You have commented 358 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
International-UN-NGOs
For 75 years, UNRWA has sought to undermine Israel, perpetuate conflict
2024-10-30
[Jpost] In the wake of Israel passing two bills that essentially block the activity of the UN Relief and Works Agency in areas under Israeli control, UNRWA’s work is under scrutiny.

Many circles worldwide have condemned Israel’s actions. UNRWA is a "lifeline," the UK says. UNRWA has claimed Israel’s vote is against the UN "charter." The organization is "irreplaceable," the head of the World Health Organization said on Monday.

What is most interesting about UNRWA is that the organization exists at all. Established by a UN General Assembly resolution in 1949, it began its work in 1950 toward providing direct relief and work programs for "Palestine refugees" — meaning, at the time, the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had fled the fighting in British Mandate Palestine and, later, areas that became part of the State of Israel in 1948.

...The UN stepped in to try to help the situation. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established only in 1950, essentially meaning that the UN’s focus on Palestinian refugees predates its interest in other refugees around the world.

This largely explains why the Palestinian refugees became a unique issue and how the UN ended up perpetuating their refugee status and essentially adopting the Palestinians as a singular cause.

What has UNRWA done since its founding? The organization has 58 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. Since UNRWA’s establishment, the number of "refugees" has increased. Today, for example, there are some 900,000 registered "refugees" in the 19 UNRWA camps in the West Bank.

The UN estimates that around one-third of the overall number of people considered "refugees" live in the 58 camps, meaning that many of them have moved to towns and other areas. In some cases, such as in Lebanon, they are often restricted to the camps.

UNRWA maintains not only the camps but also a large number of facilities linked to the camps and refugees. For instance, UNRWA says it has 155 facilities in Gaza, where it enabled 1.5 million internally displaced people to shelter in January 2024. There are eight refugee camps in Gaza; the Khan Yunis camp, for example, has almost 100,000 people registered in it.

IT’S WORTH thinking of UNRWA not as the organization it was after its founding, when it provided essential services that were actually needed, but rather as the empire of perpetual suffering that it has become.

This is a crucial point; UNRWA, as an organization, including the refugees it deals with, is larger than approximately 80 of the countries that are members of the UN. Despite the good intentions that may have been behind its creation in 1950, UNRWA has transformed into something entirely different. The only reason to maintain an organization like UNRWA, which keeps millions of people dependent, is to use them as a proxy against Israel.

In retrospect, it’s important to look at UNRWA as an organization that was created to thwart the establishment of Israel. The UN approved the Partition Plan for British Mandate Palestine in 1947. Israel declared independence in 1948.

...The concept of UNRWA is to keep Palestinians dependent, living in refugee camps generation after generation, while using its young men as foot soldiers to fight Israel. Winding down the camps and having the people live normal lives and believe in two states and peace could have potentially resulted in peace. However, the UNRWA mandate was never to embrace peace, two states, and coexistence.
(a) Anyone who really cares about "Palestinian Refugees" would work toward them building new lives in their places of refuge.
(b) There was an equivalent number of Jewish refugees from the Arab world.

The UN, however, did very little to help the Jewish refugees — the world Jewish community and Israel funded and handled their resettlement in Israel on their own.
Related:
UNRWA: 2024-10-29 Good Morning
UNRWA: 2024-10-29 UNRWA educated students speak out!
UNRWA: 2024-10-29 Israeli Parliament Passes Law To Ban UN Relief Agency, UNRWA
Posted by:Grom the Reflective

#6  in Australia, the Greens party panders to the Muslim vote and supports UNRWA. As a taxpayer, my money is forcibly taken off me and sent to them because the Greens and Teal independents voted to ensure we didn't cut their funding even after they were found to be helping Hamas (Muslim Brotherhood)
Posted by: Anon1   2024-10-30 22:00  

#5  I’m confident UNWRA staff and management would be perfectly happy if the conflict ended because Israel was erased — that’s what they’ve been training their refugees for, after all.
Posted by: trailing wife   2024-10-30 21:26  

#4  The conflict is job security.
Posted by: Super Hose   2024-10-30 12:56  

#3  "UNRWA has sought to undermine Israel, perpetuate conflict"

Exactly
Posted by: mossomo   2024-10-30 12:23  

#2  Nikki Haley: We stopped giving UNRWA money, Biden-Harris gave it back
Posted by: Grom the Reflective   2024-10-30 04:55  

#1  I strongly suspect that a lot of Nazi collaborator politicians - who had to disappear from public view for a while - went to work for UN.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective   2024-10-30 04:48  

00:00