Looking for a Solution to the Palestinian Refugee Problem? Close UNRWA

The UN Agency does more to perpetuate refugees’ status than any other factor

The cramped house in the teeming Palestinian refugee camp of Daheisha is a hot piece of property. The 60-year-old structure inside Bethlehem is actually worth more than the houses 200 yards away outside of the camp. The house’s occupants are not even refugees from the 1948 war or the children or grandchildren of refugees. What makes the property so valuable, deep in the crowded warren, is the fact that the 12,804 residents of the semi-autonomous Daheisha camp pay no taxes to the Palestinian Authority.
They, like millions of Palestinians, including the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of 1948 refugees, are the wards of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the recipients of free food, health care and schooling. No group of refugees in the world was ever granted the largess the Palestinians receive and for so many decades and generations.

One of the most intractable issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Palestinians’ claim to a “right of return” to homes and properties inside the 1949-1967 boundaries of Israel. 1,327,772 registered Palestinian refugees live in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, according to UNRWA’s annual report. They are a fraction of the purported 4.5 million UNRWA-registered refugees.

For almost 60 years world leaders have grown so accustomed to Palestinians living in refugee camps that they fail to ask two obvious questions: Why are millions of other refugees from historical conflicts like the Indian-Pakistan wars or the more recent Iraq war resettled rather than left to fester in refugee camps? And why in the world are there Palestinian refugee camps inside Palestinian-controlled areas such as Gaza and towns on the West Bank?

Cynics say that the Palestinian refugee camps remain as a perpetual demographic and propaganda tool against Israel. Palestinians are taught in schools and in their media that they will return one day to their purported properties in Haifa, Jaffa and Ashkelon. The mega-cynics claim that the UNRWA structure, with its $500 million annual budget (and hundreds of millions more in “emergency programs” -- $600 million in pledges between 2000 and 2006) and 24,324 employees (teachers, health service, administrative and support staff), is dedicated first and foremost to its own existence and perpetuation.

At what point will the UN appoint and fund an UNRWA office for the commemoration of UNRWA’s centennial?

By comparison, the parallel organization, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees handles millions of refugees at the annual cost of $1.3 billion. One of the UNHCR’s primary goals is resettlement, not the perpetuation of refugee status. “Following World War II, hundreds of thousands of Hungarian, Chilean, Ugandan, Vietnamese and Bosnian refugees have been resettled in a succession of large operations” UNHCR reports. “The ability to resettle refugees in need remains an effective way of offering refugees both protection and a lasting solution to their dilemma… In more than 50 years the UN High Commission for Refugees UNHCR has helped an estimated 50 million people restart their lives. Today, a staff of around 6,289 people in 111 countries continues to help 32.9 million persons.”

UNHCR estimates that 4 million Iraqis were displaced by the Iraq war. More than one million are in Syria; an estimated 750,000 are in Jordan. But, unlike UNRWA, no mechanism is being considered to perpetuate the Iraqi refugee problem – not for a year from now and certainly not for 60 years.

If the UNRWA monopoly were broken, the resettling of Palestinians living in West Bank and Gaza camps could be done immediately on land controlled by the Palestinian Authority – the land called “Area A.” It does not require the formal establishment of a Palestinian state. Large tracts can be purchased from Arab landowners for the construction of major housing projects. Thousands of Palestinian workers can be employed, especially those who used to work in Israel before borders were closed to keep suicide bombers out.

Employing local workers in construction in one small U.S. AID project two years ago provided a major boom to one Gaza neighborhood. Some two million dollars in home improvement loans were provided to 380 families, improving the lives of 1,900 Palestinians, and generating 56,076 person-days of employment, according to the U.S. agency.

By the way, newspaper accounts frequently refer to Gaza as one of the densest populated areas of the world (4,818 residents per square kilometer). Check the stats for Hong Kong (6407 residents per sq. km.) and Singapore (6369). Their population densities are greater than Gaza, but neither country is on the international dole. And if comparing figures, thanks to UNRWA’s health benefits, the Palestinians are among the healthiest and most literate in the Arab world. According to the CIA’s Factbook, life expectancy in Gaza and the West Bank stands at 73 years; in Egypt and Morocco 71 years; in Yemen 62 years. The Palestinians owe UNRWA for their 92 percent literacy. In Egypt literacy stands at 71 percent, Morocco 52 percent, and Yemen 50 percent.

Once Palestinian families can be moved out of the refugee camps into new homes, the ramshackle housing in the Palestinian territories can be razed, making available more land for Palestinian refugees from other countries who may want to resettle in the event that a Palestinian state is formed.

Billions of dollars for the Palestinian Authority were raised by the countries who met in Annapolis in November 2007. What better way to spend that money than putting Palestinians to work building their own housing in their own towns.

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