When Did UNRWA Abandon Its Mission To Resettle Palestinian Refugees -- And Why?

The following by Alex Joffe is reposted here with permission:

UNRWA Resists Resettlement

by Alexander H. Joffe
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2012, pp. 11-25 (view PDF)

http://www.meforum.org/3350/unrwa-resettlement

The Palestinian refugee problem lies at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But since the 1960s, the international institution charged with aiding the refugees, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), has resisted their resettlement in the Arab host countries. It has done so by shifting to an educational mission, devising expansive redefinitions of who a refugee is, and expanding its legal mandates to "protect" and represent refugees. As a result, a well-intended international relief effort has been progressively undone by the vagueness of its mandate, which allowed UNRWA to bend to the will of the U.N. General Assembly and be taken over by its own charges and by the bureaucratic imperative of institutional survival.

A Brief History of UNRWA And Where It Went Wrong

The following is an introduction to a special issue of Middle East Quarterly on the history and problems of UNRWA and possible solutions. This introduction is reposted here with permission

Why a Special Issue on UNRWA?

by Steven J. Rosen
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2012, pp. 3-10 (view PDF)

http://www.meforum.org/3344/unrwa-special

Led by the United States, the founders of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the institution tasked with oversight of the Palestine refugees, conceived of it as a temporary instrument to help relieve the plight of the Arab refugees displaced by the struggle over Israel's creation in 1948-49. But over the ensuing sixty-three years, UNRWA has evolved into an agency that perpetuates the refugee problem as a source of conflict rather than contributing to its resolution. Its refugee camps and educational programs keep alive the impossible dream that millions of descendants of the original refugees will "return" to today's Israel. Its social service delivery programs create permanent dependency and impede local integration into the societies and countries where its beneficiaries have resided for decades. Unlike its sister agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is responsible for millions of non-Palestinian refugees worldwide, it does not have an active program for "local integration" of refugees where they now reside nor "resettlement" in third countries. This special issue will explore the extent to which UNRWA has complied with its original mandate and ways and means for its reform.

A Kid Born In US With Palestinian Grandparents Counts As A Palestinian Refugee?

The Palestinian refugees are characterized as a young population where 41.7% are under the age of 15 in Palestinian territory, 35.9% of Palestinian refugees in Jordan were under 15 in 2007, 33.1% of Palestinian refugees in Syria were under 15 in 2009, and 30.4% of the refugees in Lebanon were under 15 in 2010.
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics

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So a young American boy of, say, ten years of age born in Chicago to American parents, but whose grandparents were Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948, is counted by UNRWA as a “Palestinian refugee.”
Elliot Abrams

It is a tribute to the disinformation campaign of UNRWA that so many of those who read the statement above from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Arlene Kushner On Senator Kirk's Amendment To Fix UNRWA

From Arlene Kushner:

May 29, 2012

UNRWA

For years I have been part of a small cadre of determined individuals who saw clearly the damage being done by UNRWA -- the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees.  Damage to prospects for peace in this region, and damage directly to Israel. 

There is so much wrong with this agency that it's impossible to document it all in this post.  Suffice it to say the following:

Daniel Pipes: Count Palestine Refugees?

The following by Daniel Pipes is reposted with permission:

Count Palestine Refugees?

by Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
May 29, 2012

http://www.danielpipes.org/11359/palestine-refugees

The fetid, dark heart of the Arab war on Israel, I have long argued, lies not in disputes over Jerusalem, checkpoints, or "settlements." Rather, it concerns the so-called Palestine refugees.

So called because of the nearly 5 million official refugees served by UNRWA (short for the "United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East"), only about 1 percent are real refugees who fit the agency's definition of "people 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." The other 99 percent are descendants of those refugees, or what I call fake refugees.

3 Ways UNRWA Has Ensured Number Of Palestinian Refugees Has Grown

Given UNRWA's standards, eventually all humans will be Palestine refugees.
Steven J. Rosen, Middle East Forum

In The Ever-Growing Palestinian Problem, Daniel Pipes notes how the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has mangled the definition of what constitutes a Palestinian Arab refugee.

Though only 150,000 of UNRWA's count of 750,000 refugees remain alive today, UNRWA acknowledges that according to their bizarre definitions, the number of Palestinian refugees has ballooned:

When the Agency started working in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, 5 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services. [emphasis added]

How has UNRWA allowed the Palestinian refugee problem to so get out of control?

Pipes notes 3 steps UNRWA has taken that exacerbates the Palestinian refugee problem by expanding the definition: