There are over 21,000,000 refugees in the world: Some 17,000,000 in various places, for whom UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees) has responsibility, and some 4 million Palestinian Arab refugees, for whom UNRWA (UN Relief and Work Agency) is responsible.

One set of definitions and rules applies to the 17 million, and another to the Palestinian Arabs.

Background:

In the course of the Israeli War of Independence in 1948-49, about 550,000 Arabs fled Israel and moved into neighboring regions: Gaza, under Egyptian control; Judea and Samaria, under Jordanian control; Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Many required immediate relief, which the Red Cross provided.

On December 8, 1949, the UN General Assembly (GA) established UNRWA, which was to provide relief and works programs for the Palestinian Arab refugees.

The Arab bloc was greatly influential in drafting the resolution; it passed, however, because of the support of non-Arab members of the UN. With this, a precedent was set then regarding accommodation to Arab wishes in the matter of the refugees.

UNRWA began operations in May 1950 as a temporary agency. The Arab bloc, however, was set on thwarting a resolution to the problem. They had not been able to destroy Israel by military means. They now employed UNRWA as their weapon of choice and, in the process, turned the refugees into political hostages.

The refugees might have been readily assimilated into surrounding Arab populations. Yet the Arab nations refused (and still refuse) to permit their full absorption, and, with the exception of Jordan, have denied them citizenship.

The refugees’ proper place, they insisted, was back where they had come from. When UNRWA’s mandate was drawn up, the Arabs – in order to promote their goal of destroying Israel from within – pushed through a “particular” reference to paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194. Its lead sentence includes this:

“…the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date…”

Ever since, this phrase has been offered as the basis for the claim that Palestinian Arab refugees have a right to return to Israel. In point of fact there is no such right. The General Assembly is simply not empowered to confer “rights.” GA resolutions have no standing within international law – they are merely recommendations. What is more, even if there were such a right, the Palestinian Arab refugees would be barred from exercising it, for at no point have their intentions in seeking to enter Israel been peaceful.

One year after UNRWA’s founding, another refugee agency – UNHCR – was founded by the UN General Assembly, in large part because of the millions of refugees from World War II who still required attention. A UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted shortly after, formed the binding basis for the functioning of UNHCR; a 1967 Protocol expanded its parameters. The Convention, with the Protocol, is considered the only “universal instrument of international refugee law.” Some 50 million refugees have been helped by UNHCR to “restart” their lives.

UNRWA might have been enfolded into UNHCR. The Arab states, however, would not tolerate this. Ultimately the Convention exempted those refugees who were under the protection of another UN agency (read UNRWA). Thus was the current situation set into place: the sole international agency dedicated to one group of refugees was permitted to continue independently.

. Two Agencies: Their Divergence  UNRWA was mandated to provide its beneficiaries with humanitarian services until they would be able to return to Israel. UNHCR was mandated to provide international protection for refugees and work towards durable solutions for them.

UNRWA does not consider any permanent solution for the Palestinian Arab refugees except repatriation. UNHCR is actively involved with facilitating resettlement, as necessary, so refugees can get on with their lives with a sense of permanency.

UNRWA’s focus is on providing welfare assistance, education and health care. UNHCR’s first concern is protecting refugees and safeguarding their legal rights – basic material assistance is given only as necessary and with the assumption that hosting countries, as able, will cooperate in providing for refugee needs.

The Palestinian Arabs provided for by UNRWA are the only refugees in the world to have guaranteed health care, basic education, and welfare benefits. In the course of providing humanitarian and social services, UNRWA has developed an extensive bureaucracy with one staff person per 164 refugees, compared to one staff person per 2,803 refugees in UNHCR. UNRWA annually spends some 50% more per refugee than is spent, on average, on other refugees ($99/refugee, as compared to $64/refugee).

In contrast with UNHCR, which must abide by the Convention, UNRWA was granted enormous latitude when it was established; it has set its own definitions and guidelines. Of particular note: UNRWA’s 1) definition of refugees and 2) hiring practices.

1) The Convention definition says a refugee is someone who:

“…owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted… is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country, or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”

UNRWA defines refugees as:

“…persons 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 concept of “habitual residence” is lacking here: not everyone who had lived in the land for two years prior to Israel’s founding had habitually lived there. The development of western Palestine in the years prior to the establishment of Israel drew Arabs seeking work from the surrounding countries. The definition thus embraces as “refugees” a good number of transients.

The UNRWA approach to refugee status allows many others to be included who would be excluded by the Convention regulations.

UNHCR removes the status of refugee from anyone who has acquired a new nationality that affords protection. UNRWA continues to count such persons as refugees until they are “repatriated” to Israel. Thus hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in Jordan and possessing full Jordanian citizenship continue to be classified by UNRWA as refugees. (In the period July 1, 2003 – June 30, 2003, UNRWA spent $72.2 million on refugees in Jordan.)

 UNHCR makes no mention of descendants of refugees. UNRWA grants refugee status to the patrilineal descendants of refugees, now entering the fourth generation.

UNHCR works diligently to reduce the world population of refugees. UNRWA has done the reverse. By providing an expansive definition of refugee, it originally inflated the numbers on its rolls; by declining to exempt those who subsequently acquired citizenship elsewhere, it sustains large numbers. Most significantly, by counting successive generations, it expands the numbers on its rolls. The Palestinian refugee problem, as it stands, is a growing problem. UNRWA now claims over 4.1 million refugees; no other population has sustained the status of refugee for as long as these Palestinian Arabs have.

2) UNHCR does not hire from within its client population. UNRWA has some 24,000 persons in its employ. With the exception of about 100 “internationals” in executive positions, they are all Palestinian Arabs, the vast majority registered as refugees. UNRWA claims employing refugees ensures more sensitivity to the problems of those receiving assistance. However these employees are vulnerable to conflict of interest. Because of the volatility of their situation, they are vulnerable as well to extortion.

It is difficult to justify this situation of underlying disparities for different refugee populations:

Palestinian Arab refugees receive greater material assistance and more services than other refugee populations. While certainly not all are affluent or comfortable, relative to the situation of other refugees they are doing extraordinarily well. Those in the 59 camps maintained by UNRWA live in stone houses, rent free. Some of these homes are quite respectable and some are more than “merely” respectable. Fine schools, women’s centers, youth centers, day care centers and more are found in refugee camps – which in fact are more like urban neighborhoods than “camps.”

It is not greater merit among the Palestinian Arab refugees that justifies this special care.

The justification for the more extensive care given the Palestinian Arab refugees is implicit within the mandate of UNRWA.

As UNHCR seeks to provide refugees with opportunities for getting on with their lives, the care it provides is considered temporary: countries absorbing them will be responsible for schooling, health care and more. However, by design, UNRWA denies its clients permanency through resettlement. According to the logic of UNRWA, if Israel is going to refuse to allow the refugees to return, and if the refugees do not “belong” anywhere else, then UNRWA must establish a long-term functioning bureaucracy that tends to them in place of a state.

Only with changes in the underlying premise of the UNRWA mandate would it be possible to secure some equity between levels of care for the Palestinian Arab refugees and all others.

There is in addition a highly damaging corollary to the basic premise of the UNRWA mandate: that beyond simply maintaining refugees until they can achieve “return,” there is the need to actively promote it via various policies and practices. UNHCR seeks to assure refugees of their right to settle permanently elsewhere. Palestinian Arab refugees have been neither advised of nor accorded such a right.

The irony here is enormous: A genuine right accorded within recognized international law is denied these refugees, while much is made of another “right” that is ostensibly their due but which in fact does not exist within international law.

The registration numbers originally assigned by UNRWA to refugee families included a five-digit code of origin in “pre-1948 Palestine.” As reported by BADIL, an organization promoting return, “the village structure, as it existed prior to the 1948 war, has… been preserved by… the registration system.” Additionally, the camps were set up according to villages left in 1948, with neighborhoods and even roads named after these villages..

The message of the on-going programs designed to promote return – offered by UNRWA staffers and others working with UNRWA- is consistent: The day will come when you will be able to return, as is your due. Only Israel prevents you from doing so now. These programs have included bus tours to see homes left behind in 1948 and lessons within UNRWA schools intended to keep awareness of the “homeland” uppermost in the minds of the students.

In addition, UNRWA attempts to sustain a sense of impermanency in the refugees, so they will be motivated to seek “return” as a way of acquiring a sense of belonging.

Repeatedly over the years there have been opportunities for groups of refugees to move into permanent housing, and almost always they have been blocked. In 1985, Israel attempted to move refugees into 1,300 permanent housing units that had been constructed near Nablus with support from the Catholic Relief Organization. In this instance (as in several similar instances) the UN intervened. A General Assembly resolution was passed, indicating that:

“… measures to resettle Palestine refugees… constitute a violation of their inalienable right of return… “

It should be noted that Israel did not require of the refugees that in order to move into new housing they relinquish their “right” to return.

The plight of the Palestinian Arab refugees:
They have been floating in a state of unending impermanency for over 50 years, for the most part, stateless and deprived of a sense of belonging in the places where they live. Instead of being taught to think about putting down roots where they are or in another country, they are encouraged to have unrealistic expectations regarding a “return” that is never going to happen. What is more, they have been led to believe that they are being deprived by Israel of what is rightfully theirs – a repatriation that would take them out of their misery, provide them with dignity, and give them permanency. It is the frustration, the sense of not being able to achieve what they believe they are entitled to, that is most difficult for them to contend with.

The disparity between the dream they have been fed and the reality of their lives generates despair, and ultimately rage.

Thus it is that the refugees are drawn to the extremist religious ideology and the violent techniques of Hamas; the UNRWA camps are hotbeds of terrorist activity.

This has been thoroughly documented, beginning with Operation Defensive Shield – mounted in the spring of 2002 in response to a wave of horrendous terror attacks. As the IDF entered into the UNRWA refugee camps, they were found to be riddled with small-arms factories, explosives laboratories, Kassam-2 rocket manufacturing plants, and suicide-bombing cells. Alan Baker, speaking as Chief Counsel of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, stated, “Bomb-making, indoctrination, recruiting and dispatching of suicide-bombers are all centered in the camps.”

An intelligence report released in December 2002 provided additional information regarding what had been uncovered regarding the links between UNRWA and terrorism:

A number of wanted terrorists were found hiding inside schools run by UNRWA; a large number of youth clubs operated by UNRWA in the camps were discovered to be meeting places for terrorists; and an official bureau of Tanzim was established inside a building owned by UNRWA.

The report detailed arrests by the IDF of UNRWA employees and individuals who had utilized UNRWA equipment and facilities. From another more recent source have come details of other arrests and convictions of UNRWA employees by Israeli military courts: for throwing firebombs at a public bus; for possession of materials that could be used for explosives; for transferring chemicals to assist a bomb-maker.

Yet, where a connection between UNRWA staff and terrorism is concerned, these reports just touch the surface.

On July 6, 2001, the Hamas movement convened a conference in an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza; the school administrators, teachers and students participated. The students were addressed by Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Saheil Alhinadi, representing the teaching sector on behalf of UNRWA, praised Hamas student activists who carried out suicide attacks against Israel.

IDF Colonel (ret.) Yoni Fighel, a former military governor in the territories, has stated “As long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], they are going to pursue the interests of their party within the framework of their job…Who’s going to check up on them to see that they don’t? UNRWA? They are UNRWA.”

Hamas-affiliated workers control the UNRWA union in Gaza. Within the teachers sector of the union all representatives are Hamas affiliated; Hamas candidates fully constitute the union’s executive committee as well.

An organization called Islamic Bloc, which is ideologically connected to Hamas and calls itself a “Jihad’ organization, has been charged with furthering the goal of Hamas within the schools and preparing the next generation for the liberation of Palestine.

Video has captured UNRWA ambulances being used to transport terrorists and firearms;there are reports of terrorists shooting from UNRWA clinics.

The evidence of UNRWA association with terrorism goes on; it is considerable.

UNRWA, however, rather than confronting the problems and dealing with them, has stonewalled and justified. UNRWA’s Deputy Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd, in response to the charge of terrorism in the camps, told The Jerusalem Report, in August, 2002, that “We just don’t see anything like this. These things are not visible to us.” When (recently retired) Commissioner-General Peter Hansen submitted to the General Assembly his mandated annual report for the period of July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002 – which covered the time of Operation Defensive Shield – he never mentioned, even in passing, what had been exposed. A little more than a year ago, Mr. Hansen speaking at a conference at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute indicated that charges of terrorism are “… all made up to delegitimize UNRWA’s work.”

After 55 years, UNRWA, the unique and autonomous agency dedicated to care of the Palestinian Arab refugees, must be judged a failed institution. The latitude accorded it by the international community simply has not worked to positive ends.

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