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February 10, 2023

By maintaining Palestinians' permanent refugee status, the U.N. has perpetuated violence

(Photo courtesy social media)
"...Despite the work being done to promote peaceful solutions in the Middle East through the Abraham Accords, the UN appears to insist on keeping Israel’s very existence in question and disrupting peace-building efforts by ensuring Palestinians remain as permanent refugees.

The UN’s planners must have been absent from school the day the teacher repeated the old adage that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Instead, the UN established the only permanent refugee organization in the world, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Millions of refugees poured out of Syria following President Bashar Assad’s gassing and murder of nearly 500,000 civilians, but no dedicated UN agency was founded for them. Instead, they were quickly assimilated into countries like Germany and Canada. There are no international campaigns or significant Syrian refugee movements on university campuses calling for their return, because most have acclimatized to their new homes — as refugees generally do...

In 1948, the Arab world went to war against the newly founded State of Israel. Many Arab-Palestinians either fought Israel or fled to neighbouring countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Syria), hoping to return when the Jews were pushed into the sea. That did not happen.

Instead of absorbing the refugees into their host countries, UNRWA deliberately kept them in so-called refugee camps. They were (and still are) used as pawns by both their host countries and the UN itself to leverage a ‘final status agreement’ with Israel...

The way back to peace is for the UN and its agencies like UNRWA to stop deceiving the Palestinian people by suggesting that Israel is a temporary political entity. It’s not going anywhere."
Date
February 10, 2023
Title
By maintaining Palestinians’ permanent refugee status, the U.N. has perpetuated violence, National Post
Author(s)
Avi Benlo
Original Source
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-by-maintaining-palestinians-permanent-refugee-status-the-un-has-perpetuated-violence
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Source: https://hrvoices.org/article/by-maintaining-palestinians-permanent-refugee-status-the-u-n-has-perpetuated-violence/?view=print