Refugees For-evermore

 At what point do "refugees" stop being refugees? 

Jewish Refugees In Yemen, Nov 1949

..... after 10 years? 20 years? 40 years? Inherited refugee status forever and eternally?

Palestinians have been claiming themselves to be refugees since 1949 .... 75 years .... they have been living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, as well as Gaza and the West Bank and elsewhere for 75 years. They have been supported by the rest of the world, who have been giving them aid (that no other groups have received for anything like as long a period), even though they, or around 85% of them, have never lived anywhere else than the countries they are in now or have migrated to.

When UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) was established in 1949,  originally, the displaced in the region included both Arabs, and a significant number of the Mizrahi Jews. But although Israel took responsibility for care of the latter, as you might have predicted, no Arab state wanted responsibility for the Arabs (they loudly claim Arab brotherhood, but with some notable exceptions such as *Jordan, rarely display it). In fact the original resolution included the idea to resettle the Palestinians in the 20+ Arab countries at the time (plus other volunteer Muslim countries), but even though that would have been around 32,000 refugees to each country, under pressure from the rejecting Arabs and the wider Ummah, that provision to relocate and resettle was removed in the 1950's. So UNWRA slowly evolved into being a Palestinian advocacy group rather than a neutral UN agency arm.

However it was never intended that UNRWA be operating 75 years later, and was only created as a temporary support, largely by a world still shocked by the holocaust just 4 years earlier. Apart from the displaced Jews of the region, it was initially caring for the 700,000 Palestinian refugees, who were forced from, or fled their homes, after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Now, it has to give support for over 6 million Palestinians, who still claim they are refugees, even though the majority live outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This claim makes no sense after 75 years.

This is 3 or more generations of Arabs, living in Arab countries, but who are seemingly not citizens of those countries (with whom they share ethnicity, religion, language, history and culture), but are still  claiming the right to live in the land of Israel (with whose Jewish inhabitants they share no language, religion, history, ethnicity or culture).

Palestinian Populations Middle East

It's primarily Western countries that are paying to keep this historical nonsense alive. The Arabs had a war in 1948 to try and destroy the land of Israel and lost. Losers don't get to reset the board and start again. They tried war again in 1967 and 1973 to correct the 1948 result, and lost them as well. The descendants of the original real refugees are not ever going back to retake Israeli lands. That boat sailed long ago, and everyone should acknowledge that as a fact and stop the fiction.

It's time for political and actual reality to step in ... no more UNRWA, the Palestinians are citizens of the countries they now reside legally in. Any further aid should be given to those countries and distributed according to those countries' priorities. 

As mentioned earlier, UNRWA was funded primarily by Western donors (but mostly the USA), and it seems that for reasons of his own, President Trump has decided to cut or stop USAID, including UNRWA in this (he cut US money for UNRWA in his first term as well). The U.S. was UNRWA's biggest donor - providing $300 million-$400 million a year - but former President Joe Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Hamas attacked, and some of its staff were implicated in the attack by Israel. So President Trumps cut, only reaffirms and makes permanent the current US financial position on UNRWA. Israel has said it now prohibits UNRWA from operating on its territory, or communicating with Israeli authorities (which effectively restricts its operations).

Perhaps this will stop the organisation from working (it's not clear if other countries will step up and fill the coffers), but surely it's time to ask the questions. How is this going to ever end? When will Palestinians cease to be called refugees? Will they still be refugees in 100 years time?

*Jordan continues to house a large Palestinian population, despite the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) attempting to overthrow the Jordanian King and government in 1970. Jordan had given full Jordanian citizenship to all Palestinians in the West Bank after it annexed the area in 1950. But despite Palestinians at one point having half the seats in its parliament, the Fatah (formerly the PLO) movement started attacks on Israel from the annexed territory culminating in in a large reprisal raid by Israel in 1966 and resulting in the 1967 Six-day war. This of course was lost by the Arabs and created the usual Palestinian military/political disaster, as Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan ... so all the autonomy of action and movement that they had enjoyed as 'Jordanians' with passports was lost.

The PLO/Fatah made the grab to seize Jordan in 1970. They lost, despite Syrian troops backing them. Similarly in Lebanon, which also housed refugees, plus  PLO/Fatah and its players after their defeat in Jordan ... PLO/Fatah then  involved themselves in the first Lebanese civil war, which resulted in Fatah being expelled to Tunisia.

The Palestinians are always their own worst enemies ... they now face a complete disaster in Gaza, further encroachment in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, and Donald Trumps pronouncements on Gaza, all because of the October attack.