A rumor floated around recently that the UN is asking UNRWA to try to resettle Palestinian “refugees” in Europe after 72 years of statelessness.
Of course, resettlement would be the job of any real refugee agency dedicated to helping people who are languishing in camps for so long.
Of course, the rumors are false. The UN would never ask UNRWA to act like it cares about ending the Palestinian “refugee” problem.
Of course, the response to the rumor from the people who pretend to be the leaders of the Palestinians show what utter contempt they have for their own people.
Ahmed Abu Huli, head of the PLO’s Refugee Affairs Department and member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, issued a press statement Saturday, contacted UNRWA to verify that there was no truth to these rumors. He then said that these rumors are part of a plot by Israel and America to liquidate UNRWA because they accuse the Palestinian leaders of perpetuating the refugee issue, perpetuating the conflict and sponsoring terrorism. (Those accusations are, of course, empirically true.)
Abu Huli added that these rumors “target the steadfastness of the refugees in the camps and undermine their just and legitimate right to return to their homes from which they were displaced in 1948, according to what was stated in Resolution 194.”
Dr. Bakr Abu Safia of the PFLP said that “the attempt to dispose of the refugee issue through resettlement has not ended, since the beginning of the Nakba, but the Palestinian people were able to stop these projects through their association with their land.”
Did anyone ask the Palestinians who are in camps in Lebanon or Syria whether they would welcome resettling in Europe? No one really has to. Hundreds of thousands of them have already moved to Europe themselves. In Lebanon alone, some 300,000 “registered refugees” have moved out, and are yet still counted by UNRWA as being there so they can demand more funds.
The UN’s only real refugee agency, UNHCR, works hard to find permanent homes for real refugees. UNWRA works hard to keep Palestinian refugees and their descendants in stateless limbo forever. Palestinian leaders have used the “refugees” as pawns for 72 years, and they aren’t about to let anything stop them from continuing.