In 2022, UNRWA raised $1.175 billion, quite a haul. Of that money, $751 million came from designated programs while the balance was raised in emergency appeals.
The biggest donors by far were western countries, seemingly overcome with guilt that Palestinian Arabs haven’t been successful yet in destroying Israel.
Country
2022 Contribution
$ per Citizen
United States
$344 million
$1.01
Germany
$202 million
$2.43
European Union
$114 million
Sweden
$61 million
$5.87
Norway
$34 million
$6.30
Japan
$30 million
$0.24
France
$29 million
$0.43
Saudi Arabia
$27 million
$0.75
Switzerland
$26 million
$2.99
Turkey
$25 million
$0.29
Top 10 donors to UNRWA in 2022
The Scandinavian countries of Norway and Sweden were by far the most drawn to UNRWA. Not only were they among the top ten donor countries, they far exceeded all countries on a per capita contribution – 20 times as much at Turkey.
There were only two Muslim countries in the top 10 donors, one of which isn’t Arab. Despite the trillions of petrol dollars coming from the Gulf, most countries couldn’t be bothered with sending money to UNRWA.
Some of the largest Muslim countries in the world – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia – gave a grand total of $459,000. The total population of those four countries is 708.2 million, meaning each person gave UNRWA an average of $0.0006. Egypt, abutting Gaza with about 85 million Muslims, didn’t send a single dollar.
Consider the countries hosting UNRWA facilities including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and “Palestine” which is not recognized by most of UNRWA’s major donors. Each only contributed “in-kind,” essentially meaning giving office space to UNRWA for free.
It’s not as though Iran doesn’t give money to Palestinians, or Qatar limits its funding to the $10.5 million it contributed in 2022. It just sends the money directly to the political-terrorist group Hamas without the pitstop at the UN.
While the United Nations might sound global, it’s funded by western democracies while serving the “global South” and agendas of dictatorships and Islamic regimes (DIRs), including 50 Muslim-majority countries. Those DIRs channel western dupes’ monies to their causes via the UN, while simultaneously directly funding the more radical parts of their agendas.
The western world is complicit in funding the fungible farce. While it knows full well that Palestinians favor terrorism and want the destruction of Israel, it sends “humanitarian” money for education and health services through the United Nations, knowing that the military component is funded directly by DIRs.
In light of the recent reports that many UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 pogroms, that over one thousand aided and abetted the atrocities and several thousand employees cheered the massacre, many western countries have suspended funding of that deeply problematic UN agency.
The evidence that UNRWA is complicit in aiding the Hamas antisemitic war has been publicly known for many years. Tunnels and armaments are found throughout UNRWA schools and a teacher was a famed bomb maker for Hamas. UNRWA textbooks have long called for jihad and killing Jews.
This reality is baked into the very nature of UNRWA staffing. While the United Nations typically appoints a White European to oversee the organization to make it appear as a European entity, almost every single employee is a local Palestinian Arab.
Using UNRWA’s own information from 2019-2020, when the agency broke information into finer detail, there is barely any international staff working in Gaza or the West Bank. Between the two regions, only 44 out of 15,850 staff, or 0.3% were from outside of the region. Further, UNRWA mostly hires the descendants of Palestinian refugees as seen in the graphic above. Roughly 96% of UNRWA’s Gaza staff claims to be a “refugee.”
According to a 2017 UNRWA report, “With the exception of 155 international staff posts funded by the General Assembly through the UN regular budget, UNRWA operations are supported through voluntary contributions.” The Swiss, Norwegian and other global staff of UNRWA are paid by the United Nations and the rest of the world contributes whatever it wants whenever it wants to the over $1 billion UNRWA budget.
And the western donors are finally done.
UNRWA is a front for the world to funnel money to descendants of internally displaced Arabs, who speak the same language near the same neighborhoods with the same people as grandparents did. The UN ignores facts and calls them “refugees,” and promises that they’re going to get to move into towns where grandparents lived 75 years ago in Israel, going from a third-world economy to a first world society, in yet another form of misplaced expiation.
In its most benevolent form, it’s ransom via guilt. In reality, it is in funding terrorism and destroying any possibility for coexistence.
Israel accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of having many staff members involved in the October 7 Palestinian genocidal attack against Israel. In response, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asked UNRWA to investigate itself, and find out the veracity of the charges and to fire those who committed atrocities.
Several western countries, who make up the majority of the funding of the UN agency, suspended their contributions. They include the United States, U.K., Finland, Australia, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Iceland and Estonia. So far.
This is not a surprise. UNRWA is staffed almost exclusively by Palestinian Arabs; only the thin veneer of the executive management is European.
UNRWA has long been known and accused of teaching students to kill Jews and destroy Israel. Many staff members have been bomb makers for Hamas. Tunnel shafts at UNRWA schools lead down to Hamas’s terrorist tunnels.
In February 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives put forward H.R. 1102 “The UNRWA Accountability Act” which called for withholding funds to the UN Palestinian group if “UNRWA staff and partners nor its funding and facilities are affiliated with terrorism or disseminating certain rhetoric, such as calling for the destruction of Israel or describing Israelis as occupiers or settlers.” The U.S. Senate had a similar bill, S.431.
For much of 2023, Israel had been rooting out terrorists from UNRWA schools in the West Bank, Jenin in particular. UNRWA’s West Bank terrorists committed and planned to commit several attacks against Jews. Those terrorists were not only from Hamas which carried out the October 7 massacre, but the Jenin Brigades and Lion’s Den, other very popular terrorist groups.
UNRWA in Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
Guterres has asked donor countries to renew payments to the agency, arguing that a few bad apples shouldn’t mean that millions of Palestinian Arabs should suffer.
But he completely misses the point.
UNRWA is the leading CAUSE of the October 7 attacks. Its mission of funneling billions of dollars into Gaza and the West Bank to employ Palestinian Arabs and miseducate them that Israel is an illegal European colonial state and that millions of descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 have an “inalienable right” to move into the Jewish State is the main reason that the conflict has dragged on for decades. UNRWA in Gaza and the West Bank must be dismantled and the agency’s operations in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should be folded into the other agency to handle refugees, UNHDR.
The United States has taken the first steps in UNRWA Accountability. It must lead to the termination of the toxic agency to forge a pathway towards coexistence.
The United Nations has long been a terrible actor in the Israeli-Arab conflict, perpetuating the conflict through terrible policies and procedures. One of the worst offenses which contributed to the October 7 massacre and the current Gaza War was backing the “right of return” for millions of Arabs into Israel.
The United Nations agency, UNRWA, services roughly 7.5 million people of which 6.7 million are registered as refugees, with another 763,000 on the global dole. The vast majority of the 7.5 million are descendants of people who used to live in Israel in 1947. Amongst these so-called “refugees,” approximately 1.8 million live in Gaza and 1.1 million in the West Bank, a total of 2.9 million, or 43 per cent of UNRWA “refugees” live inside of 1947 Palestine.
These 2.9 million have been told by the United Nations that they will get to move into Israel for the last 75 years, based on a single line in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948, that has long passed its expiration date. With that false promise, Gazans spend their time and money building a war infrastructure rather than an economy as they don’t imagine a future in their current neighborhood of historic Palestine, but in the Jewish State.
On January 23, 2024, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres may have laid the groundwork to finally end the dream of these 2.9 million Palestinians that their future homes will be in Israel.
In his remarks to the UN Security Council he said “The right of the Palestinian people to build their own fully independent State must be recognized by all. And any refusal to accept the two-State solution by any party must be firmly rejected. What is the alternative? How would a one-State solution look with such a large number of Palestinians inside without any real sense of freedom, rights and dignity? This would be inconceivable.”
The first part of Guterres’s comments is simply wrong. No state has a right to exist. None. Not Portugal, not China, not South Sudan, not Kurdistan. Individuals have a right to self-determination and there are many ways for that to be realized which do not create another Arab and Muslim country.
The second segment of his remarks, marked in bold above, is an important milestone for the UN. It is the first time Guterres essentially rejected the notion of Arabs swarming Israel – either in a one state solution or as part of a two-state solution in which 6.7 million Arab “refugees” enter the Jewish State.
Finally acknowledging that this will not happen, Guterres should make an unambiguous statement that there is no “right of return” for Arabs into Israel, a stale idea floated over 75 years ago in the midst of the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. In addition to such proclamation, he must follow up with actions to dismantle the “refugee” camps which dot Gaza and the West Bank, where UNRWA schools teach young Arabs that they will move into Israel and where UN facilities have keys above the portal to emphasize that the doorway for Palestinians to move into Israel is via the United Nations.
Entrance to Aida Refugee Camp (مخيم عايده) in Bethlehem with keyhole gateway and key on top to symbolize that UNRWA is the pathway for Palestinians to return to ancestors’ homes.
The United Nations finally said the obvious, that millions of Palestinian Arabs moving to Israel is “inconceivable.” It is time to explicitly state that there is no “right of return” and to dismantle the “temporary” refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank which have long served as incubators for extremism and terrorism.
When the congressional hearing about antisemitism at universities asked three university presidents whether they believed that Israel has a right to exist, they all answered in the affirmative, either believing so or feeling the pressure to state that they did. In fact, these educational leaders should have known that NO country has an inherent right to exist.
Not Turkey, not Colombia, not Japan and not Israel.
Countries have rights to secure borders and other matters, however there is nothing inherent that they must exist or that such existence cannot be dissolved.
For example, did Yugoslavia have a right to exist and does Macedonia have such right now? Did South Sudan have a right to a country before its creation? Do the Kurds have a right to a new Kurdistan in eastern Turkey together with sections of Iraq and Syria? Countries may opt to break apart into more regional tribal countries as was the case of Yugoslavia, or merge for particular political, demographic or ethnic reasons like Egypt and Syria in 1958.
But there is no inalienable right for any country to exist.
PEOPLE have a right to self-determination. Every person should be allowed to have citizenship in a country, participate in elections and have freedom of speech, religion and movement within such country as basic human rights.
It was a missed opportunity for the university presidents to educate the world on some fundamental realities but their failures were so profound, that this one was minor, especially in failing to clearly denounce repulsive calls for the genocide of Jews.
A more nuanced and interesting question is whether a country SHOULD exist. Does a country have a sound moral basis, a common sense of community and purpose? Does it have a functioning judicial system and ability and desire to govern and be governed? Is it willing to live at peace with its neighbors?
Israel meets every criteria. It has built a thriving economy and a liberal democracy in the heart of the illiberal Middle East. It has worked to forge peace agreements and engage in trade with its neighbors.
And even more, Israel built a safe haven for the most persecuted people in the world in their ancestral homeland. In their holy land. In their Promised Land.
Morning over Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan (photo: First One Through)
The answer is not clearcut regarding a Palestinian state.
The most compelling argument for a State of Palestine is that the Palestinians are stateless, Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs). They should have self-determination and citizenship somewhere, whether in their own country or others like Jordan and Egypt. Many of the Palestinians have lived in the area for generations and share a language and culture, and can either unify in a single entity or be part of other Muslim Arab countries nearby.
There are many arguments against Palestinians having a country. They have consistently favored killing civilians in Israel next door and celebrate their sadistic slaughter. They have spent time and resources devoted to building a terrorist infrastructure rather than an economy. They focus their education on demonizing Jews and the destruction of Israel. On a basic political front, they have been unable to reconcile between the two dominant political factions and territories.
The United Nations continues to push for a new Palestinian State, perhaps to balance supporting Israel’s creation in 1948. In the November 1974 General Assembly Resolution 3236 (XXIX), the UN claimed that Palestinians had “The right to national independence and sovereignty;” which is a bold falsehood as described above. No nation has such right and it is highly questionable as to whether Palestinians should have a country.
While no country has an inherent right to exist, the only country which SHOULD definitely exist is the Jewish State of Israel.
The global population was roughly 2.5 billion people in 1947. Less developed countries had a population of roughly 1.75 billion, and there were about 800 million in the developed world. Back then, the populations of China, India, the USA and Russia were about 570 million, 360 million, 150 million and 100 million, respectively.
Quite a different world then today.
The world was once much more regionalized. In 1947, there were fewer than 25 million international tourists; that figure was nearly 1.5 billion in 2019 before the pandemic, and has slightly rebounded to just under 1 billion in 2022. There were only about 10 million foreign-born people in the US in 1947, a number closer to 45 million in 2018. The figures are similar in Europe.
Computers were just starting to be used 75 years ago, with today’s pocket smartphones having more capabilities than those gigantic governmental ones. International calls cost a fortune as opposed to today’s free over-the-top calls made to people everywhere in an instant.
Technology and transportation have made the world smaller and people migrate much more than they did 75 years ago. Just since 1990, Europe went from having a foreign-born population accounting for roughly 5.5% of the population to nearly 10.5% in 2015. In the United States, it went from 7.9% to 13.9% over those same years.
Laws and regulations changed over the past 75 years which contributed to global migration patterns beyond technology and transportation. Many more immigrants from Latin American countries come to the United States now, whereas they used to come from Europe (75% in 1950s). Countries pass laws based on current realities and desires for the future. They tinker with immigration policy based on global demand as well as their own demographic needs for labor.
No country enacts policies to RECREATE A REALITY that existed in the past. They do not pretend that it’s 1947 and that laws passed back then have relevance to today’s reality.
Except for the United Nations as it relates in Palestinian Arabs.
The UN continues to bless the Palestinian desire for a “Right of Return” to homes that grandparents once lived in inside Israel based in a resolution passed in December 1948 when the Arab war to destroy the new State of Israel was still being waged. While the UN and Palestinians ignore most of Resolution 194 as it obviously has no bearing on today’s reality, they continue to prop up a single provision, article 11 which states:
“Resolves that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.“
Supporters of Hamas express their solidarity with the Jenin refugee camp, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 10, 2022. Days before, gunmen from Jenin went on a shooting rampage in Tel Aviv killing three Israelis and wounding more than a dozen others. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
People correctly point out that almost all Palestinians today are not refugees and are unwilling to live at peace with Israel as demonstrated time and time again. More basically, today is not 1947, and the same way that UNGA Resolution 194 calling for the internationalization of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem is no longer contemplated, so has the concept of a “right of return” long passed its expiration date.
The UN may advocate for Palestinian self-determination but cannot demand a right-of-return to Israel. All nations must make clear that they support terminating a concept which was captured in a single line in a resolution passed in 1948 in the middle of a war.
ACTION ITEM
Email White House “Make clear that our country opposes the idea that descendants of Palestinian refugees have a “right of return” to towns inside Israel which was contemplated as part of a broad end to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It continues to foment frustration, hatred and encourages war in the region.
South Africa put forward the charge of ‘genocidal conduct‘ against Israel for its actions in Gaza since October 8, 2023. The reported figure of over 23,000 deaths, over one percent of the population of Gaza, is claimed to show a deliberate intent to wipe out all Arabs in the region. The use of heavy 2,000-pound bombs in civilians neighborhoods is alleged to show a complete disregard for non-combatants as well as a disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force.
Lawyers prosecuting Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) quoted members of the Israeli parliament after the October 7 attack in which they said they wanted to flatten Gaza, encourage a ‘voluntary emigration’ of Arabs from the region, and treat them like the biblical ‘Amalek’, a people for which Jews are commanded to wipe out completely. Counsel argued that comments from leaders shows the government’s official policy for the annihilation of the region’s Arabs.
The United Nations’ International Criminal Court has disallowed Israel from bringing any evidence of the Gazans’ October 7 massacre and brutalization of Israelis, mostly civilians. It contends that even if Hamas committed crimes against humanity, Israel must still adhere to basic rules of war.
The Case Against ‘Genocide’
Genocide involves the deliberate mass killing of an ethnic group or particular nation with the goal of annihilation or ethnically cleansing them.
It is bizarre to bring the charge against Israel based on the situation before even considering the prosecution of the war.
Israel’s attack on Gaza was both reactive and defensive. It had a ceasefire agreement with Hamas which rules Gaza, which Hamas broke with its invasion and sadistic slaughter.
Hamas leaders have pledged to commit the October 7 massacre “again and again.” Israel is compelled to not only bring the estimated 3,000 Gazan perpetrators of the October 7 massacre to justice, as well as the leaders who commanded and supported the operation, but to prevent the atrocities from happening again.
Hamas continues to fire at Israel. Hamas and various factions of this Gaza army continue to fire rockets and wage war against Israel. This is not a situation of a military aggressively hunting civilians but an active battlefield.
Hamas fires from civilian neighborhoods. The battlefield is the neighborhoods of Gaza from which Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other factions of the Gazan army shoot rockets and attack Israel.
Civilian infrastructure is part of the Gazan war effort. The Gazan army and infrastructure is embedded in civilian homes, hospitals, mosques and schools. Arms are stored and tunnel-openings begin in these locations, and are therefore part-and-parcel of the Gazan war effort.
The core Gazan army infrastructure is beneath civilian neighborhoods. The Gazan army runs the majority of its operations below ground, underneath civilian neighborhoods.
The Gazan army doesn’t wear uniforms. Many Palestinian fighters do not wear uniforms to clearly distinguish themselves from civilians, blurring the battlefield between military and civilians.
Israel unilaterally left Gaza completely in 2005. Israel does not covet the land and wanted the region to be a peaceful neighbor where Arabs would have complete self-determination. Instead, Gaza became a terrorist-ruled strip which has waged repeated wars against Israel targeting civilians.
Israel is attempting to save hundreds of hostages. Hamas and other Gazans took 240 hostages, mostly civilians into Gaza, many of whom are children, elderly and infirm. Saving them requires quick action.
Those are just the basic facts which set the scene for which Israel has to prosecute a difficult war. Even with such impossible backdrop, Israel has attempted to avoid the loss of civilian lives.
Millions of text messages sent to Palestinian Arab civilians to get out of harm’s way
Leaflets dropped over neighborhoods to make sure civilians got the message to leave active battlefields.
‘Safe zones’ and escape corridors created for civilians to flee hot spots.
Israel telegraphed its intentions of where it was prosecuting the battle – starting in northern Gaza – to allow civilians to leave, putting its own Israeli soldiers at risk.
The world begged Israel to not launch a ground invasion of Gaza and so relied on air power to start the retaliation against known military targets. It is those aerial assaults that the world now criticizes.
While the world may appreciate the need to dismantle Hamas and the impossible task facing Israel of fighting an enemy which is deeply embedded with civilians, it doesn’t really care. It has no proposals or gameplans to prosecute the war any better, other than demand Israel do so.
A view of the rubble of buildings hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, October 10, 2023. (Fatima Shbair/AP)
In regard to Israeli leaders’ commentary that Gazans are like Amalek, a metaphor is not a call to action. Amalek was called out because they attacked the weakest Jews as they left Egypt, just as Hamas and its horde brutally butchered women, children and elderly in 2023. Other Israeli comments that all Gazans are culpable have been made by Palestinian advocates, such as James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute who told the United Nations on June 27, 2023 that there is “tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture,” as the majority of the people prefer violence.
Most importantly, Israel has said it will end the campaign immediately if Hamas surrenders and returns all of the hostages.
Israel is now going house-to-house to rescue its captives and destroy Hamas’s army and infrastructure amid a population which supports Hamas and terrorism. Hamas has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament from democratic elections held in 2006. The majority of Gazans support killing Jewish civilians in Israel and supported the October 7 massacre. They are family and friends of Hamas fighters, their teachers and students, donors and recipients of Hamas aid. When Israelis go through the Gazan neighborhoods in this tight battlefield, the civilians which surround them are the soft layer of the Hamas military which Hamas exploits, not uninvolved spectators.
It is likely that any other army would have killed five times as many Gazans as Israel at this point of the war. It is impossible to know because this war is like no other.
As to the charge of genocide, Palestinian Arabs are not confined to Gaza. Over half the population lives in the West Bank and Israel has not launched a massive campaign there, as Hamas doesn’t have a strong presence and there are no Israeli hostages in that region. On a macro level, 23,000 Gazans out of 1.8 billion Muslims is a 0.001% figure. By way of comparison, 63% of Europe’s Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and about 39% of global Jewry, an actual premeditated deliberate genocide of unarmed civilians.
There are therefore only two considerations to possibly judge Israel: the terrible loss of children’s lives, and the massive destruction of Gazan infrastructure.
Children are innocent by definition. They have no say in the war and not responsible for the terrible actions of adults. Close to 50% of Gazans are under the age of 18, so one would imagine indiscriminate bombing would cause close to 50% of the 23,000 dead to be children, or around 11,500 people. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the number of children killed is about 8,000, or 30% less than expected. While a tragic figure, it defends Israel’s prosecution of the war as being targeted against military targets.
There is no question there is widespread destruction of Gazan infrastructure. Neighborhoods have been leveled all around the Strip. That is a function that those neighborhoods are, and are above, the battlefield. It is actually surprising that a relatively low number of deaths have occurred with so many bombs dropped on the small territory, suggesting a targeted military campaign.
Hamas is sworn to the destruction of Israel and has ruled Gaza unilaterally since 2007 enabling it to embed itself throughout the region. Despite the hostile neighbor next door, Israel has limited its activities against the strip to a blockade to limit the flow of weapons, and to respond when attacked. It has never targeted the region or its residents for annihilation.
It is a tragedy for Palestinian Arabs, for Israel, and the world that so many children in Gaza have died. But the fault remains with the Arab rulers who teach their children death and martyrdom, while they attack Israel from those children’s homes. Israel is trying to minimize those casualties in an impossible battle, and the figures show that it is doing so.
The smoldering rubble of the Gazan battlefield is shocking but there is no genocide of buildings. However, the overall architecture of Gaza’s war mentality and machinery has been enabled by the United Nations, the entity which now sits as judge of Israel’s actions. It is a morbid farce, and must be confronted and rooted out for there to be a prayer of coexistence.
On January 3, two bombs went off in Iran during ceremonies marking the death of Qassem Soleimani. Soleimani was head of Iran’s Quds Force, and assassinated by the United States four years earlier because it claimed he was “directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of people.”
Despite the backdrop of Soleimani being a murderer, the fact remained that the bombing was an act of terrorism, so the United Nations felt compelled to issue a statement, despite the victims being supporters of that mass murderer. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres official statement read “The Secretary-General strongly condemns the attack today on a memorial ceremony in Kerman city in Iran, which reportedly killed more than 100 people and injured many more. The Secretary-General calls for those responsible to be held accountable. The Secretary-General expresses his deep condolences to the bereaved families and the people and the Government of Iran. He wishes the injured a speedy recovery.”
Guterres reached out to the government of Iran despite its fomenting wars throughout the Middle East as it pursues nuclear weapons, and also demanded that the terrorists who killed 100 people celebrating a mass murderer be brought to justice. One would therefore imagine a much stronger statement from Guterres for Israel after October 7 when thousands of Palestinians killed 1,200 people and brutally raped and sadistically tortured civilians in their homes in Israel.
The October 7 statement from Guterres was appalling:
“The Secretary-General condemns in the strongest terms this morning’s attack by Hamas against Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip and central Israel, including the firing of thousands of rockets towards Israeli population centres. The attacks have so far claimed numerous Israeli civilian lives and injured many hundreds. The Secretary-General is appalled by reports that civilians have been attacked and abducted from their own homes. The Secretary-General is deeply concerned for the civilian population and urges maximum restraint. Civilians must be respected and protected in accordance with international humanitarian law at all times. The Secretary-General extends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and calls for the immediate release of all abducted persons. The Secretary-General urges all diplomatic efforts to avoid a wider conflagration. He stresses that violence cannot provide a solution to the conflict, and that only through negotiation leading to a two-State solution can peace be achieved.”
Rather than demand that the terrorists “be held accountable,” as with Iranians, Guterres urged “maximum restraint” by Israel. Instead of offering condolences to victim families AND the state as he did for Iran, Guterres omitted any mention of feelings towards Israel.
In the aftermath of Jews suffering the worst single day killing since the Holocaust and most savage day of sexual assault ever, the head of the United Nations demanded no accountability for the terrorists and no sympathy for Israel. Guterres and the United Nations have demonstrated a failure of basic civility and humanity, and are enemies of justice, peace and the Jewish people.
Gaza is a crowded mess and there are two proposals for “voluntary emigration” which are getting vastly different reactions.
Situation In Gaza
The population of Gaza is roughly 2.1 million people, all Arabs, almost 99% of whom are Muslim. Roughly 39.8% of the population is under 14 years old, making it one of the youngest geographies in the world, with less than 3% of the Strip over 65 years old. The median age of 19.2 years old ranks it at #209 out of 227 areas scored by the World Fact Book. By way of comparison, the median age in Israel is 30.1, in USA 38.5, and 40.6 in the United Kingdom.
The US-designated foreign terrorist group Hamas exclusively governs Gaza since 2007. That means that roughly half of the Gaza Strip has only known the rule of a fanatical Islamist group committed to killing Jews and the destruction of the Jewish State next door. Fighters, typically aged 18-24, have known almost nothing other than Hamas and its mission.
As of 2022, UNRWA provided services to nearly 1.8 million people in Gaza, or about 83% of the population. It manages most of the schools in the Strip, many of which openly call for killing Jews and destroying Israel according to reports from IMPACT-SE. The report also covers that “13 UNRWA staff members have publicly praised, celebrated or expressed their support for the unprecedented deadly assaults on civilians [in Israel] on 7 October.”
Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Proposal Condemned
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said “a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where four minutes away from our communities there is a hotbed of hatred and terrorism, where two million people wake up every morning with aspiration for the destruction of the State of Israel and with a desire to slaughter and rape and murder Jews wherever they are.” As such, he expressed his support for encouraging “voluntary emigration” of the Strip’s population to other countries as part of his postwar vision.
The reaction to Smotrich’s proposal was quick. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller labeled the suggestion as “inflammatory and irresponsible.” The New York Times reported that France and Germany had similar reactions.
United Nations’ Proposal Embraced
The United Nations also has a plan for Gaza. It involves the voluntary emigration of roughly 1.8 million Gazans for whom UNRWA provides services to relocate to Israel. It makes this proposal – still to this very day – as part of UN Resolution 194 which was passed in December 1948, over 75 years ago while the Israeli War of Independence was still being waged.
The proposal has long since passed its expiry date but dozens of Islamic and Arab countries, as well as the United Nations itself, keep on trying to breathe life into an idea to massively move over 80% of the population of Gaza – the majority of whom want to kill Jews – into Israel to extinguish the Jewish State.
Several Western countries and members of the progressive media were appalled that two members of the Israeli parliament suggested a “voluntary emigration” of Gazans to various countries but simultaneously embrace such emigration to Israel. It’s a peculiar mix of anti-Zionism and hypocrisy which seems very prevalent in these dark days.
There is a fantastic idea that has been floated around the Middle East for many decades: two states for two peoples, one Jewish and the other Arab. Even though the notion continues to be bantered in political circles, few details are understood about what that plan means.
The pro-Palestinian camp talks about “THE” two state solution, meaning the Arab Peace Initiative proposed in 2002. The United States and other governments talk about “A” two state solution, which could mean a wide variety of negotiated outcomes. The United Nations has a third alternative, which is the most toxic and has directly led to permanent hostilities between Israel and its neighbors.
“THE” 2 State Solution: Arab Peace Initiative
There are three primary matters which stand between Israel and the Palestinian Authority: land/borders; capital city; and the future of Palestinian refugees.
Land: The API calls for Israel to withdraw from ALL territories taken in its defensive war of June 1967. This would include Gaza, the West Bank, the Sinai, Golan Heights, and areas of southern Lebanon still under dispute. Israel has already withdrawn from some of those lands including Sinai, Gaza and many areas of the West Bank. The API seeks the remainder.
Capital: The API calls for East Jerusalem to be the capital of a new Palestine. An early draft of the API called for “al-Quds al-Sharif as its capital,” seemingly softening the stance to something Israel could accept.
Refugees: The API states that Palestinian Arabs outside of Israel will seemingly not move to the Jewish State. The final language of “Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries,” may only be in reference to UNRWA Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan whom the API thinks should not have to settle them. The API language was in sharp contrast to an earlier version which stated “To accept to find an agreed, just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in conformity with Resolution 194,” which would have given Palestinians wishing to live in peace with Israel the option of either moving there or getting compensation.
“A” Two State Solution
The United States and Israel see the end of the conflict differently. Through the Madrid Conference and Oslo Accords, as well as other efforts made by the Obama Administration in 2014 and the Trump Administration’s “Deal of the Century,” the three major matters had different contours.
Land: Israel believes that it has already given back some of the territory it took in June 1967. It returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and handed Gaza and major population centers in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority. UN Resolution 242 (1967) called for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” which does not call for ALL territory to be abandoned.
The United States agrees. The Obama Administration tried to broker a series of land swaps which would have essentially given Palestinians a state on the same amount of land but in different locations than came about from the 1949 Armistice Lines (49AL). The Trump Administration started with the same concept that the 49AL were arbitrary and not conducive to long-term peace and that Israel has already complied with the land provision of Res. 242. Team Trump did not try to match a certain number of square kilometers with history, and instead sought to create borders which accounted for current reality on the ground and a dynamic to forge an enduring peace.
Capital: Israel annexed the section of Jerusalem that was divided for nineteen years between 1949 and 1967, and further extended the municipal boundaries. It considers the city its eternal capital, but has offered sections of the city to be part of a Palestinian State as part of the peace efforts, with American prodding.
Refugees: Israel has offered some limited number of Palestinian Arabs to move to Israel. The figures have ranged from 10,000 to 100,000 over time under different plans. The US position has long been that Palestinian Arabs should move to the new Arab State, as the basic principle of two states for two people.
The United Nations’ Two State Solution
The UN’s plan is the most aggressively pro-Palestinian of the three.
The UN agrees with the API regarding a new Palestinian State on all of the land in Gaza and the West Bank being part of Palestine, as well as East Jerusalem being the capital of the country. However, it continues to insist on the full “right of return” for six million “Palestine Refugees” who are registered with UNRWA in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
The UN’s promise to Palestine Refugees has caused them to be frustrated by the failure to move to neighborhoods where grandparents used to live. It has led them to build terrorist tunnels to penetrate the land which the UN promises to them, rather than build an economy. It has kept them in a restive state for generations, not accepting the existence of the “Zionist entity” which they believe will soon cease to exist according to recent polls.
The United Nations’ adoption of Palestinians as their perennial wards has harmed peace in the region. It has a position on refugees which it knows Israel cannot accept, deliberately putting the Jewish State as the obstacle to peace rather than a counterparty with whom to find a solution. Permanently putting Israel on the defensive with one-sided resolutions makes Israel unwilling to seriously consider the UN on any matter.
It is destructive to any peace process for the United Nations to call for a “two-state solution” without clearly articulating that there is no “right of return” to Israel. The death toll in the region will certainly rise while Palestinian Arabs believe their future is in Israeli homes.
First One Through 