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One of the most important statements on Mideast policy over the past four years. It's more than eight years in the making. USG finally upends the fiction of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Numbers & policy statements to be cited by scholars for years. Thread. https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1349832113923780610
UNRWA claims to serve millions of “Palestinian refugees." These "refugees" are in some cases kept in poverty and hopelessness, told they are waiting for the day when they will return to their rightful homes within modern Israel (to end the Jewish majority of the state).
Of course, most people served by UNRWA don’t meet basic criteria for refugee status. Most are either citizens of other countries or live within Palestinian territories. Most were not displaced by conflict. Yet @StateDept has promoted UNRWA’s fiction for decades - with taxpayer $.
Flashback to May 2012: an amendment sponsored by former US Sen. Mark Kirk passed the Senate Appropriations Committee requiring the State Department to estimate how many people served by UNRWA were truly refugees. https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/05/24/senate-fight-today-over-palestinian-refugees/
Here's another good after-action on the fight over the Kirk amendment from @JRubinBlogger -- a fight that has continued until today. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/un-refugee-battle-reveals-what-the-pa-is-up-to/2012/05/25/gJQAG40NpU_blog.html
At the time @JSchanzer wrote a compelling piece in @ForeignPolicy as to why the Kirk amendment was needed to end UNRWA's fictions. https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/05/21/status-update/
The Obama administration sent a report in 2015 to the Hill but classified it to hide any numbers. This sparked outrage among UNRWA’s critics, but detractors of Israel who appreciate UNRWA as a tool of political warfare targeting Israel thought they were in the clear. Not so much.
In 2018, @FDD @JSchanzer & I called on the Trump administration to release the estimate of actual refugees served by UNRWA and make clear that UNRWA is not a refugee agency – it is a scam. https://www.wsj.com/articles/expose-the-palestinian-refugee-scam-1530833146?mod=article_inline
In 2020, @FDD @JSchanzer & I once again called on the outgoing administration to take these steps – cementing a lasting legacy on one of the most important remaining hurdles to Palestinian-Israeli peace. https://nypost.com/2020/11/23/how-trump-can-expose-biggest-lie-in-middle-east-palestinian-refugee-myth/
Today, the Secretary of State spoke truth. It's estimated fewer than 200,000 Arabs displaced by the 1948 conflict are still alive. Notably, this is the high estimate among researchers with <30,000 being the low. But the outcome is the same – UNRWA’s millions are not refugees.
Further, @SecPompeo rightly calls for UNRWA’s mandate to end. Keeping people in a false refugee status, impoverished & hopeless is a violation of Palestinian human rights. As we look at changing paradigms with the Abraham Accords, ending UNRWA’s mandate must be high on the list.
All of this raises serious policy questions for Congress and the incoming administration as it promises to restore funding to UNRWA. Why is funding to UNRWA provided from refugee assistance accounts and/or overseen by State's refugee bureau? This should change via appropriations.
If most of these non-refugee individuals are citizens of another country or residents of the Palestinian territories, why aren't we providing assistance to support these individuals bilaterally? What is the plan to move to bilateral assistance and who should oversee that?
And what of the Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords that continue to fund UNRWA. The fiction of UNRWA and its mandate is built as a political weapon to delegitimize and destroy Israel. How does that align with the terms of the Accords?
I'll end with this: lifting the veil on UNRWA's fiction, recognizing its registrants aren't refugees & calling for an end to UNRWA's mandate is pro-peace and pro-Palestinian human rights. Anyone who says otherwise has an incompatible agenda with peace and Palestinian prosperity.
