World Refugee Day: Perspective From Jerusalem

Our agencies, located on the web at www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com, have engaged professional staff since August 1, 2000 to examine and translate the new school books issued by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education and used by 321,000 students of UNRWA.

In the new PA educational system, all areas settled by “Zionists” are defined for the Arab school child as occupied and illegal, with the explicit command given to the Palestinian Arab people to obliterate them.

This is neither an assessment nor an opinion.

This is a fact.

You may look at the source.

Most people will not do so.

Indeed, both sides of the political spectrum in Israel are tied to the idea that what is on the table for negotiations is the territory area taken by Israel in the wake of the six day war in 1967

Such a belief ignores the fact that Israel’s armistice lines from 1949 were never recognized by any nation in the world.

Indeed, the UNRWA school system which operates in 59 Arab refugee camps in Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon now inculcates the violent ideology of the “right of return by force of arms” to all lands lost to the Arabs in 1948.

Yet people on both sides of the political spectrum tend to willfully ignore UNRWA reality –of five million descendants who dwell in “temporary shelters” financed by  $1.2 billion of donations from 67 nations, with little transparency.

What can be done? The UNRWA mandate, debated by the UN General Assembly every five years since 1949, is up for renewal.

While removing UNRWA will not occur, the time has come for the donor nations of the world to consider taking major steps to defuse the toxic UNRWA powder keg:

1. Cancel the new UNRWA curriculum which incorporates principles of Jihad, martyrdom and a “right of return” by force of arms, in UN schools which are supposed to promote the UNRWA slogan of “Peace Starts Here.”
2. Cease paramilitary training in all UNRWA schools UNRWA should demonstrate commitment to UN principles for “peace education”.
3. Insist that UNRWA dismiss employees who are affiliated with Hamas in accordance with laws on the books in Western nations, which forbid aid to any agency that employs members of a terrorist organization.
4. Insist that UNRWA cancel its contract with “youth ambassador” Mohammad Assaf to travel the world encouraging violence. Would this not be the appropriate time for donor nations to ask that UNRWA cancel that contract with a harbinger of war?  
5. Ask for an audit of donor funds that flow to UNRWA This would address widespread documented reports of wasted resources, duplicity of services and the undesired flow of cash to Gaza-based terror groups, which gained control over UNRWA operations in Gaza over the past 18 years.
6. Introduce UNHCR standards to UNRWA to advance the resettlement of Arab refugees, after 67 years. Current UNRWA policy is that refugee resettlement would interfere with the “right of return” to Arab villages that existed before 1948.