End UNRWA funding

"UNRWA is a huge impediment to actionable understanding in the Arab world – and particularly among Palestinians – that Israel is a legitimate and permanent part of the Middle East. Making Israel real to people who delude themselves on that point is key to honest negotiations about the future of a Palestinian state...

UNRWA has an interest in a) keeping the refugees poor enough to need them and b) cozying up to repressive Palestinian governments – Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – and terror organizations including Hezbollah in Lebanon to continue working.

UNRWA perpetuates the notion that as the refugee population grows, it needs more money. Today UNRWA claims about 30,000 -50,000 original refugees, and 4,950,000 descendants. (Palestinians claim there are 6 million refugees – a number with historic resonance.) But watch out for those numbers. The Jewish Policy Center wrote a recently about an enormous over count of refugees in Lebanon:

UNRWA in Lebanon reports on its website that 449,957 refugees live under its protection in 12 camps, but a survey by Lebanon's Central Administration of Statistics, together with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, could only find 174,535.

Notice that UNRWA had nothing to do with that census. Would the same discrepancies emerge if a similarly serious census was taken on the West Bank and in Gaza, where UNRWA claims 2.15 million registered refugees? Is UNRWA taking more and more money for fewer and fewer actual clients?

Rather than trying to unwind a 67-year-old agency, the Trump administration's policies can render it moot.

First, transfer the U.S. contribution and control of the refugees to the UN High Commission on Refugees – which has the mission of resettling people in countries that will have them. It doesn't have to be done all at once, but it will have the effect over time of caring for the original refugees and organizing their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren for productive citizenship.

Second, to underpin the importance of the change, stop granting 'refugee' status to the descendants of the original refugees – no other population is permitted to hand down both status and stipends that way..."