-governmental body
aimed at nurturing a people over the long haul rather than providing
humanitarian relief. Not surprisingly, in the course of providing these
services, UNRWA has developed an extensive bureaucracy–according to its website,
UNRWA’s staff currently stands at 24,324 members28–with one staff
person per 164 refugees (compared to one staff person per 2,803 refugees in
UNHCR), and 99 dollars spent per refugee annually (compared with the UNHCR’s 64
dollars per refugee).29 The result is a kind of mutual dependence:
The Palestinian community has become dependent on UNRWA’s services, support, and
employment; and UNRWA has become dependent on its clients for its own survival
and operational growth.
In short, by introducing
broad parameters of inclusion, UNRWA has inflated the original numbers on its
rolls; by declining to exempt those refugees who subsequently acquire
citizenship elsewhere, it has sustained those large numbers over the years; and
by counting successive generations, it has succeeded in indefinitely expanding
the number of refugees. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, by encouraging
the expectation of and desire for a “return” to Israel that is in all likelihood
impossible, UNRWA has done a grave disservice to the refugees themselves–in
effect, subordinating the humanitarian aims of refugee assistance to the
political aims of Arab leaders. Unlike other refugees, who have been helped to
regain some measure of autonomy, the Palestinian refugees remain mired in a
sense of helplessness and frustration, condemned to an existence as stateless,
displaced persons.
Of all the problems inherent in UNRWA’s policies,
however, the practice of hiring from within its own client population is perhaps
the thorniest. Of the approximately 24,000 persons in its employ, all but the
roughly 100 “internationals” in executive positions are Palestinian Arabs, the
vast majority of whom are themselves refugees.30
UNRWA claims that hiring
refugees ensures a greater degree of sensitivity on the part of employees toward
the problems facing their client base. Yet there is a general rule of thumb that
it is not appropriate for an agency to do large-scale hiring of staff from the
population it serves. No other UN agency does this; the UNHCR, for example,
maintains by design a certain distance from its client base. The reason for this
distance is clear: Employers who share the situation of their clients are
vulnerable to conflicts of interest. UNRWA staff naturally share the passions
and perceptions of their fellow refugees, and can easily be led to act on them
inappropriately. In some cases, this means turning a blind eye to beneficiaries
of UNRWA services engaged in terrorism; in others, it means outright involvement
in terrorist activity itself.
Unfortunately, there is
abundant evidence of such involvement. Incidents like the one on July 6, 2001
are not uncommon: The terrorist organization Hamas convened a conference in an
UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza with the full participation of
school administrators and faculty. Students were addressed by Hamas leader
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who spoke about the “liberation of Jerusalem.” He was then
joined by Saheil Alhinadi, UNRWA’s representative from the teachers’ sector, who
praised the Hamas students who had carried out suicide attacks against Israelis
in recent months. “The road to Palestine,” he orated, “passes through the blood
of the fallen.”31
It is also common knowledge
that Hamas-affiliated workers control the UNRWA union in Gaza.32
Within the teachers’ sector of the union, for example, all representatives are
Hamas-affiliated, and Hamas candidates constitute the union’s entire executive
committee, as well. Moreover, an organization called Islamic Bloc, ideologically
similar to Hamas, has been charged with furthering the goals of Hamas within
UNRWA schools; it prepares the next generation of Palestinians for the
“liberation of Palestine” by organizing special events and distributing printed
materials. Retired IDF colonel Yoni Fighel, a former military governor in the
territories, explains how radical Islamic movements have come to dominate the
refugee camps: “As long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or pelp
[Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine],” he says, “they are going to
pursue the interests of their party within the framework of their job…. Who’s
going to check up on them to see that they don’t? UNRWA? They are UNRWA.”33
The full extent of the
terrorist infiltration in Palestinian refugee camps was revealed during the
IDF’s Operation Defensive Shield, mounted in the spring of 2002 in response to
an unprecedented wave of terror attacks inside Israel. The evidence gleaned from
that operation is both irrefutable and damning: Hardly innocent residential
areas, the UNRWA-run camps which the army entered were riddled with small-arms
factories, explosives laboratories, Kassam-2 rocket manufacturing plants, and
suicide-bombing cells. The camp in Jenin, site of the most intense fighting,
provides the most dramatic example of the terrorist takeovers of UNRWA camps. A
letter written by Fatah members in Jenin to Marwan Barghouti in September 2001
grants some insight into the situation:
Of all the districts, Jenin
boasts the greatest number and the highest quality of fighters from Fatah and
the other Islamic national factions. The refugee camp is rightly considered to
be the center of events and the operational headquarters of all the factions in
the Jenin area–it is, as the other side calls it, a hornets’ nest. The Jenin
refugee camp is remarkable for the large number of fighting men taking
initiatives in the cause of our people. Nothing will defeat them, and nothing
fazes them. They are prepared to fight with everything they have. It is little
wonder, therefore, that Jenin is known as the capital of the suicide martyrs.34
It should come as no
surprise, then, that the IDF found a number of wanted terrorists hiding inside
UNRWA schools; that a large number of youth clubs operated by UNRWA in the camps
were discovered to be meeting places for terrorists; and that an official bureau
of the Tanzim, or Fatah-affiliated, militia was established inside a building
owned by UNRWA. UNRWA’s donors might be surprised to learn that funds intended
for humanitarian relief sometimes end up serving the goals of Palestinian
terror: In an interview with CNN in February 2002, PA Minister of Labor Ghassan
Khatib remarked that every young man in UNRWA’s Balata refugee camp has his own
personal weapon, since the local steering committee–an official UNRWA body–had
voted that charitable donations received would be used for guns rather than food
or other relief. UNRWA’s role in the terrorist activity of the Palestinian
refugees is not only a passive one. Rather, UNRWA employees themselves sometimes
engage in terrorism. According to the 2003 report by the United States General
Accounting Office,35 for example, UNRWA employees were arrested and
convicted by Israeli military courts of throwing firebombs at an Israeli public
bus; possession of materials that could be used for explosives; and transferring
chemicals to assist in bomb-making. Also, the IDF demonstrated that UNRWA
ambulances have been used to transport terrorists and firearms in the Zeitoun
neighborhood of Gaza City. Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN,
himself saw shahid (martyr) posters on the walls in the homes of UNRWA
workers during a visit to Jenin in April 2002. “It was clear,” he said in a
December 2003 interview, “that UNRWA workers were doubling as Hamas operatives.”36
Rather than confronting
these problems, however, UNRWA has stonewalled. UNRWA’s then-deputy commissioner
general Karen AbuZayd (she has since been promoted to commissioner-general), in
response to the charge of terrorism in the camps, told The Jerusalem
Report in August 2002 that “We just don’t see anything like this. These
things are not visible to us.”37 And when recently retired
commissioner general Peter Hansen submitted to the General Assembly his mandated
annual report for the period of July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002–which covered the
period during which Operation Defensive Shield occurred–he failed to mention,
even in passing, what had been exposed regarding the terrorist apparatus in the
Jenin camp. A little more than a year ago, in fact, Hansen, speaking at the Van
Leer Jerusalem Institute, insisted that charges of terrorism are “all made up to
delegitimize UNRWA’s work.”38 He did, however, admit in an interview
with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that “I am sure that there are Hamas
members on the UNRWA payroll,” but added, “I don’t see that as a crime.”39
Others would disagree: Canada, like the United States and the European Union,
lists Hamas as a terrorist organization, and makes no distinction between its
“political” and “militant” factions.
Whether UNRWA is afraid to interfere with
terrorist activity in its camps, or has become so entrenched in the terrorist
infrastructure as to be effectively indistinguishable from it, the evidence is
clear that an agency mandated to serve a humanitarian purpose has been drafted
to further a militant political agenda. Yet complicity in terrorist activity is
only the worst element of an entire UNRWA regime structurally aimed at advancing
the Palestinian cause rather than relieving Palestinian suffering.
As its original, noble
objectives have been lost, and its policies are now geared to perpetuating
rather than solving the problem, one might rightfully wonder what positive value
UNRWA’s continued existence may serve. The present situation, indeed, benefits
no one: Not the UN, whose reputation as the guardian of international law and
guarantor of international peace and security is tarnished by UNRWA’s links to
terror; not Israel, whose hopes for peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian
neighbors are thwarted by UNRWA’s unswerving promotion of the “right of return”;
and finally, not the Palestinian refugees themselves, who have been denied the
opportunity to create new lives, and thus to break the cycle of dependence,
frustrated hopes, and perpetual victimhood. In light of these facts, it seems
clear that if one is to take seriously the standards of international law set
out by the United Nations with respect to refugees, and the aims of its agencies
in helping refugees around the world, one must also conclude that UNRWA is not
only unhelpful to the Palestinian refugee issue, but in fact detrimental to it.
UNRWA has failed the
Palestinian refugees. This failure is the product of half a century of
overwhelming politicization of a humanitarian effort. Fortunately, another UN
agency exists to deal with the problem of refugees, one with a successful record
of resolving their problems around the world. Those nations interested in
finding a genuine, viable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem–a sine
qua non for peace in the Middle East–should be encouraged to support the end
of UNRWA’s regime and the application of the policies of the UNHCR to the
Palestinian refugee issue.
________________
Arlene Kushner is the author
of Disclosed: Inside the Palestinian Authority and the PLO (Pavilion,
2004) and has written reports on UNRWA for the Center for Near East
Research.
Notes
1.The exact number of
Palestinian Arabs who fled the region in the period 1948-1949 and the reasons
for their flight remain an issue of much contention: Israel puts the number of
refugees at approximately 550,000; Arabs claim it was 750,000 or more. UNRWA’s
registry put the number at approximately 914,000 in 1950. The fact that more
than 100,000 of those ultimately registered as “refugees” by UNRWA were
indigents, migrants, and others in need of assistance, but not actually persons
who had fled Israel, has further complicated the issue. For UNRWA’s historical
statistics of registered refugee numbers by country, see:
www.un.org/UNRWA/refugees/pdf/reg-03.pdf.
2.“UNRWA’s Beneficiaries,”
at www.un.org/UNRWA/overview/qa.html.
3.Emanuel Marx and Nitza
Nachmias, “Dilemmas of Prolonged Humanitarian Aid Operations: The Case of
UNRWA,” The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (June 22, 2004), at
www.jha.ac/articles/a135.htm.
4.The term “Palestinian
refugee” as used by UNRWA was never formally defined by the United Nations. The
normative version of the UNRWA definition, described here, is applied to those
Palestinian Arabs who took refuge in one of the countries where the UN provides
relief.
5.Convention relating to the
Status of Refugees, Chapter I, Article 1A.
6.Convention, Chapter I,
Article 1C.
7.UNRWA Overview, Frequently
Asked Questions, “UNRWA’s Beneficiaries,” at www.un.org/UNRWA/overview/qa.html.
8.“UNRWA’s Beneficiaries.”
9.UNHCR, The State of the
World’s Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford: Oxford, 2004),
ch. 1: “The Early Years,” box 1.2, at
www.UNHCR.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/template?page=publ&src=static/sowr2000/toceng.htm.
10.United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 302 (IV): Assistance to Palestine Refugees.
11.“UNRWA’s Beneficiaries.”
12.UNHCR, Helping
Refugees: An Introduction to UNHCR, 2004, pp. 12-13,
at
www.UNHCR.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/basics/opendoc.pdf?tbl=basics&id=420795964.
13.www.UNHCR.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/protect?id=3bb2eadd6.
14.UNHCR Resettlement
Handbook, ch. 1, “Resettlement: A Virtual Instrument of International
Protection and an Element of Comprehensive Solutions,” November 1, 2004. Chapter
1, p. 9, at
www.UNHCR.ch/cgibin/texis/vtx/protect/opendoc.pdf?tbl=PROTECTION&id=3d464b239.
15.www.UNHCR.org.uk/resettlement/home_office_scheme.html#whatisresett-lement.
16.UNRWA Overview,
Frequently Asked Questions, History and Establishment of UNRWA, “UNRWA
Assistance in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” at
www.un.org/UNRWA/overview/qa.html.
17. Emanuel Marx, “Changes
in Arab Refugee Camps,” The Jerusalem Quarterly (Summer 1978), p. 43.
18.www.badil.org/Publications/Other/Refugees/Workshop/wkshop2.htm.
19.United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 194 (III), Palestine: Progress Report of the United Nations
Mediator.
20.Terry M. Rempel, “The UN
Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and a Durable Solution for Palestinian
Refugees,” badil Information and Discussion Brief no. 6 (July 2000), at
www.badil.org/publications/Briefs/Brief-No-06.html.
21.Jeannie O’Donnell,
“Shu’fat Camp: Life on the Edge for Jerusalem Refugees,” The Jerusalem
Quarterly File 6, 1999, at www.jqf-jerusalem.org/1999/jqf6/odonnell.html.
22. Mohammed Daraghmeh,
“Teaching the Refugee Issue at UNRWA,” The Jerusalem Times, June 22,
2001.
23.Israel launched a “build
your own home” project in the 1970s that allotted a half dunam of land “to
Palestinians who then financed the purchase of building materials and, usually
with friends, erected a home. Israel provided the infrastructure: sewers,
schools, etc. More than 11,000 camp dwellers were resettled... before PLO, using
intimidation tactics, ended the program.” Israeli authorities contended that had
the program been allowed to continue apace, “within eight years every camp
resident could own a single-dwelling home in a clean and uncongested
neighborhood.” Joel Bainerman, “Permanent Homes for Palestinian Refugees,”
Christian Science Monitor, May 26, 1992.
24. United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 40/165, Article J: Palestinian Refugees in the West Bank.
25.Convention, Preamble.
26.
UNHCR Basic Facts, Protecting Refugees–Questions and Answers, at
www.UNHCR.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/basics/opendoc.htm?tbl=BASICS&id=3b0280294.
27.Organization of the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,
Secretary General’s Bulletin, Article 2.1(b).
28.www.un.org/UNRWA/organization/staff/html.
29.Figures drawn from the
respective agencies’ websites. UNRWA cites 4.1 million refugees, although in
practice it attends to a smaller number than this; the
UNHCR claims 17 million. UNRWA cites a budget of $408 million for
the year, while the UNHCR budget is
$1.1 billion.
30.www.un.org/UNRWA/employment/organization.html.
31.“In the Second Ceremony
for Exceptional Students Organized by the Islamic Bloc in Northern Gaza, Sheikh
Yassin: The Current Palestinian Generation is the Generation of Liberation and
the Struggle Continues Regardless of Our Sacrifices” [Arabic], Palestine
Information Center, July 7, 2001, at
www.palestine-info/arabic/palestoday/dailynews/2001/july01/7-7/details.htm.
32.In the 2003 elections for
representatives of the UNRWA union in the Gaza Strip, Hamas-affiliated
candidates–formally identified with the Islamic Bloc–gained 23 out of 27 seats.
These victories made it possible for Hamas candidates to fully constitute the
executive committee of the union. “Hamas Scores Sweeping Victory in UNRWA
Elections,” Palestine Information Center, June 10, 2003, at
www.palestine-info.co.uk/am/publish/article_1214.shtml.
33.Allison Kaplan Sommer,
“UNRWA on Trial,” Reform Judaism (Winter 2002), p. 42.
34.Yagil Henkin, “Urban
Warfare and the Lessons of Jenin,” Azure 15 (Summer 2003), p. 53;
Ronen Bergman, Authority Given (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2002), p. 266.
[Hebrew]
35.From the 2003 report of
the US General Accounting Office, detailing an investigation of UNRWA
operations.
36.Interview with the
author, December 14, 2003. Gold was serving as a consultant to the IDF at the
time.
37.Isabel Kershner, “The
Refugees’ Choice?” The Jerusalem Report, August 12, 2002, pp. 24-26.
38.Peter Hansen, “The
Response of Western Governments and the U.N. to the Humanitarian Crisis and Its
Political Implications,” The Politics of Humanitarianism in the Occupied
Territories, conference at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, April 20-21, 2004.
39.“Canada Looking at UN
Agency over Palestinian Connection,” CBC News, October 3, 2004, at
www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/10/03/UNRWA041003.html.
Azure Magazine,
Fall 2005
www.arlenefromisrael.info
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