...the Appropriations Committee unanimously approved a Kirk amendment offered by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would require the State Department to report to Congress with an approximate number of people currently served by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) who actually lived in then-Palestine between 1946 and 1948 and were displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. With U.S. taxpayers providing more than $4 billion to UNRWA since 1950, the watershed reporting requirement will help taxpayers better understand whether UNRWA truly remains a refugee assistance organization or has become a welfare agency for low-income residents of the Levant.The bill was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee, so now we are closer to resolving the discrepancy between the 5 million Palestinians that now receive assistance from UNRWA on the one hand and the approximately 750,000 Arabs who were displaced during the war against Israel.
Clifford D. May writes that the State Department opposition to Kirk's bill is counter to previous policy--and the law:
