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Palestinians: US refugee amendment may delay peace deal
According to legislation, State Department must now differentiate between Palestinian refugees and descendants of refugees; former Abbas advisor: It can have a very bad reaction on the ground.Palestinian advocates are warning that a new US Senate amendment dictating a reporting requirement on the issue of Palestinian refugees could set back efforts to reach a peace deal. The amendment to a bill, recently approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee, mandates that the secretary of state must report how many of the Palestinians serviced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency fled or left homes in Israel during the War of Independence and how many are only their descendants. "It's very dangerous. It can have a very bad reaction on the ground," talk about stating the bleeding obvious said Ghaith Al- Omari, a former foreign policy advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas now with the American Task Force on Palestine. "It will just make any US ability to push for a responsible solution suspect in the eyes of the Palestinians and refugees in particular." Before committee passage, the amendment was weakened slightly from the original proposal by Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois -- which would have also mandated a count of how many of each category of Palestinians lived in the West Bank and Gaza as well as were citizens of another country -- after objections from the Obama administration. Posted by: tipper 2012-06-05 |
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