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href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/latest-us-israel-attack-on-palestinian-refugees-will-prove-futile/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/latest-us-israel-attack-on-palestinian-refugees-will-prove-futile/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Latest US-Israel Attack on Palestinian
Refugees Will Prove Futile</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time"><span
class="entry-meta-date updated"><a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/2018/09/">September
26, 2018</a></span></div>
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<p><strong>By <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud"
title="Display all articles for Ramzy Baroud">Ramzy
Baroud</a></strong></p>
<p><span>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.</span><span><br>
</span><span><br>
</span><span>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. </span><span><br>
</span><span><br>
</span><span>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.</span><span><br>
</span><span><br>
</span><span>News of this failed barter surfaced last
month. It was </span><a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/kushner-worked-to-strip-status-of-palestinian-refugees-1.6341143"><span>reported</span></a><span>
that US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Jared
Kushner, tried to sway the Jordanian government during
his visit to Amman in June.</span></p>
<p><span>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 </span><a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/trump-took-jerusalem-off-an-negotiating-table-1.5768097"><span>decision
</span></a><span>to “remove Jerusalem from the table,”
the American strategy is neither random nor impulsive.</span></p>
<p><span>“It is important to have an honest and sincere
effort to disrupt UNRWA,” </span><a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/kushner-worked-to-strip-status-of-palestinian-refugees-1.6341143"><span>Kushner
wrote</span></a><span> 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.</span></p>
<p><span>This notion that UNRWA sustains the status quo —
meaning the</span><a
href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538257?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents"><span>
political rights of Palestinians refugees</span></a><span>
— 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,”</span><a
href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/09/02/israeli-leaders-jewish-groups-hail-defunding-of-unrwa/"><span>
he said</span></a><span>.</span></p>
<p><span>Certainly, the US</span><a
href="https://ips-dc.org/trump-administration-tells-palestinian-refugees-to-submit-or-starve/"><span>
cutting of funds </span></a><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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 the</span><a
href="http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/palestinian-refugees-and-the-right-of-return-in-international-law/"><span>
internationally sanctioned </span></a><span>right
of return is equivalent to a</span><a
href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4974678,00.html"><span>
call for Israel’s “destruction.”</span></a><span>
According to that same faulty logic, the fact that the
Palestinian people live and multiply is a </span><a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ex-mossad-chief-warns-of-demographic-threat/"><span>“demographic
threat”</span></a><span> to Israel.</span></p>
<p><span>Much can be said about the circumstances behind
the </span><a
href="https://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/201006109246.pdf"><span>creation
of UNRWA</span></a><span> 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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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 to</span><a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-palestinians-un/us-envoy-haley-questions-palestinian-refugee-numbers-idUSKCN1LD2AA"><span>
make Palestinian refugees vanish</span></a><span>,
wished away through the destruction of UNRWA and the
redefining of the refugee status of millions of
Palestinians. </span></p>
<p><span>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 </span><a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/kushner-worked-to-strip-status-of-palestinian-refugees-1.6341143"><span>will
finally bring Palestinians to their knees </span></a><span>so
that they will ultimately submit to the Israeli
government’s diktats.</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><i><span>– 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 </span></i><a
href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><i><span>www.ramzybaroud.net</span></i></a><i><span>.</span></i></p>
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