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Netanyahu, after a meeting with the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, in Jerusalem, said, "It is time the UNRWA be dismantled and merged with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees".
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA | United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine ) was established by the UN General Assembly in 1949 after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the war that followed Israel's creation.
Since its establishment, the UNRWA has provided education, healthcare, and social services to those meeting its definition of "Palestine refugees".
The organisation defines a Palestine refugee as someone whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who lost his/her home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. UNRWA also provides basic services to Palestinians who became displaced as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Today, the UNRWA aids more than five million registered Palestinian refugees in lebaon, Syria, Jordan, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu wants to dismantle the UNRWA because the agency allows Palestinian refugee men to transmit their refugee status from one generation to another. This transmission of refugee status keeps the right of return for Palestinian refugees alive - it ensures that their hopes for returning to their ancestral homeland do not perish with the death of the original 1948 refugees.
Israel has accused the UNRWA of "perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem" by allowing Palestinian refugees to transmit their refugee status to future generations. This accusation aims to shift our attention away from the fact that Israel is solely responsible for perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem by denying the refugees the right to return to their homes.
If the UNRWA is dismantled and merged with the UNHCR, Palestinian refugees scattered all over the Middle East will effectively lose all hope of returning to their homeland. Since the possibility of repatriation is effectively being blocked by Israel, the UNHCR will either integrate them in host countries or resettle them in a third country.
Furthermore, if the UNRWA is dismantled, Palestinian refugees registered with the agency will no longer be excluded from the scope of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons, which calls upon contracting states to facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees.
This exclusion clause was added to the convention by Arab states who wanted to make sure that the principle of naturalisation within the 1951 Convention did not affect the right of return for Palestinian refugees. But if the UNRWA is dismantled, Palestinian refugees will automatically lose their exclusive status.
Arab countries hosting UNRWA camps are not parties to the 1951 Convention, but they still can be affected by this text. Without the UNRWA, Palestinian refugees will fall under the UNHCR mandate which bases its work on the 1951 Convention. This means that Arab countries hosting Palestinian refugees will find themselves under pressure to either integrate Palestinian refugees or agree to their resettlement in a third country. And Palestinian refugees who could not be integrated or resettled will find themselves facing a legal limbo.
If the UNRWA merges with the UNHCR, Palestinian refugees and their descendants will either be integrated or resettled and as a result will no longer be recognised as refugees and lose all hope for repatriation. This is what Netanyahu wants - ending the Palestinian refugee problem by dissolving their refugee status and alongside their right to return to their homeland.
The UNRWA receives its mandate from the UN General Assembly and the assembly members have long been supporting of the agency. But UNRWA's current mandate ends on June 30, 2017, and Netanyahu will try his best to influence the next UN General Assembly vote on the future of the agency.
The UNRWA should continue to exist until a just and fair solution for the Palestinian refugee problem materialises. When members of the UN General Assembly are voting on UNRWA's mandate, we hope that they will remember the words of the UN Security Council Mediator, Folke Bernadotte, who in 1948 noted that "No settlement can be just and complete … if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes."
Bernadotte was assassinated by a Zionist group in 1948 for defending the right of return for Palestinian refugees. The innocent victims he died defending continue to suffer a grave injustice by not being able to return to their homes. In the middle of this injustice, the UNRWA is the only UN agency that can continue to protect and serve Palestinian refugees without stripping them of their right of return. Therefore, saving the UNRWA means saving Palestinian refugees.
Published on World Refugee Day, the study by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) stated that nearly 5.9 million people are registered as refugees with UNRWA, the UN relief agency tasked with dealing with Palestine refugee affairs, 17 per cent live in the West Bank and 24.5 per cent in the Gaza Strip.
As many as 39.1 per cent of Palestinian refugees live in Jordan, 8.8 per cent in Lebanon and 10.6 per cent live in Syria.
In an interview with Quds Press, Ahmad Hanoun, director of the Refugee Department in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said that resolving the refugee issue by ensuring that they return to their abandoned homes in 1948 is “the key to stability in the entire region and the basis of any future political solution to end the conflict”.
Hanoun said the world marks World Refugee Day as the Palestinian refugees at home and in the diaspora live under difficult conditions which are exacerbated by the intensification of regional crises in the Arab region and the Israeli restrictions on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Thousands of Palestinian workers wueue at this Israeli military checkpoint before dawn each dayn Bethlehem, to go to school, to work, to see a doctor, etc.
Resistance is not terrorism. It is a human right
Although the US and Israel both reject the concept of state terrorism (i.e. acts of violence practiced by official state agencies), the above description of Israel’s policies and actions in East Jerusalem should be regarded as terrorist activities. Israel’s violent activities are premeditated, political in nature, and aimed at civilians – i.e., all the factors generally accepted to constitute elements of terrorism.
The nature of Israel’s violence in Jerusalem (as well as in the other occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) is highlighted by the extrajudicial and brutal erasure of Palestinians who exercise their internationally recognized right to resist as described by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/33/24 of 29 November 1978:
Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle; Israel has a long history of extrajudicial killing of Palestinians in and outside Palestine and also a history of trying to prevent reporters from exposing its policy of extra-judicial killing. As Palestinian resistance increases, so does the proliferation of Israel’s extrajudicial killings: Human Rights Watch has documented numerous statements since October 2015, by senior Israeli politicians, including the police minister and defense minister, calling on police and soldiers to shoot to kill suspected attackers, irrespective of whether lethal force is actually strictly necessary to protect life. (Israel/Palestine: Some Officials Backing ‘Shoot-to-Kill’)
So, what to make of the incidents that took place on June 16, 2017, in which three Palestinian young men reportedly conducted two attacks on Israeli police in Jerusalem?
Two Palestinians were shot dead after opening fire at and trying to stab a group of Israeli police officers on Friday night, police said. At the other, a Palestinian fatally stabbed a border policewoman before being shot dead by police…. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the stabbing but the militant Palestinian organisation Hamas and the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said the three attackers and were their own members…. Palestinian media named the attackers as Adel Ankush, 18, from a village near Ramallah, Bra’a Salah, 18, from the same village, and Amar Bedui, 31 from Hebron.
Israel blames the violence on incitement by Palestinian political and religious leaders compounded by social media sites that glorify violence and encourage attacks.
Palestinians say it stems from anger over decades of Israeli rule in territory they claim for their state. (Israeli police officer stabbed to death in Jerusalem attack)
The excerpt from The Guardian above lays out all the dimensions of the tragedy, but in the wrong order.
The reference to the Islamic State is in the subheading of the article, “Three Palestinians armed with knives and a home-made gun launched two attacks and were shot dead in attack claimed by Islamic State”, but the refutation of it is buried inside the story. The Israeli side of the report is up front, the Palestinian side is literally in the last line of the report. The three young men involved are said to have “entered Jerusalem from the West Bank,” as if occupied and illegally annexed East Jerusalem is not part of the West Bank and as if the village of these young men, Deir Abu Mash’al (Dayr Abu-Mashal/Meshal), northwest of Ramallah does not share the same confiscation of land by Israel and Jewish settlement ringing it as does East Jerusalem.
Here is a little bit of information from the village profile online that will connect the dots for you: The Israeli government confiscated hundreds of dunums of lands in Deir Abu Mash‟al to open Israeli bypass road no. 465. This road is constructed and open to connect the Israeli settlements surrounding the village with each other. The real threat of bypass roads lies in the buffer zone formed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) along these roads, extending to approximately 75 m on the roads‟ sides.” (Deir Abu Mash’al (Dayr Abu-Mashal/Meshal), Ramallah gov.)
In all justice, we should be condemning the instigators of the violence in Jerusalem, the brutal oppression and erasure of Palestinians meant to ensure the “Jewish character”, i.e., the “right” of Israel to exist as a Jewish state on stolen land. We should do what the United Nations General Assembly has already done (Resolution A/RES/33/24): “Strongly condemns all Governments which do not recognize the right to self-determination and independence of peoples under colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, notably the peoples of Africa and the Palestinian people.”
. Alternet: New Report Exposes Direct Israeli Support for Al Qaeda-Allied Forces in S
. Middle East Monitor: 'We cannot bear the repeated Nakba anymore', says Abou Omar, a Palestinian refugee who lived in Yarmouk camp in Syria before the war broke and thousands of Palestinian refugees were slaughtered.
. The Independent: Government acted unlawfully by restricting 'ethical' boycotts of Israel
. Human Rights Watch: Israeli Forces Kill Gaza Fisherman at Sea
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BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!
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Palestinian artist Steve Sabella has dedicated his practice to investigating “why I felt alienated where I should belong,” namely, the city of Jerusalem where he was born.
BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!
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