A Middle East peace process ensued 34 years ago, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made an unprecedented middle east peace effort, when he proclaimed a new policy of peace and reconciliation with Israel. Sadat headed the largest nation of the League of Arab Nations, the very entity which declared a war of extermination against the nascent state of Israel in 1948 – the very same League of Arab Nations which spawned the PLO in 1964 for the very same purpose: to liquidate the Jewish state.

The 1979 Israeli Egyptian peace treaty and the subsequent 1994 Israeli Jordanian peace treaty which emanated from the seminal Sadat initiative ignited hopes that the Israeli Arab war would finally come to an end, while outstanding issues of the 1948 war would finally be resolved

Festering issues from 1948 still include the vast property claims of nearly one million Jews from Arab countries who left almost all possessions behind, along with the claims of the descendants of half a million Arab refugees from 1948 war who left behind hundreds of Arab villages.

While Jewish refugees from Arab countries were absorbed into Israel, nearly five million descendants of Arab refugees from the 1948 war continue to languish in 59 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) “temporary” refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, now funded to the tune of 1.2 billion dollars per annum by 38 western democracies, with the US government donating 25% of the annual UNRWA budget.

An official UNRWA report, published in June 2011, describes the destitute situation in the UNRWA facilities,which UNRWA officials contrasted with the tremendous economic growth of neighboring Arab cities of Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron and more.

Yet despite its plague of poverty, UNRWA makes no effort to seek any long term solutions for descendants of Arab refugees who have wallowed in the indignity of refugee life for more than 60 years, UNRWA could adapt the principles of UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission For Refugees,to rehabilitate thousands of its clients. After all, UNHCR has recently gained experience in its efforts to relocate thousands of Arab refugees who it had rescued in Iraq, placing them in eleven nations around the world beginning with Chile.

In contrast,, UNRWA instils millions of Arab refugee descendants with the false hope that they will be repatriated to their 1948 villages, even though these villages no longer exist.

Meanwhile, UNRWA makes no effort to even encourage Arab refugee descendants to plan for in a future Palestinian Arab entity that may soon be established in.udea, Samaria and Gaza

Instead, UNRWA embraces the ‘right of return” curricula of the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and UNRWA facilities boast maps of Palestine which replace Israel, where all Israeli cities are described as Arab cities. This past summer, our agency filmed UNRWA sports camps for children where the dominant theme was the “right of return” to the villages of their great grandparents

The UNRWA school system’s call to join the armed struggle to realize the “right of return” has transformed UNRWA camps into a breeding ground for terrorists.

It was therefore no coincidence that, in Marh 2009, Hamas terror groups won their fourth consecutive election to take charge of the UNRWA trade union and the UNRWA teachers union in Gaza,.

Appearing before the National Press Club in Washington on September 19th, 2011, Dr. Mordechai.Kedar, senior research associate at the Begin Sadat Center (BESA) for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, described UNRWA as “ an anachronistic institution born 60 years and should have died a natural death many decades ago like in all parts of the world after the tumult of the second world war”.. Moreover, said Kedar, “What UNRWA does is to perpetuates the wars of the 1940’s as it

recessitates refugee problems that died in all other parts of the world, more than fifty years ago

In conclusion, Kedar addressed the contrast between UNRWA, whose motto is. “peace begins here”.. with UNRWA policies which work against the cause of peace between Israel and its neighbors.

In short, noted Kedar, “UNRWA raises Arab expectations to radically change Israeli demography – expectations that will never be fulfilled. UNRWA wastes funds that could be used much productively, which the world – especially the American taxpayer – funds which could have used in a more productive way.”

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Previous articleUNRWA schools in Gaza – a Greenhouse for Hamas
Next articleNuclear arms expert says it would be foolish for canada to sell Jordan nuclear reactor: Canada on short list to sell
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.