From Arutz Sheva: The Israeli Initiative Calls Upon Officials to Close Jerusalem Refugee Camps

(IsraelNN.com) 'The Israeli Initiative,' an Israeli non-governmental organization, called this week to close down refugee camps in Jerusalem. A recent decision regarding refugees living in South Africa sets a precedent allowing cities to shut down camps whose residents refuse to resettle, the group argues.

City officials in Cape Town plan to clear out the local Blue Waters Refugee Camp this week and force its 340 residents to find new accommodations. A Cape Town court ruled that the city could evict refugees from the camp after the refugees rejected the municipality's offers to help them relocate.

The Cape Town verdict demonstrates that cities are not obligated to provide endless support to refugees who refuse to resettle, said the Israeli Initiative. Once refugees are given the option of rebuilding their lives, they can no longer use the “refugee” label to continue living off of aid, they argued.

Ending the saga
The organization turned to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and asked them to shut down the Arab refugee camps currently operating within Jerusalem municipal limits. “Rivlin recently said it is disgraceful that there are refugee camps in Jerusalem,” said Israeli Initiative director and former minister Benny Elon. “He's right, of course. Now we need to turn that understanding into action.”

Closing the camps will be beneficial even beyond the Jerusalem city limit, said members of the organization. “The benefit to the city of Jerusalem and to the Palestinian refugees from the end of this sixty-year-long saga will be enormous,” the group said. “And equally importantly, we will create a model here that reminds the world that the refugee problem is a humanitarian problem that can be solved, and there's no need to wait for a diplomatic solution, which apparently is not going to happen in the near future.”

Israeli Initiative manager Yoav Sorek accused the United Nations agency UNWRA, which was tasked with helping Arabs who fled pre-state Israel and their descendants, for the continued existence of refugee camps more than 60 years after the original “Palestinian refugees” left during the War of Independence. UNWRA “sees its goal as keeping the refugees in their current situation,” he charged.

The Cape Town model
The Cape Town case, in which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) worked to resettle the refugees outside their camp, demonstrates how the refugee issue should be tackled, he said. “The way the UNHCR handled the issue was correct. It was characteristic of an organization that seeks to rehabilitate refugees, an organization that works toward a humanitarian goal and does not serve political agendas,” he said.

The Israeli Initiative seeks to create a new approach to the Israel-Arab conflict. It proposes extending Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria and reaching a peaceful settlement with Palestinian Authority Arabs in cooperation with Jordan. Arabs from the refugee camps would be resettled in various countries and those who remain in Judea and Samaria would have Jordanian citizenship.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136263

Links Roundup

• MK Orlev of Jewish Home (formerly National Religious Party) evokes The Israeli Initiative in an interview with Arutz Sheva: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/135933
• A Palestinian journalist talks about "the good old days" before the peace process: http://www.hudsonny.org/2010/01/the-good-old-days-beofre-peace.php
• A Palestinian refugee camp in Iraq run by UNHCR is closed: http://news.brunei.fm/2010/02/02/unhcr-end-of-long-ordeal-for-palestinian-refugees-as-desert-camp-closes/

UNRWA - A Political Organization

A new English-language play is touring Israel, titled "Building Understanding: Epitaph for a Dead Warehouse." The show combines video clips with a one-man performance by Chris Gunness, who plays the part of a UN warehouse in Gaza described as "the victim of an excruciatingly painful fire that burned me down," due to the IDF using illegal white phosphorous to bomb the building. The videos show the bombing, as well as interviews with the warehouse staff, complaining of being doused by a bomb that "looks like phosphorus, it smells like phosphorus and it burns like phosphorus."

An IDF probe found minimal quantities of phosphorus material, which came from smoke rather than weapons, within the limits of international law. In an interview with Israel National News, Gunness said he had no way to confirm that the shells had, in fact, been fired by IDF soldiers, although his one-man show places the blame squarely on the IDF's shoulders.

Who is Chris Gunness? Who would take out the time, effort and resources to perform such a series of falsehoods, besmirching the reputation of Israel's military (as seems to be de rigeur these days)?

Of course, Chris Gunness is a UN worker.

Gunness, however, is not just any UN worker – he is the head spokesperson for UNRWA. Yes, the same UNRWA that describes itself as having been established "to carry out direct relief and works programmes for Palestine refugees" and "the main provider of basic services – education, health, relief and social services – to…registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East."

The provider of social services to Palestinian refugees proudly displayed an article from McClatchy Newspapers praising Gunness's performance, on its website. This is an interesting strategy, considering that nowhere in its mandate or mission statements is UNRWA given the role of taking political positions and disseminating them; the agency seems to have taken it upon itself to slander Israel.

It's hard to imagine how the Palestinian refugee problem can be solved, while it's in the care of UNRWA. Time and again, this agency shows that it is incapable of handling its mandate and serves values opposite of those of the countries that fund UNRWA. Not only are the vast majority of the agency's workers also recipients of UNRWA's services, which in all other UN agencies is consider a conflict of interest, the agency has also employed members of Hamas and other terrorist groups. The textbooks in UNRWA schools feature inflammatory and incorrect information about the United States and Israel, deny the holocaust, and glorify terror. In this way, UNRWA has served as a conduit for terror since Arafat made refugees the symbol of the Palestinian Nationalist struggle in the 1960s, perpetuating the Israel-Arab conflict rather than helping to assuage it.

Recently, Congressmen like Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Steve Rothman (D-NJ) have proposed the UNRWA Accountability Bill, demanding transparency and responsibility from UNRWA. United States donations to UNRWA in 2009 reached $154.5 million by early October, and may increase before the year's end. The bill seeks to ensure that money sent to UNRWA from the United States does not fund terror, and emphasizes the need to evaluate the curricula in UNRWA schools.

While Kirk and Rothman's actions are praiseworthy, they are not enough. As Middle East analyst Asaf Romirowsky has pointed out, UNRWA works in a way that is opposite of other humanitarian operations and refugee relief agencies, such as the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR encourages resettlement, avoiding political stances and putting refugees in danger, whereas UNRWA favors the "right of return," thus blocking resettlement, takes clear political positions, and is connected to terrorist groups. In 2005, UNHCR served 19.2 refugees and asylum seekers in 116 countries with a budget of $992 million and a staff of 6,450. In the same year, UNRWA had a staff of 24,300 and a $339 million budget for only 4.1 million refugees in only five areas.

Refugees may benefit from UNRWA's services to some extent, but the organization itself seems to benefit much more from the refugees. Without refugees, UNRWA would no longer exist; therefore, UNRWA has no motivation to solve the refugee problem. Clearly, the way to solve the refugee problem is to dismantle UNRWA, and replace it with an organization that can look forward and find solutions, rather than focus on politics and encourage terror.

Sources: http://www.rightsidenews.com/200910196906/global-terrorism/blocking-unrwas-terror-ties.html

http://www.romirowsky.com/6426/unrwa-accountability-bill

http://www.un.org/unrwa/

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134090

UN General Assembly Celebrates 60 Years of UNRWA's Lack of Acheivements

Agency Has Perpetuated Palestinian "Refugeehood" For Sixty Years

This week's United Nations General Assembly has been marked by a week-long commemoration of 60 years of "achievements and service" by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). At a press conference in New York, Karen Koning Abu-Zayd, Commisioner-General of UNRWA, declared that the commemoration was a tribute to the refugees themselves, who thrived "despite being refugees for such a long time and under occupation for 40 of those 60 years." She also emphasized the importance of aiding refugee youth.

It is hard to understand what achievements UNRWA has had that are worth celebrating. Although the agency provides services such as food and education to Palestinian refugees, it has helped cause stagnation and complacency with their current status. While all other refugees, treated by UNHCR, the United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees, are resettled within two years, Palestinian refugees have remained in camps for 60 years, without help in rehabilitation from UNRWA.

"Western countries, which have sought to help the Palestinians, have, over the course of six decades, donated millions to UNRWA – an agency that has not rehabilitated even one refugee, and never will," emphasized former Israeli cabinet minister Benny Elon, founder of The Israeli Initiative. "UNRWA does not serve the Palestinian population; rather, it serves the Palestinian national narrative, and thus eternalizes the conflict, offering the refugees war and blood instead of welfare and life. The time has come to stop the cash flow to UNRWA and once and for all, with a just solution, deal with the refugee problem. Transferring the refugees to UNHCR's care, after 60 years under UNRWA, would be such a solution."

According to Israeli Initiative researcher Gideon Israel, "Sources working in the refugee camps have reported that 90% of the refugees in Gaza would like to emigrate to Western countries, and there are similar statistics for other Palestinian refugees. Contrary to the myth that no states are willing to accept refugees, there are actually many that would absorb Palestinian refugees, such as Canada or Chile. In fact, Palestinian refugees in Iraq were recently relocated to Iceland, Slovakia, Norway and the United States. However, these refugees were under UNHCR's care, not UNRWA. "

Although Abu-Zayd claimed that her greatest wish is to see the end of Palestinian refugeehood, UNRWA's actions speak louder than their words, and those actions say that UNRWA plays no part in rehabilitating refugees. Millions of Palestinians under UNRWA's care are sentenced to remain refugees forever – that is, as long as the State of Israel exists.

There is also an issue with Abu-Zayd's emphasis of the so-called occupation. The majority of Palestinian refugees are not in Israel, therefore the claim that most have been under occupation for 40 years is wrong. Israel cannot be blamed for the refugee situation, when there are many options that are not being sought for the Palestinian refugees, such as the ten countries which have agreed to participate in the UNHCR's refugee absorption program.