Notwithstanding a huge amount of literature on this subject, many misconceptions, emotions and political games obscure the picture of the Palestinian refugee issue. Palestinian advocates claim that without granting all registered refugees the right to return to Israel, peace in the region is impossible. Israel, therefore, has to let about 5,000,000 descendants of Arab refugees settle in its territory. This also means that peace depends entirely on Israel.
The phenomenon of Palestinian Arab refugees stands out in the history of refugees. As of 2013, it has already lasted 65 years and it seems there is no end in sight.
The UN established a specific agency to deal solely with the problem of Palestine's refugees: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). It has about 30,000 employees, most of them recruited from Palestinian Arab refugees. It is funded by the UN, Western Europe and the US, and deals with education and other aspects of refugee life. Corruption and the wasting of money are rampant there, but who cares? The agency ostensibly deals with one of the most important issues of our time, and as such is deemed worth every penny.
To see the bigger picture, let's step back and compare the Palestinian Arabs refugee problem with some other refugee problems of the last century, which took place at approximately the same time.
The problem of Arab refugees emerged in 1948, when an alliance of Arab countries started the war against Israel. Here are the numbers from different sources of refugees who fled the war zone:
Israel: ...................................................................................520,000
UN - progress report Oct. 1948: ..........................................472,000
UNRWA (Agency designated to deal with Arab refugees).. 711,000
Arab countries (claim): ........................................................850,000
For the sake of further discussion, I will take the number stated by the UNRWA: 711,000. At the same time, Arab countries expelled more than 600,000 Jews and expropriated their properties. How did the world react to these two events? In the UN, no issue of compensation, or right to return for Jews, was discussed. Western media and politicians did not see any moral, legal or political problem there. Be that as it may.
The international treatment of Arab refugees was quite different. The Arab League has instructed its members to deny citizenship to original Palestinian Arab refugees (or their descendants) ‘to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland’. The message was clear: to conserve the hatred and a state of war until total victory over Israel. The wellbeing of the refugees was not a consideration.
Article comments
1 - Andreas Andersen
Excellent Article! Thank you!