[News] Latest US-Israel Attack on Palestinian Refugees Will Prove Futile

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/latest-us-israel-attack-on-palestinian-refugees-will-prove-futile/ 



  Latest US-Israel Attack on Palestinian Refugees Will Prove Futile

September 26, 2018 <http://www.palestinechronicle.com/2018/09/>
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*By Ramzy Baroud <http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud>*

The US government’s decision to slash funds provided to the UN agency 
that cares for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is part of a new 
American-Israeli strategy aimed at redefining the rules of the game 
altogether.

As a result, UNRWA is experiencing its worst financial crisis. The gap 
in its budget is estimated at about $217 million and is rapidly 
increasing. Aside from future catastrophic events that would result in 
discontinuing services and urgent humanitarian aid to the 5 million 
refugees registered with UNRWA, the impact of the callous US decision is 
already reverberating in many refugee camps across the region. UNRWA has 
downgraded many of its services, laying off many teachers and reducing 
staff and working hours at various clinics.

Nearly 40 percent of all Palestinian refugees live in Jordan, a country 
that is now also overwhelmed by a million Syrian refugees, who sought 
shelter there because of the grinding and deadly war in their own 
country. Aware of Jordan’s vulnerability, American emissaries attempted 
to barter with the country to heed the US demand of revoking the status 
of the 2 million Palestinian refugees there. Instead of funding UNRWA, 
Washington offered to redirect the money directly to the Jordanian 
government. Thus, the US hoped that Palestinian refugee status would no 
longer be applicable. Unsurprisingly, Jordan refused the American offer.

News of this failed barter surfaced last month. It was reported 
<https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/kushner-worked-to-strip-status-of-palestinian-refugees-1.6341143>that 
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Jared Kushner, tried to sway 
the Jordanian government during his visit to Amman in June.

Washington and Israel are seeking to simply remove the right of return 
for Palestinian refugees, as enshrined in international law, from the 
political agenda altogether. Coupled with Washington’s decision 
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/trump-took-jerusalem-off-an-negotiating-table-1.5768097>to 
“remove Jerusalem from the table,” the American strategy is neither 
random nor impulsive.

“It is important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA,” 
Kushner wrote 
<https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/kushner-worked-to-strip-status-of-palestinian-refugees-1.6341143>to 
the US Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, in an email in January. This 
email, among others, was later leaked to Foreign Policy magazine. “This 
(agency) perpetuates a status quo,” he also wrote, referring to UNRWA as 
“corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace.

This notion that UNRWA sustains the status quo — meaning thepolitical 
rights of Palestinians refugees 
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538257?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents>— is 
the main reason for the American war on the organization; a fact that is 
confirmed by statements made by top Israeli officials. Israel’s 
Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, echoed the American sentiment. UNRWA 
“has proven itself an impediment to resolving the conflict by keeping 
the Palestinians in perpetual refugee status,”he said 
<https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/09/02/israeli-leaders-jewish-groups-hail-defunding-of-unrwa/>.

Certainly, the UScutting of funds 
<https://ips-dc.org/trump-administration-tells-palestinian-refugees-to-submit-or-starve/>to 
UNRWA coincides with the defunding of all programs that provide any kind 
of aid to the Palestinian people. But the targeting of UNRWA is mostly 
concerned with the status of Palestinian refugees — a status that has 
irked Tel Aviv for 70 years.

Why does Israel want to make Palestinian refugees status-less? The 
refugee status is already a precarious one. To be a Palestinian refugee 
means living perpetually in limbo — unable to reclaim what has been 
lost, and unable to fashion an alternative future and a life of freedom 
and dignity.

How are Palestinians to reconstruct their identity that has been 
shattered by decades of exile, when Israel has constantly hinged its own 
existence as a “Jewish state” on opposing the return and repatriation of 
Palestinian refugees? As per Israel’s logic, the mere Palestinian demand 
for the implementation of theinternationally sanctioned 
<http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/palestinian-refugees-and-the-right-of-return-in-international-law/>right 
of return is equivalent to acall for Israel’s “destruction.” 
<https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4974678,00.html>According to 
that same faulty logic, the fact that the Palestinian people live and 
multiply is a “demographic threat” 
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ex-mossad-chief-warns-of-demographic-threat/>to 
Israel.

Much can be said about the circumstances behind the creation of UNRWA 
<https://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/201006109246.pdf>by the UN General 
Assembly in December 1949 — its operations, efficiency and the 
effectiveness of its work. But, for most Palestinians, UNRWA is not a 
relief organization per se; being registered as a refugee with UNRWA 
provides Palestinians with a temporary identity, the same identity that 
allowed four generations of refugees to navigate decades of exile.

UNRWA’s stamp of “refugee” on every certificate that millions of 
Palestinians possess — birth, death and everything else in between — has 
served as a compass, pointing back to the places those refugees come 
from. Not the refugee camps scattered in Palestine and across the 
region, but the 600 towns and villages that were destroyed during the 
Zionist assault on Palestine.

These villages may have been erased, as a whole new country was 
established upon their ruins, but the Palestinian refugee remained — 
subsisting, resisting and plotting her return home. UNRWA refugee status 
is the international recognition of this inalienable right.

Therefore, the current US-Israeli war does not target UNRWA as a UN 
body, but as an organization that allows millions of Palestinians to 
maintain their identity as refugees with non-negotiable rights until 
their return to their ancestral homeland. Nearly 70 years after its 
founding, UNRWA remains essential and irreplaceable.

The founders of Israel envisioned a future where Palestinian refugees 
would eventually disappear into the larger population of the Middle 
East. Seventy years on, the Israelis still entertain that same illusion. 
Now, with the help of the Trump administration, they are orchestrating 
yet more sinister campaigns tomake Palestinian refugees vanish 
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-palestinians-un/us-envoy-haley-questions-palestinian-refugee-numbers-idUSKCN1LD2AA>, 
wished away through the destruction of UNRWA and the redefining of the 
refugee status of millions of Palestinians.

The fate of Palestinian refugees seems to be of no relevance to Trump, 
Kushner and other US officials. The Americans are hoping that their 
strategy will finally bring Palestinians to their knees 
<https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/kushner-worked-to-strip-status-of-palestinian-refugees-1.6341143>so 
that they will ultimately submit to the Israeli government’s diktats.

The latest US-Israeli folly will prove futile. Successive US 
administrations have done everything in their power to support Israel 
and to punish the supposedly intransigent Palestinians. The right of 
return, however, remained the driving force behind Palestinian 
resistance, as the Gaza Great March of Return, ongoing since March, 
continues to demonstrate. The truth is that all the money in 
Washington’s coffers will not reverse what is now a deeply embedded 
belief in the hearts and minds of millions of refugees throughout 
Palestine, the Middle East and the world.

/– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine 
Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ 
(Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the 
University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for 
Global and International Studies, University of California Santa 
Barbara. His website is //www.ramzybaroud.net/ 
<http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>/./

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