Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The fetid, dark heart of the Arab war on Israel, I have
long argued, lies not in disputes over Jerusalem, checkpoints, or
"settlements." Rather, it concerns the so-called Palestine refugees.
So-called because of the nearly 5 million official
refugees served by UNRWA (short for the "United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East"), only about 1 percent are
real refugees who fit the agency's definition of "people whose normal
place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both
their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli
conflict." The other 99 percent are descendants of those refugees, or what
I call fake refugees.
Perversely, UNRWA feted its 60th anniversary in 2009, as
though this were something to be proud of.
Worse: those alive in 1948 are dying off and in about
fifty years not a single real refugee will remain alive, whereas (extrapolating
from an authoritative estimate in Refugee Survey Quarterly by Mike Dumper)
their fake refugee descendants will number about 20 million. Unchecked, that
population will grow like Topsy until the end of time.
This matters because the refugee status has harmful
effects: It blights the lives of these millions of non-refugees by
disenfranchising them while imposing an ugly, unrealistic irredentist dream on
them; worse, the refugee status preserves them as a permanent dagger aimed at
Israel's heart, threatening the Jewish state and disrupting the Middle East.
Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict, in short, requires
ending the absurd and damaging farce of proliferating fake Palestine refugees
and permanently settling them. 1948 happened; time to get real.
I am proud to report that, in part based on the work
carried out by the Middle East Forum's Steven J. Rosen and myself over the past
year, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee on May 24 unanimously passed a
limited but potentially momentous amendment to the $52.1 billion fiscal 2013
State Department and foreign operations appropriations bill.
The amendment, proposed by Mark Kirk (Republican of
Illinois) requires the State Department to inform Congress about the use of the
annual $240 million of direct American taxpayer funds donated to Palestine
refugees via UNRWA. How many recipients, Kirk asks, meet the UNRWA definition
cited above, making them real refugees? And how many do not, but are
descendants of those refugees?
The Kirk amendment does not call for eliminating or even
reducing benefits to fake refugees. Despite its limited nature, Kirk calls the
reporting requirement a "watershed." Indeed, it inspired what a
senior Senate GOP aide called "enormous opposition" from the
Jordanian government and UNRWA itself, bringing on what Foreign Policy
magazine's Josh Rogin called a raging battle.
Why the rage? Because, were the State Department
compelled to differentiate real Palestine refugees from fake ones, the U.S. and
other Western governments (who, together, cover over 80 percent of UNRWA's
budget) could eventually decide to cut out the fakes and thereby undermine
their claim to a "right of return" to Israel.
Sadly, the Obama administration has badly botched this
issue. A letter from Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides opposing an
earlier version of the Kirk amendment demonstrates complete incoherence. On the
one hand, Nides states that Kirk would, by forcing the U.S. government "to
make a public judgment on the number and status of Palestinian refugees …
prejudge and determine the outcome of this sensitive issue." On the other,
Nides himself refers to "approximately five million [Palestine]
refugees," thereby lumping together real and fake refugees – and
prejudging exactly the issue he insists on leaving open. That 5-million refugee
statement was no fluke; when asked about it, State Department spokesman Patrick
Ventrell confirmed that "the U.S. government supports" the guiding
principle to "recognize descendants of refugees as refugees."
Also, by predicting a "very strong negative reaction
[to the amendment] from the Palestinians and our allies in the region,
particularly Jordan," Nides invited Arabs to pressure the U.S. Senate, a
shoddy maneuver unworthy of the State Department.
Through all of Israel's 64-year existence, one American
president after another has resolved to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet
every one of them ignored the ugliest aspect of this confrontation – the
purposeful exploitation of a refugee issue to challenge the very existence of
the Jewish state. Bravo to Sen. Kirk and his staff for the wisdom and courage
to begin the effort to address unpleasant realities, initiating a change that
finally goes to the heart of the conflict.
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