In the Trenches: Why are Palestinian refugees different from all other refugees?

8/14/2019 In the Trenches: Why are Palestinian refugees different from all other refugees?

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In the Trenches: Why are Palestinian refugees different from all otherrefugees?

David Harris, Executive Director, American Jewish Committee (AJC)

Jerusalem Post Blog

Why indeed?

Tragically, there have been countless refugees in the annals of history.

Many have fled political persecution, religious harassment, racial or ethnic targeting, or

gender or sexual discrimination.

Its happened in just about every era.

In the twentieth century alone, tens of millions of refugees, if not more, were compelledto find new homes - victims of world wars, border adjustments, population transfers,

political demagoguery, and social pathologies.

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne codified the population exchange of Greeks and Turks,totaling more than 1.5 million people. Ancestral homes were wiped out on both sides.

Massive numbers of Hindus and Muslims were moved to accommodate the partition of the sub-continent into two independent nations - India and Pakistan.

Refugees by the millions, unable to return to their countries, were created as a result of the twelve-year Third Reich.

Czechs, East Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and Romanians fled the suffocation of Soviet-led tyranny whenever the opportunity presented itself.

The exodus from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam after the victory of Communist and rebelforces was massive.

Refugee flows from Africas civil and tribal wars, as well as its dictatorships, have beenconstant.

Yemenis were expelled from Saudi Arabia by the hundreds of thousands during the firstGulf War due to Yemens support for Saddam Husseins Iraq.
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Countless Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims fled, or were expelled, due to Serbianaggression.

And this is just the tip of the refugee iceberg.

In fact, I dont have to look very far to understand the unending refugee crises of our times - or the trauma they have created.

My mother and her family fled oppressive Bolshevik rule and Soviet anti-Semitism in1929, among the last to leave before the exit gates sealed shut. They arrived in Paris andhad to start over again - new language, new culture, new everything. Eleven years later,they were on the road again, this time courtesy of the Nazis and their Frenchcollaborators. They were on the run for eighteen months before they were among the veryfew to make it to the United States . Once more, new language, new culture, neweverything.

My fathers story was similar. From Germany to Austria, thanks to Hitler, and a new start.From Austria to France, again thanks to Hitler, and another new start. And, after the war,from shattered Europe to the United States and a third new start. He, too, found hisfooting and moved on.

And my wife and her family, whose roots in Libya predated the Arab conquest andoccupation - yes, conquest and occupation - by centuries, were ousted from the country in1967. Of course, they had an alternative. They could have stayed and been killed by therampaging mobs looking for Jews. They, like other refugees, had to start anew in Italy.

Yet, rather than wallow in victimization, allow themselves to be exploited by

unscrupulous leaders, or become consumed by hatred and revenge, they established newlives, grateful to their adopted lands for making it possible.

The same was the case with the Indochinese refugees with whom I worked in the late1970s and early 1980s, including the couple that my wife and I sponsored to come to theUS. And with the Soviet and East European refugees I worked with for several years just

before.

At the end of 2007, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)counted 11.4 million refugees in its jurisdiction, with the largest populations being fromAfghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, Sudan, and Somalia. Over five decades, UNHCR estimates

that it has assisted 50 million refugees "to help restart their lives." Refugees are definedas those with "a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion..."

And yet, of all the worlds refugees, one group - the Palestinians - are treated entirelydifferently from all others.
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Indeed, the 1951 Refugee Convention explicitly does not apply to Palestinians, who fallwithin the purview of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for PalestineRefugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

There is no equivalent UN body for any other refugee group in the world.

The definition of a refugee under the UNRWA mandate is also unique. It covers alldescendants, without generational limitation, of those deemed refugees in 1948. Thishelps explain why its caseload has nearly quintupled since 1950.

Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA does not seek to resettle Palestinian refugees, but rather provides social services while, in effect, keeping them in perpetual limbo.

And despite the crocodile tears shed by Arab countries, many of which today are awashin petrodollars, about the plight of their Palestinian brethren, they have been among themost miserly donors to UNRWA. They callously assert that it is not their responsibility to

care for refugees created by the decisions of others. The top six donors to UNRWA thisyear are the US and European governments, with miniscule amounts donated by a fewArab nations and nothing by others.

By the way, I should hasten to clarify that only those Palestinians who are seen as victimsof the Arab-Israeli conflict are given this special treatment.

In 1991, when Kuwait summarily threw out an estimated 400,000 Palestinians for their alleged support of Iraqs Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, there wasnt a peepfrom the international community. Arab violations of Arabs human rights are vieweddifferently, if theyre noticed at all.

And in countries like Lebanon, with a large Palestinian refugee population under UNRWA auspices, the government has long imposed restrictions on the Palestinian rightto work in many professions and trades. But there has never been an outcry.

So, we are confronted by an unprecedented situation.

Palestinians are not the worlds first refugee population, but they may be the first tolament their perpetual refugee status while resisting any effort to resolve it.

Think about it. In 1947, the UN offered a two-state solution to address two competing

national claims. The Jews accepted it; the Arabs rejected it. Or in UN-speak, the"proposed Arab State failed to materialize." Had it been otherwise, two states might haveemerged, and with any luck, learned to live side by side. To this day, that two-stateconcept remains the most feasible outcome.

Instead, the Arab side went to war. Has there been any war that didnt produce refugees?Yet the Arab world blames Israel for the refugees from a war it ignited.


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Meanwhile, that same Arab-Israeli conflict produced a greater number of Jewish refugeesfrom Arab countries, who resettled elsewhere with little fanfare.

Then, by design, the Palestinian refugees were kept in camps, as wards of theinternational community, to serve as permanent reminders of the impermanence of their

situation. Taught to focus their hatred on Israel, rather than to hold their own leadersaccountable for using them as pawns, they have been denied opportunities for new lives.

Even now, three years after Israel totally withdrew from Gaza, astonishingly, nearly500,000 Palestinians continue to live in UNRWA refugee camps there. Why?

While the Palestinians are among the worlds largest per capita aid recipients, as Britishofficial Kim Howells has noted, much of that aid has been siphoned off to line the

pockets of corrupt Palestinian officials - who then turn around and seek more aid for their allegedly neglected people.

Its the same absurd logic that Hamas deploys when it decries energy shortages whileshelling the Israeli power plants that provide electricity to Gaza.

The whole process is abetted by an elaborate and well-funded UN apparatus,encompassing more than just UNRWA, created by the majority of member states tosupport the Palestinian cause. It goes without saying that Darfuris, Kurds, Tibetans, andothers who believe they have suffered from injustice and occupation have no comparableUN bodies to advance their cause.

This is not to say that Palestinians have had easy lives. They havent. It is to say that their leaders, with the complicity of many in the international community, have pulled off one

of the most successful spin jobs in history. Rather than settle the refugees - just likeuntold others - they have shamelessly exploited the refugees instead.

Therein lies the irreducible tragedy of a decades-long conflict.

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In the Trenches: Why are Palestinian refugees different from all other refugees?