On the Palestinian Right of Return and UNRWA funding
Craig Turner, 14 May 2024
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Before the Second World War, there were significant populations of ethnic
Germans living in regions outside of Germany across eastern europe. These were
families who spoke German but had not lived in territorial Germany, often for
generations. These people bore no responsibility for the war.

In the aftermath of the war, twelve million ethnic Germans were expelled from
their lands, or otherwise compelled to flee. These people suffered injustice.

There is no pattern of terrorist activity by displaced ethnic Germans against
modern states where their ancestors were removed from their land.

In 1948, some 700k Palestinian arabs were displaced in the 1948 Arab-Israeli
War. Arab nations joined the war against the Jewish cause, but were
unsuccessful. The outcome of the war was the formation of Israel, and the
permanent displacement of those arabs who had moved during the conflict.

The arab world did not accept the result of that war, and launched follow-up
wars in 1967 and 1973. In each case, Israel won decisively.

Though some arab states have made their peace with Israel since then, several
others and Iran continue to fund military and terrorist activity against
Israel. [1]

In 1949, the UN set up the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to
assist displaced Palestinians adjust to new circumstances. It has failed to
achieve its mission, and has been compromised by activist capture - employees
who operate on the basis of their personal political agendas rather than being
guided by the mission of the entity.

Seventy five years after the 1948 war, it is common for Palestinian political
organisations and the UNRWA to claim a /right of return/ for Palestinian arabs
to lands that now reside in territorial Israel. The origins of this phrase are
complicated [2], but it has become a form of weasel words that implicitly deny
Israeli sovereignty.

The country that existed before the 1948 war was the British-run Mandatory
Palestine. That arrangement ceased in 1948. More than half of Mandatory
Palestine was replaced by the state of Israel, with the remaining land
becoming the Palestinian territories with complex sovereignty split between
Israel, UN NGOs and local Palestinian leaders.

There is an analogy between this change of land control, and European border
changes after the Second World War.

The right-of-return mantra discourages Palestinian arabs from accepting the
reality of their circumstances, and incites conflict.

For decades the western world has poured money into the Palestinian
territories with a stated goal of helping the Palestinian arabs to emerge from
poverty and to form a respectable state. The Palestinian people at large
experience poor value from this funding. The funds are routinely lost to
corruption.

For the last twenty years the groups that control Gaza have been directing
donations intended for nation-building towards terrorism.

There is a moral imperative not to fund terrorism.

Western nations should require organisations operating in the region to
explicitly reject the right-of-return and to recognise the state of Israel as
a condition of receiving aid.

We should view this as a litmus test for the amount of damage that Israel is
justified in bringing to Hamas and its sympathisers in the current
Israel-Hamas war. The job is not done until it is possible for organisations
that explicitly reject the right-of-return to operate unhindered across Gaza
and the West Bank.



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[1] There has been a slow momentum towards arab states forming non-hostile
relations with Israel. Relations with Egypt became stable in the 1970s, and
Jordan in the 1980s. Iraq has not antagonised Israel since the Hussein regime
collapse in 2003.

Syria and the defacto government of South Lebanon continue to organise attacks
on Israel, as does the Persian state of Iran.

These regimes routinely offer lip service to Palestinian causes (e.g. motions
at the United Nation), but none currently offer resettlement options for
Palestinian arabs. There are large populations of Palestinian refugees in
Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In Syria they have the same rights as Syrian
citizens (for whatever that is worth), but inferior rights to citizens in
Jordan and Lebanon.

[2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_194