World Refugee Day; Not for Palestinians

World Refugee Day; Not for Palestinians

Ibrahim Alsaafin


In UNHCR history, refugees of war and natural catastrophes have been taken care of. Whenever a conflict starts, UNHCR was there to provide food and shelter for the becoming homeless in one direction, and applying some pressure to ensure their return to their original land and homes, if they still there.

Two years before UNHCR was founded, a forced displacement against the majority of Palestinians who were exiled from their lands to refugee camps took place, where UN took the initiative and founded UNRWA to take care of them. Two years later, no hope was rising in the horizon for those refugees to return home. UNHCR was founded, but Palestinians were kept under the umbrella of UNRWA, maybe because one of UNHCR goals is to work on ensuring the return of refugees.


As years were passing, the tents became houses. And as the population of Palestinian refugees kept growing, the houses became buildings on the same spot and boundaries of the original tent encampments back in 1948. Now, the refugee camps are neighborhoods, poor ones though, distributed between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, West Bank and Gaza Strip. People there living day to day while their case is completely ignored on the negotiations table. What negotiations anyway!


More than 66% of the Palestinian people are refugees. Having the UNRWA to take care of them makes it a government-like institution who provides education, health care, quarterly food supplies and vacancies to refugee workers, but not the pursuit their right of return.

It's clearly obvious why the Palestinians were meant to remain under UNRWA not UNHCR; because they meant to remain refugees for a very long time. Meanwhile the allocations of UNRWA have been sized down while the Palestinian refugees are restricted from working freely in their refuge destinations, more repulsive factors are added on them to start searching for new places to immigrate to, far far away from the surroundings of their lost land.

These places grow do not they? I mean the refugees have made these areas into a village. As the population grows so will the demands to sustain them. This means more money in million's of dollars that come from Europe and USA.

I wonder how will Europe & USA endure the added expenses of normal population growth demands in order to continue relieving the originally displaced refugees?

If you have been a refugee for 65 years, there is a good chance that your current host doesn't want you to be a part of their society. A society that shares your faith and values but has done little or nothing to assimilate you into their society.

AliHajiSheik said:

If you have been a refugee for 65 years, there is a good chance that your current host doesn't want you to be a part of their society. A society that shares your faith and values but has done little or nothing to assimilate you into their society.

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But should not Israel be paying for their well being through UNRWA? Why should we pay for the side effects of Israel's being?

What ran out of money? World's richest people could sustain them instead of us. Perhaps would help with taking into consideration of assimilating the refugees back an all. While we are taking care of this side effect I do not see why Israel should bother with these refugees?

How convenient!

You are dealing with the symptoms not with the disease; the only fair solution for those refugees is to go back to their own lands currently occupied by overseas settlers.
this will stop money drain for UNRWA (Which USA is not the main contributor by the way, besides the allocations are being downsized) and will solve any problem emerged by the existence of the refugees in the hosting countries.

refugees have the right to return, immediately. this is the indisputable justice. above that, they have the right for fair compensation for the 65 years of suffer.

ibrahim said:

You are dealing with the symptoms not with the disease; the only fair solution for those refugees is to go back to their own lands currently occupied by overseas settlers.
this will stop money drain for UNRWA (Which USA is not the main contributor by the way, besides the allocations are being downsized) and will solve any problem emerged by the existence of the refugees in the hosting countries.

refugees have the right to return, immediately. this is the indisputable justice. above that, they have the right for fair compensation for the 65 years of suffer.

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My point was that Israel would not even consider taking refugees back right away because conveniently to them they are not paying for the well being of refugees there through UNRWA. Why should they care about this situation? It is not them being harmed financially in anyway?

If they are forced to pay for you though, it may become a more issue. Instead of draining millions of dollars to mere sustain you, especially if by most odds people naturally grow (more costs), it may be cheaper to get you back and assimilate back to Israel. You would be paying taxes and as such may be less of a drain of their money. As it is it is too convenient for Israel to take you back to your lands.

You go back to Israel peacefully of course. For no one wants troublemakers.

Most of these "refugees" are in Gaza and the West Bank. They are home, now start cleaning up the place and stop taking resources away from real refugees.

I would suggest that all the Arabs who left the area voluntarily at the behest of calls from their leaders to do so should be allowed to return provided they can document the fact they lived there 65 years ago.

Everybody else should be allowed to live where they were born and be given appropriate citizenship.

Calling people a "refugee" from an area upon which they have never set foot is ridiculous. I am not a refugee from Ireland because my ancestors chose to leave it any more than the vast majority of those Arabs who recently begun calling themselves "Palestinian" are refugees from Israel.

EVERY DAY is 'Refugee day' for the 'Palestinians' who Hog the world's refugee resources from being used for the truly needy.
80% of the UN refugee apparatus/resource is used for the minority called Palestinians, virtually none of whom are refugees in the classic sense.

http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2011/12/19/ending-unrwa-and-advancing-peace/ said:

by Elliott Abrams - December 19, 2011

Since the end of the Second World War, millions of refugees have left refugee camps, and refugee status, and moved to countries that accepted them–quickly or slowly–as citizens. Post-World War II Europe was an archipelago of displaced persons and refugee camps, housing 850,000 people in 1947–Czechs, Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Latvians, Greeks, and many more nationalities. By 1952, all but one of the camps had closed. Hundred of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe went to Israel after 1948, and then hundreds of thousands more arrived from Arab lands when they were forced to flee after 1956 and 1967. The children and grandchildren of these refugees, born after their arrival, were never refugees themselves; they were from birth citizens of the new land, as their parents had become immediately upon their own arrival. In this process many nations and agencies have played wonderful roles, not least the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The exception to this refugee story is the Palestinians. In most of the Arab lands to which they fled or travelled after 1948 they were often treated badly, and refused citizenship (with Jordan the major exception) or even the right to work legally. And instead of coming under the protection of UNHCR, they had a special agency of their own, UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency. In the decades of its existence, it has not solved or even diminished the Palesinian refugee problem; instead it has presided over a massive increase in its size, for all the descendants of Palestinian refugees are considered to be refugees as well. Once there were 750,000; now there are Five Million people considered by UNRWA to be “Palestinian refugees.” And UNRWA is now the Largest UN agency, with a staff of 30,000.
UNHCR cares for the rest of the world with about 7,500 personnel.

The political background to this story is simple: only in the case of Israel was there a determined refusal to accept what had happened during and after World War II,".."

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Summer Camps considered refugee agency work?
Real refugees are starving worldwide.
Marathons organized by UNRWA schools.
Maybe speak to the Saudis/Gulf States about funding them. The USA/EU can't afford all but dire need these days.
Gaza children run marathon to raise funds for UN summer camps - Haaretz | Israel News

Runners take part in a 10 km race, as part of the second annual Gaza Marathon,
organized by the UNRWA in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip March 1, 2012.
Reuters.


Meanwhile in ie, Kenya, the world's largest Refugee camp at 1/2 a Million

Somali boys fetch water from a puddle that formed after rain
at the sprawling Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya, October 2011.
World

Others in Africa are in even worse straights with no agencies/no pictures. UN is too busy demonizing Israel by pampering persecuted-Palestinians into the 4th generation of refugee-hood.

The Only real 'Middle East' refugees here just posted.
I Refuse further comment in this string when and if it's moved to that section.