The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo has been doing yeoman’s work covering Senator Mark Kirk’s efforts to force the State Department to define Palestinian refugees in the same manner that the international community defines non-Palestinian refugees.
The problem about definitions exists because the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) applies one definition of refugees around the world, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) applies a different definition only to Palestinian refugees. The State Department sides with UNRWA. In a 2006 article, University of Illinois economist Fred Gottheil explained the difference between the UNHCR and UNRWA approach:
The refugee population that UNHCR serves, at any time, is the number who fled their homelands minus those refugees repatriated or resettled. Because there was virtually no repatriation or resettlement among UNRWA’s refugee population, its size includes not only those who fled their homes but also during the course of over a half-century and in considerably larger numbers their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, regardless of where and under what social, political, and economic conditions they live. Another distinction between UNRWA and UNHCR on population counts is this: Palestinians who had fled their homes from one location within Palestine to another location within Palestine – say, from a village in what became Israel to a location in the West Bank – are nonetheless defined by UNRWA as refugees, even though they had not fled their homeland. By UNHCR reckoning, they are not refugees. And counted as well among the Palestinian refugees are descendants of refugees born, raised, and living elsewhere in the Middle East and abroad, who, never having seen the Palestinian homeland, are free nonetheless to return to it and to live there permanently but choose not to do so. Their decision to reject repatriation to the Palestinian homeland had nothing to do with the principles of non-refoulement since persecution of returnees was at no time a perceived threat. They do not satisfy UNHCR’s definition of refugee.
If the State Department accepts the UNRWA definition, there are about 5 million Palestinian refugees, but if one accepts the standard UNHCR definition, there are about 30,000.
To understand how dangerous it is to accept an expansive, political definition of refugees, consider India: The 1947 partition of India created about 14.5 million refugees, as those born in what became Pakistan fled to India and vice versa. At a 2002 speech at Hebrew University, Bernard Lewis suggested that applying the same definition to refugees created by the partition of India that UNRWA and the State Department apply to refugees created by the partition of Palestine meant that there existed 140 million refugees in South Asia. Today, that might equate to 170 million refugees or so. Had the international community adopted the same strategy in South Asia that it does in the Levant, this would guarantee the impossibility of any peace and reconciliation. Secretary of State Clinton knows this. By pandering to UNRWA, therefore, she is in effect choosing war over any hope of peace.
Everyone is aware that the definition of who is a palestinian 'refugee' is a political one, a 'one off' definition designed to strengthen (in numbers) the weapon that is the created palestinian 'nationality'. n nThe arab countries and western powers did this, by creating UNWRA in the first place, allowing it to aggrandize, and arab nations intentionally ghettoizing and in most cases not granting citizenship to the original palestinian refugees and their descendants into perpetuity, forever a dagger aimed at the Israeli heart. n nLike all things related to Israel and its rights to self defense and legitimacy, the game is rigged, and logic and fairness have not entered into the discussion. n nGlad the issue is finally seeing the light of day. Perhaps that can change. It is truly the key to a just settlement. Otherwise, we go on like this till forever. Where is Dershowitz on this? Where are the great Jewish legal minds? Too busy doing Tikkun Olam elsewhere, I suppose, fighting the great phantom of Islamophobia.
It is not Islamophobia but rational fear of Islam.
Its a shame no one was talking about this during Bush's 2 terms, when it might possibly have changed. No chance in hell Obama will change this.
Let us hope he won't be around much longer. In the meantime, this issue should be brought to Romney's attention.
The Arabs who fled Israel when it became a state are falsely called "Palestinians," a name which always meant "Jew." In 135 A.D. the Roman Emperor Hadrian, after defeating the last Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba, renamed Judea "Palestina" in order to eradicate all memory of Judea and the Jews. He also outlawed Judaism and renamed Jerusalem "Aelia Capitolina," "Aelius" being his gens name. From then on, "Palestine" was synonymous with "land of the Jews," and "Palestinian" with "Jew." That is why Great Britain was awarded the "Palestine Mandate" as "homeland of the Jews" after World War I. Calling Arabs "Palestinians" is an effect of the invention of the "Palestine Liberation Organization" (P.L.O) by Gamel Nasser, ruler of Egypt, and the Soviet Union in Cairo in 1964.
I cannot believe the Orwellian mind-think of US senators who believe they can wish away the Palestinian refugees by simply redefining the problem. There is no parallel with India in 1947; Muslims and Hindus were eventually content to live in their new homes, being Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, and thus their refugee status fell away. You only have to visit a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut or Gaza or the West Bank to see that, for the refugees, the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 is still unfinished business. Their homes and lands were stolen from them, and the world has done nothing to rectify this injustice in 64 years. Their children and grandchildren have rights too, and it is an Israeli conceit that they can just settle in Jordan or Lebanon, since, in Israeli eyes, "they are all Arabs". Shame on the US Senate for this decision.
You, Sir, are spouting mendatious silliness. The Arabs born in the "refugee camps" of Lebanon and Syria are by all norms and definitions Lebanese and Syrians who are denied right of citizenship by their fascistic and corrupt governments. Their misery is the result of Arab exploitation of their own people, their own abysmal stupidity and the cleptomaniac "Palestinian" leadership which has pocketted billions into Swiss accounts. Your India-Pakistan assumptions about the refugees being "content" to be where they are have no foundation in fact. But fine, what about Tibetans living in exile in India and other similar examples? Why has UNRWA not "adopted" them? In any case, your reference to Israel's creation as "naqba" marks you as an antisemitic shill who will always find an excuse to select Jews for "special" treatment of hatred and injustice and to favour anyone who is their enemy. Shame on you and people like you.
The Asians have no value for the US and the state Dept. (the oilmen and the orientalists still have fun). The Pal are a major asset since it allows the State Dept to undermine Jews and Israel at will. Once the oil and gas disappear from the ME, the US will lose all interest in the ME. We need to remember that there was a reason for the US and Europe to create and support the UNRWA. The Arabs have not only not given a penny but they have fully cooperate with the West to keep the abscess OPEN. Since she was borne the West has undermined the only democracy in the ME .