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.
Many people wonder what will happen after the end of the 2023 Gaza War. Will the Palestinian Authority take administrative control of the area with Israel serving a military function, much like Area B in the West Bank? Will Hamas 2.0 rise from the ashes, the way Queen Rania of Jordan (herself of Palestinian descent) predicts, which will be a “new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent.”
There is a better way. To end Palestinian atrocities and the horrible death on both sides, one needs to speak a plain truth at the core of the conflict to understand how to end it.
The United Nations and Saudi Arabia must state clearly that there is no ‘right of return’ for Palestinian Arabs to go to Israel. The Arabs’ future lies in Gaza or parts of the West Bank that will be under the Palestinian Authority, or another country that welcomes them, should they decide to leave the region.
Palestinians have been lied to by the United Nations for 75 years that they will get to return to homes where grandparents once lived. The United Nations continues to call many Palestinians “refugees” and places keys atop UNRWA “refugee” camps to tell them that the UN is much more than a services agency: they are the gateway to returning to Israel.
Portal to UNRWA Aida “refugee” camp near Bethlehem
The UN maintains refugee camps inside Gaza and the West Bank to tell Palestinian Arabs that the land they stand on – which was part of Palestine in 1947 – is just a waiting zone. They will get to move to Israel someday.
So the Arabs have grown very frustrated. Rather than make a life in Gaza and the West Bank, they covet the first world country next door that it really belongs to them. Palestinians vote for invasion rather than investment.
Approximately 81.2% of UNRWA wards reside in what was the British Mandate in 1922 or what was annexed by Jordan with Arabs given citizenship. Almost all of them have self-determination, either as citizens of Jordan or under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. There are really only Syrian and Lebanese “refugee” descendants which need to be addressed.
And those in Syria and Lebanon should move to a new Palestinian State.
Before Israel left Gaza in 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush sent Israeli Prime Minister a letter in April 2004 to encourage the Israeli action: “It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”
The Democratic Party long held the same notion in its platform stating “The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.” The Obama/ Biden Administration had that statement removed in 2012, stoking Palestinian anger/hope which bubbled into 2014, 2021 and 2023 wars from Gaza against Israel, each under either President Obama or President Biden.
The United Nations and Saudi Arabia need to deliver the message ending the ‘right of return’ so that Palestinians know these intifadas to destroy Israel are over. It is time for Palestinian Arabs to focus energies on building institutions, economy and society, and abandon the genocidal efforts to destroy the Jewish State.
UNRWA should announce a wind down of all camps in Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan, and funnel those monies to actual refugees who really need the services, fleeing their homeland to faraway countries where they are strangers not knowing the language, people or land. Saudi Arabia should play a role in rebuilding the Gaza infrastructure together with Israel, and push the Iran-Hamas alliance into the dustbin of infamy.
The future for coexistence relies on terminating the ongoing failed policy promoted by the United Nations for 75 years, and a new Saudi-Israeli alliance might be the pathway to broader peace.
Boat packed with as many as 750 fleeing migrants capsizes off Greece in June 2023
Since 2014, the United Nations International Organization of Migrants estimates that 56,912 migrants and refugees are dead or missing. This year is set to be perhaps the deadliest on record, as thousands of people flee their homes due to war or poverty.
The United Nations and media spend a scant moment mourning these poor souls. Men, women and children who reluctantly ran to far-away lands in pursuit of peace were quickly forgotten. No actions are taken to prevent the frequent tragedies.
The United Nations has other priorities:
For synthetic “refugees” over real refugees; and
For people who seek to murder over defenseless souls
The UN has dressed up Palestinian Arabs who have been living in the same land for generations, as a special class of “UNRWA Refugees”. It pardons their jihadi violence against Israeli Jews as a matter of routine and concocted resolutions.
The media closes its eyes and minds to the facts that Palestinian Arabs are not refugees who do not deserve a special UN agency accompanied by a promise of invading a UN member state. Politicians suspend belief that they favor a two state solution while simultaneously advocating that the Jewish State shouldn’t be Jewish and forced to take in millions of Arabs from a few miles away.
The UN held a week-long conference on counterterrorism in June, and subsequently informed Israel that only the rest of the world can combat the global scourge. Israel must accept jihadi violence as penance for its existence.
The UN Security Council is now scheduled to meet to invert reality in discussing Israel’s successful raid to eliminate terrorists in Jenin but will not convene to dismantle UNRWA camps in Gaza and the West Bank which serve as the incubators for Muslim extremists.
It is terribly sad that politicians, the United Nations and media do not attend to peaceful people in actual dire need. It is a horrific state of reality, that the world supports jihadi extremists living next to Israel in their quest to kill Jews and the only Jewish State.
Many anti-Zionists point to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (Britain), the San Remo Resolution of 1920 (Britain, Italy, France and Japan), and the United Nations Partition Resolution of 1947 as examples of foreign intervention against the will of the region’s inhabitants. While the Jews had thousands of years of history in the land and a religion which is uniquely tied to the land, the local Arabs did not want Jews in their midst. The Palestinian Arabs’ desires were ignored because foreigners sought to help Jews reestablish their rights in their homeland.
Those same anti-Zionists don’t pause in their push to ignore the will of local Israelis today who do not want millions of Arabs from abroad to move into their country. Not only do the pro-Palestinian advocates ignore the will of millions of Israeli citizens, they dismiss that Israel is a sovereign country with its own laws, something that was never true of Palestine before the creation of Israel in 1948.
Those same individuals point to United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948 Article 11 which states that refugees should be allowed to return to their homes if they are willing to live in peace. Somehow they ignore three critical items: 1) Palestinian Arabs refuse to coexist in peace, as shown in their terrorism and quarterly polls; 2) there are only a few thousand refugees from 1948, not millions of people which include descendants of people who left the region, many taking citizenship elsewhere; and 3) that resolution was for a moment in time and no longer relevant. For example, Article 8 says that greater Bethlehem and greater Jerusalem should be under United Nations control – are they advocating that Bethlehem be stripped from Palestinian Authority control?
The Ottomans and British may have ignored the wishes of the local Arab population in Palestine but they had the authority to do so. Today, there is no basis for the United Nations, the European Union, or anti-Zionists in the US Congress to impose their will over the common position of both the Israeli government and Israeli population.
Palestinian Arabs and their supporters claim that they have a “right of return” to towns in Israel based on two principles. One is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (established December 10, 1948) and the other United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (issued the following day, December 11, 1948). These are grossly misapplied, and if anyone wants to see a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, this issue is a complete roadblock.
UDHR, Article 13
Article 13 of the UDHR makes two statements that Palestinian propagandists assert give Palestinians the right to move into Israel:
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Regarding the first point, the freedom of movement is “within the borders”, meaning that any Israeli Jew or Arab should be free to live anywhere inside of their home country of Israel. This clause has nothing to do with Palestinian Arabs or wards of UNRWA who live outside of Israel. It simply means that Israeli Arabs should be free to move into Israeli towns – where grandparents may have lived or entirely new locations – as long as there are no security matters which render such movement impossible.
As it relates to the second point of leaving and returning to a country, there are two issues with Palestinians using this clause to move to Israel: the people and the land.
Israel is a new country, founded on May 14, 1948. There are only an estimated 20-30,000 elderly Arabs who lived in Israel on that date who now reside outside of the country’s recognized borders. The other 14 million Palestinian Arabs were born elsewhere and have no such claim to “return” to Israel, including the 6.4 million registered persons with UNRWA.
The second related matter has to do with the borders of Israel. If one were to take the non-factual view that the land of pre-1948 Palestine is a single country (it was a region / territory), then the millions of Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank today still live in that same country, so there is no argument under the second clause. Only the Stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs) in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan could argue to move into Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. The right of return in UDHR relates to returning to a country, not a particular town or region.
UNGA Resolution 194, Article 11
As opposed to the general UDHR meant for all people, UNGA Resolution 194 was specifically adopted for Palestinians. Article 11 calls out the matter of returning to “homes,” not a country as specified in UDHR:
“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.“
At the most fundamental level, General Assembly resolutions are simply suggestions and not binding in law. Israel is not beholden to GA resolutions.
Critically, Palestinians have shown in deeds and words since the founding of Israel that they are not willing to “live at peace with their neighbors.” Add to the fact that only 20-30,000 people at this time are actually “refugees” makes this resolution relatively meaningless in application.
Two State Solution
Those people who back the notion of a “two-state solution” for the Israeli-Arab Conflict, with one state for Jews and one state for Arabs, should be appalled at the idea of a Palestinian “right of return” to the Jewish State. The Jewish State currently has 25% of its citizenry being non-Jews. It would destroy the basic principle of the “two state solution” for millions of Arabs to enter Israel. It is even more outrageous, when the United Nations demands that NO JEWS be allowed to live in a future Palestinian State. There’s no two-state solution if 50% of the Jewish State is comprised of non-Jews and 0% of the Arab State has Jews.
One State Solution
For advocates who argue for a single Jewish-Arab country and that Palestine was always a singular country, there are a couple of considerations.
One, Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza already live in such country, so are not and have never been “refugees” but just internally displaced people, taking billions of dollars from the world’s largess over the past decades. Resolution 194 Article 11 is specifically for refugees which excludes Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. Only UDHR 13.1 would argue for freedom of movement within the single country, if security matters permit.
Secondly, there is only return to a country under UDHR 13.2, not to villages where grandparents once lived. Allowing refugees from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to move to the West Bank or Gaza satisfies this clause as much as moving inside the borders of Israel.
Palestinian Sentiment
Importantly, Palestinians have no interest in either of these solutions. According to the PCPSR December 2022 poll, only 32% of Palestinians support a two-state solution and 26% support a one-state solution with equal rights for Jews and Arabs. That compares to 55% who favor terrorism against Israelis, to destroy the Jewish State and replace it with a single Arab state. It’s outrageous for Palestinians to demand the right to move to homes under UNGA Resolution 194, and skip the basic premise of coexistence that the resolution demands.
The poll also showed that the right of return issue was the second most important issue for Palestinian Arabs, behind establishing a state. The fact that UNGA Resolution 194 requires coexistence while Palestinians support new armed gangs can only be viewed as an attempt to better infiltrate and take over the Jewish State, as part of establishing a new Palestinian State.
Sentiment of Israeli Arabs
When polled in June 2018, Israeli Arabs were the most likely to cap Palestinian refugees coming to Israel (the proposed question used a figure of 100,000 people) with the balance going to a new state of Palestine and getting compensation for lost property. A whopping 84.1% of Israeli Arabs supported such limited “right of return”, compared to 21.3% of Israeli Jews and 47.5% of Palestinian Arabs. When offered a different formulation in which a capped number of Palestinians would get permanent resident status but not citizenship in Israel, and Jews in the West Bank would similarly get such status in a new Palestinian State, Israeli Arab support (63.8%) dwarfed that of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs with 36.1% and 31.7%, respectively.
Beyond the differences in granting a Palestinian “right of return” among Israeli Arabs, Jews and Palestinian, the same poll showed a big difference in support for a two state solution. Not surprisingly, no Israeli Arabs favored the idea of “apartheid” or expulsions of the other, while 14.9% of Israeli Jews voted in favor of minimal rights for Israeli Arabs, and 17.2% of Palestinians favored expelling all the Jews from the region.
SAPs in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan
The Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) only poll people in Gaza and the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have control and self-determination, having been given land to administer by Israel. The SAPs who might have some actual claims under UDHR and UNGA Resolution 194 are those in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as described above but were not polled.
Almost all of the SAPs in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship so cannot be considered “refugees.” Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank after the 1948-9 War against Israel, and granted all Arabs living there citizenship– as long as they were not Jewish – in 1954. Palestinian-Chileans have the same non-claim to move to Israel as these Palestinian-Jordanians.
The Palestinians who might be considered “refugees” with rights to move to the holy land are those elderly Palestinians who left Israel in May 1948 and now reside in Lebanon and Syria, countries which have denied them citizenship for almost their entire lives. Of the 1.2 million SAPs in those two countries (18.8% of the total people getting services from UNRWA), around 2% are over 75 years old and would qualify to move to Israel under UDHR Article 13.2, and under UNGA Resolution 194, Article 11, if they are willing to live with Israelis in peace. While it is well understood that Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza have no desire to live peacefully with Israelis, it is possible that those in UNRWA camps in Lebanon and Syria might.
If one advocates for a two-state solution, one must simultaneously be against a Palestinian “right of return” for any Arab other than the elderly living in UNRWA camps in Lebanon and Syria. All other Palestinians wishing to return to the region would need to move to Gaza or the West Bank under the approval of the Palestinian Authority. This has long been the logical bipartisan approach of both Democrats and Republicans.
In summary, there are very few people who qualify for a Palestinian “right of return” and there is very little support for, or belief that it can be implemented peacefully amongst the people in the region.
On December 19, 2022, The New York Times published an article about a menorah that was lit in the window of a Jewish home across from a Nazi flag in Germany, in defiance of the edicts to ban Jews from participating in society. The descendants of that German family brought the menorah back to Germany to rekindle it once again.
It’s an interesting story on many levels. To consider the defiance and fear that the Jewish family must have felt in 1931 as Nazis gathered power in Germany, to openly declare their Judaism in the face of growing anti-Semitism. And then, eighty years later, to return to Germany after the genocide of European Jewry with that same menorah.
Chanukah candles lit in the ashes of millions of slaughtered Jews.
Yehuda Mansbach, the grandson of the Jewish couple who lit that menorah in the iconic 1931 photograph, wept openly after lighting the two candles to mark the holiday of Chanukah in Germany in 2022.
It was the only story that the New York paper would write about the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, other than some recipes for latke cocktails and how to make a DIY menorah. The actual holiday story of Jews expelling the Hellenist pagan rituals from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and throughout the Jewish holy land 2,200 years ago must have been considered too political for the anti-Zionist paper.
During the holiday, the paper preferred to write stories about Arabs who had “ancestors” in “modern day Israel” whose towns were destroyed at Israel’s creation. These “Palestinian citizens of Israel” (commonly called Israeli Arabs) have been trying to get back to the homes where their grandparents lived but have been blocked from doing so by the Israeli military and courts because the town sits in a buffer zone along Lebanon which is in a state of war with the Jewish State.
These are stories that neatly contour to the Times’ jaundiced narrative: Jews are native to Europe but were pushed out by Nazis, and Arabs are native to Palestine but were pushed out by Jews.
The actual Chanukah story disrupts the anti-Zionist propaganda, that Jews have thousands of years of history in Israel and not just throughout the land, but on the Jewish Temple Mount itself. That is where the original menorah of the Jews was lit, not in defiance of any edict but as a basic part of Jewish religious ritual.
Today, while Arabs may be blocked from returning to living in villages alongside the border of a hostile country by Israel’s military, Jews are considered to be in violation of United Nations edicts for going to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. While Israeli Arabs freely drive around Israel as recognized citizens of the Jewish State, countries around the world demand that Jews be forbidden from living and praying in their holiest city.
Jews have been lighting menorahs for 2,200 years, even in the face of blatant anti-Semitism from neighbors, governments and media propaganda. And Jews will continue to light their menorahs in their windows as proud Jews, and visit the reestablished Jewish State, as they use the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda as the rags that they are.
A single menorah of defiance lit before a Nazi flag in Germany, dozens of menorahs held aloft in Montana in 1993 amidst a wave of anti-Semitic attacks, and thousands of menorahs lit in Jewish homes in Jerusalem and around the world today in the face of blatantly anti-Semitic articles and resolutions. Jews are indigenous to Israel and will always insist on the basic human right to practice their faith everywhere, especially in their holiest city.
On November 29, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) condemned the sudden appearance of a “man-made cavity underneath the grounds of an UNRWA school in Gaza.” The agency “protested strongly to the relevant authorities in Gaza to express outrage and condemnation of the presence of such a structure underneath one of its installations.“
For the uninformed, the “man-made cavity” was a tunnel dug by the political-terrorist group HAMAS to store weapons and move their soldiers to attack and abduct Israelis. The “relevant authorities in Gaza” is the leadership of HAMAS.
But the words “Palestinian”, “Hamas”, “tunnels” or “terrorist” were completely absent in the otherwise strongly worded statement. It was as if UNRWA was only worried that a sinkhole might damage the structural integrity of their building.
UNRWA pretends that it is a neutral party to the conflict like the Red Cross, simply providing shelter, education and healthcare services inside the camps that it runs. The UNRWA statement made the point in closing with “UNRWA reiterates its demand that all parties respect the neutrality and inviolability of United Nations premises at all times. Such flagrant breaches of neutrality are serious violations of the Agency’s privileges and immunities, and they jeopardize the ability of UNRWA to provide support and protection to the 1.4 million Palestine refugees in need in Gaza.“
The reality is that UNRWA is not neutral. It frequently leaves its jurisdiction to investigate Israel. It specifically calls out Israel by name, while not doing so for Palestinians.
A recent example was UNRWA’s condemnation of Israel evicting Arab squatters in Israeli-owned homes in the Sheik Jarrah section of Jerusalem. That neighborhood lies outside UNRWA’s jurisdiction and purview.
A few weeks ago, UNRWA joined with several other UN agencies to go to Beit Iksa in Area B of the West Bank, near the Israeli town of Mevaseret Zion. It joined Palestinian farmers in an olive harvest – again, nothing to do with its mission and far outside of so-called “refugee camps.”
Meanwhile, when Palestinian children lost their lives in Syria from playing with dormant bombs lying on the ground from the civil war, UNRWA bemoaned the loss of life but only mentioned that the children were victims of the generic “conflict” without blaming the government of Syria.
Yet when a Palestinian man was hit by an Israeli army truck in a small town southeast of Hebron, no where near an UNRWA facility, UNRWA “condemned” Israel saying it showed “evident disregard for their responsibilities vis-à-vis internal law and standards.“
Supporters of Hamas in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, gather to express their solidarity with the Jenin refugee camp, against the Israeli operation in Jenin to root out Palestinian terrorists who killed three civilians in Tel Aviv on April 10, 2022. A few weeks later, the head of UNRWA went to Jenin to show his support for Palestinian Arabs in Jenin. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
When UNRWA lambasts Israel far from its field of operations but refuses to clearly condemn Hamas and its terrorist tunnels abutting its facilities, it further underscores that the agency is not neutral and therefore deserves neither privileges nor immunities.
Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) submitted a bill to congress to commemorate the ‘Nakba’, or ‘catastrophe’ of the reestablishment of the Jewish State shortly after the Holocaust, in which Palestinian Arabs who waited for the destruction of Israel were refused reentry into the country. Below is a review of H.Res.1123 Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights, submitted on May 16, 2022.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) talking at the Democratic Socialists of America event in 2021 where she said Jews control people and profit off of racism
“Ms. Tlaib (for herself, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Ms. Omar, Ms. McCollum, Ms. Newman, Mr. Bowman, and Ms. Bush) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs“
It should be noted that two of the co-sponsors of the resolution, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, represent the tri-state New York area, home to the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel. That these two members of congress continue to have seats says much about the Jewish community prioritizing Israel or bothering to pressure their representatives about Israel.
“Whereas the United Nations General Assembly recommended on November 29, 1947, to partition Palestine into two states against the wishes of Palestine’s majority indigenous inhabitants;“
At the time of the UNGA resolution, Palestine was less than 60% Arab and it would have been closer to 50% had the British not instituted the 1939 White Paper at the behest of local Arabs, preventing 100,000 Jews from fleeing the Holocaust in Europe, resulting in their deaths.
“Whereas this partition plan nevertheless provided for the “Full protection for the rights and interests of minorities, including the protection of the linguistic, religious and ethnic rights of the peoples and respect for their cultures, and full equality of all citizens with regard to political, civil and religious matters”;”
After rejecting the partition plan, Tlaib nevertheless embraces some positions, even while misunderstanding them completely. Israel did protect the rights of all, granting citizenship to everyone. This is in sharp contrast to the Arab nations of Transjordan and Egypt who illegally seized the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza, respectively, and ethnically-cleansed all Jews from those lands. Transjordan renamed itself Jordan with its newest illegal land, and then granted citizenships ONLY to Arabs in 1954, specifically excluding Jews. [1954 Jordanian Citizenship Law, article 3]
“Whereas before the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, there were already between 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from their homes often after attacks by Zionist militias on major Palestinian cities and villages;”
The Civil War for the land of Palestine was not about “attacks by Zionist militias” against unarmed civilians as portrayed by Tlaib but between warring parties of which the Arabs were much better armed and had initiated the fighting. In terms of people fleeing, there were Jews who fled the battle scenes too. The figure of “250,000 to 300,000” is preposterous as well. That many people fled the land to places like London and Canada or Jordan and Syria? If they stayed inside of the British Mandate boundaries, they cannot be considered refugees going from one town to another.
Palestinian Arabs mark Nakba Day 2013 with calls for violence in Bethlehem, a city Israel handed to the Palestinian Authority in 1995 as part of the Oslo Accords (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)
“Whereas by the time the war ended with the signing of armistice agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab countries in 1949, establishing Israel’s sovereignty over 78 percent of Palestine, and, in the process, conquering an additional 23 percent of Palestine beyond those areas allocated to the Jewish state under the partition plan, there were at least 750,000 Palestinian refugees (roughly 75 percent of the indigenous population that had lived in areas that became Israel);”
Israel was established on 22 percent LESS of Palestine than afforded it under the international mandate. The Arabs rejected the partition plan and it was never implemented so why does Tlaib reference it here at all, other than to make it sound that Israelis got more when indeed they got less.
In terms of the total number of refugees, the figure thrown about includes people who moved a few miles away to Gaza and what later became known as the ‘West Bank.’ If those areas were part of ‘Palestine’, then those people are called ‘internally-displaced’, not refugees. To be clear, there were about 770,000 Arab Muslims in the Mandate in 1931, a figure which jumped to 1.056 million in 1945, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.3%. Extrapolating that number would suggest a total Arab Muslim population of 1.182 million in 1950. However, the actual figure for Arab Muslims in 1950 in Israel, Gaza and the ‘West Bank’ was 1.015 million, or 167,000 fewer than anticipated. Using the same approach for Christians who grew at a 3.0% CAGR from 1931 to 1945 would have produced 164,000 Christians in 1950, instead of the 65,000 actually in the region in that year, or 99,000 fewer people. That means that the total number of actual refugees that left Mandate Palestine was 267,000 of which 37% were Christians, many fleeing a religious war between Muslims and Jews (not because of the creation of Israel).
“Whereas, by 1949, Israel had depopulated more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities, often demolishing all structures, planting forests over them, or repopulating them with Jewish Israelis;”
Tlaib’s anti-Semitism is made clear: she makes all Arabs appear as indigenous and true ‘Palestinians’ when hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in the land as Palestinian Jews. She ignored the fact that the government of Israel gave citizenship to all Arabs who remained with full rights. She ignored the fact that the Arabs started the war against the small and weak Jews in their midst. She ignored the Arab ransacking of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Instead, she calls out “Jewish Israelis” who took Palestinian villages.
“Whereas Palestinians refer to this experience of uprooting, dispossession, and refugeedom as the Nakba (meaning “catastrophe” in English);”
The Palestinians rejected coexistence proposed in the partition plan, then launched and lost a war because they wanted to live in a Jew-free land. It’s Arab attitude that is a Nakba.
Palestinian Arabs rip down and burn Israeli flags on Nakba Day (photo: Menahem Kahana / AFP / Getty Images)
“Whereas the Nakba refers not only to a historical event but to an ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people that continues to this day through the establishment and expansion of approximately 300 illegal settlements and outposts in the occupied Palestinian West Bank in which approximately 674,000 Israelis reside as of 2020;”
The Nakba-attitude of rejecting coexistence is definitely an “ongoing process.” Jordan attacked Israel in 1967 and Israel re-took the land in a defensive battle. Arab armies launched a war in 1973 on Judaism’s holiest day of Yom Kippur. Palestinian terrorists hijacked airplanes and killed Jews all over the world. And not only Jews – consider Palestinian assassination of US Senator Robert Kennedy. Arabs launched multi-year pogroms killing thousands of Jewish civilians in the 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s.
And of course, Palestinians reject Jews moving back to their holiest city of Jerusalem, and pretend there is a “Palestinian West Bank”. In truth, there are lands that Israel gave to the Palestinian Authority – Gaza, and Areas A and B – where Palestinian Arabs have self-determination, of course, as is their desire, in land devoid of a single Jew.
“Whereas the United States knew of the scale and magnitude of the Palestine refugee crisis as it unfolded, as is documented in an October 1948 telegram to the President and Secretary of State from the Embassy of the United States to Israel, warning that the “Arab Refugee tragedy is rapidly reaching catastrophic proportions and should be treated as a disaster”;”
The United States State Department stated clearly that Arabs started the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War: “Fighting began with attacks by irregular bands of Palestinian Arabs attached to local units of the Arab Liberation Army composed of volunteers from Palestine and neighboring Arab countries. These groups launched their attacks against Jewish cities, settlements, and armed forces… On the eve of May 14, the Arabs launched an air attack on Tel Aviv, which the Israelis resisted. This action was followed by the invasion of the former Palestinian mandate by Arab armies from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Saudi Arabia sent a formation that fought under the Egyptian command.” Israel was engaged in a defensive war for its survival against Arabs from Palestine and neighboring countries.
“Whereas the United States voted in favor of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948, which states that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors 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 in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible”;”
The Palestinians have never sought to “live at peace” with Israel. Not in 1948, in 1967, in 2001 nor today. The United States also voted for the UN partition plan in 1947. How do any of the votes of 75 years ago matter today? In 2004, President Bush made clear that as part of Israel leaving Gaza, that “a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”
Arabs climb fence between Syria and Israel in Nakba Day protest (photo: Jalaa Marey/Reuters)
“Whereas Palestinian refugees’ right of return is not only stipulated in a General Assembly resolution, but is also anchored in international law and in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country”;”
The UDHR principal is to return to a COUNTRY, not a town or house. As Palestine was not a country this article is irrelevant. Further, that same UN wanted to separate the land – not country – into new Arab and Jewish states in 1947. Moving the Arabs into the Jewish state undermines that basic principle.
“Whereas, on December 8, 1949, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 302 establishing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which the United States has financially supported on an almost continuous basis since its establishment;”
UNRWA was established as a TEMPORARY agency. It’s existence over 70 years later has proven an embarrassment and obstacle to peace. That is why the US had suspended payments to the organization and European countries are cutting back significantly.
An Israeli policeman bleeds from an injury during clashes with Palestinians commemorating Nakba Day at Damascus Gate, Jerusalem, May 15, 2013.(Photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)
“Whereas of the more than 7,000,000 Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East provides much-needed social services to 5,700,000 Palestine refugees today;”
UNRWA is a general social services organization that treats many people who are NOT refugees. By its own account, UNRWA continues to service hundreds of thousands of “other” people who live in the area. And why not? The idea that descendants of internally-displaced people are somehow “refugees” is an absurdity anyway.
“Whereas international law also recognizes that descendants of refugees retain their rights as refugees, and that according to the United Nations, “Palestine refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises”; and”
This is completely untrue. If Tlaib likes UNHCR so much, why not just fold UNRWA into that global organization? It would get rid of rampant corruption, support of terrorism and the major obstacle to peace in the region. UNHCR seeks to find a solution for refugees fleeing war. UNRWA seeks to find only one political solution for one particular group of people – Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) to move into Israel. UNRWA insists that SAPs stay registered with UNRWA and live in its environs, essentially making them prisoners. Should they opt to move – say to London – they would lose this anointed status of “refugee” and free housing, education and medical care today, as well as the chance for free housing in Israel or lots of money. UNHCR has no such political agenda and welcomes actual refugees fleeing war to find citizenship and life anywhere.
“Whereas a just and lasting resolution requires respect for and the implementation of Palestine refugee rights as enshrined in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Now, therefore, be it”
Concluding her introductory remarks, Tlaib called out legal principals for a “lasting resolution.” She continued the narrative that there can be no peace with Israel unless the manufactured issue of “refugees” is resolved.
Palestinian rioters mark Nakba Day, 2012 (photo: Majdi Mohammed/ AFP)
“Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that it is the policy of the United States to—
(1) commemorate the Nakba through official recognition and remembrance;
(2) reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the United States Government with denial of the Nakba;
(3) encourage education and public understanding of the facts of the Nakba, including the United States role in the humanitarian relief effort, and the relevance of the Nakba to modern-day refugee crises;”
The first three points highlighted by Tlaib refer to the ‘Nakba’. In Tlaib’s version of history, that would mean educating people that only Arabs are indigenous to Palestine; that Zionists attacked the native Palestinian Arabs and stole their lands; obfuscating that Arabs in 1948 – and today – desired a land free of any Jews; and that Palestinian Arabs want peace, even though they reject the very notion of a Jewish State in Palestine to this day. In other words, supporters of this resolution are looking to support continuing the 1948-9 Arab War against the Jewish State.
“(4) continue to support the provision of social service to Palestinian refugees through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East; and
(5) support the implementation of Palestinian refugees’ rights as enshrined in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
UNRWA has shown itself to be a deeply flawed organization. In no situation should the US government be compelled to support a temporary UN agency, which is one of the leading obstacles to peace in the region.
Further, UN Resolution 194 was a document prepared in the midst of a war. It includes numerous provisions which have absolutely no relevance today. Bringing up the December 1948 resolution highlights the dated and irrelevant orientation about refugees from which Tlaib seeks to enshrine certain rights. Indeed, US presidents have made clear that the resolution of the “refugee” issue would have them settle in a new state of Palestine, not Israel.
Palestinians wave Hamas flags on the Jewish Temple Mount. Hamas warned Jews about visiting their holiest site on Nakba Day, 2022. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
The Nakba isn’t a historical fact but a biased narrative. It attempts to whitewash the Arab attempt to destroy Jews’ safe haven in their ancestral homeland immediately after the Holocaust. Its a flimsy veneer of refugee-washing to promote refugee rights as evidence of being the wronged victim, to distract the world from the violent anti-Semitic screed of the popular Hamas Charter which encapsulates Palestinian desire for a Jew-free land. It’s a disgusting attitude which inspired the war against the Jews in 1948 and continues to this day.
That six members of the US Congress would promote commemorating the ‘Nakba’, highlights how anti-Semitism and racism is being mainstreamed in America today.
Palestinian supporters who hate Israel use a variety of terms to whitewash the crimes and intentions of Palestinian Arabs. Below is a sampling with a review of the misdirection.
“Intifada”
The term “Intifada” means “Uprising.” It gives the sense that the movement is one of empowering the disenfranchised as a matter of protest rather than the reality of genocidal terrorism.
The “Second Intifada” which raged from roughly September 2000 to September 2004 witnessed Palestinian Arabs blowing up ice cream parlors full of children, school lunchrooms and buses. Over 1,000 innocent Israeli civilians were killed in the mayhem because the leadership of the Palestinians refused to accept anything less than 100% of their demands.
Intifada means war. It means terrorism. The call for an intifada is not a protest chant but an incitement to violence.
A pro-Palestinian rally in New York City on July 31 featured protestors chanting “globalize the Intifada” and other anti-Israel chants.
“Martyr”
The Palestinian murderers of Israeli civilians are described as “martyrs” by Palestinians. They are held up as idols for Palestinian children when schools, soccer tournaments and public squares are named for the terrorists. The mothers and fathers of the killers are showcased on television telling the Arab public how proud they are of the killer’s sacrifice. The Palestinian Authority pays the families of the terrorists monthly stipends for their “contribution” of killing the enemy.
For clarity, the term “martyr” actually means “a person who is killed because of their religious beliefs.” Using the term for Palestinian terrorists turns Israel into racist murderers rather than victims of jihadi genocidal maniacs.
“Slain attackers”
Much like the term “martyrs,” pro-Palestinian press prefers to call Palestinian terrorists killed while committing murder as “slain attackers.” The word “slain” is defined as “to kill violently, wantonly, or in great numbers.” In other words, according to anti-Zionist rags like The New York Times, it is Palestinian Arab “attackers” who are killed violently and wantonly by Israelis. Not only are Israelis racists (see “martyrs” above) but also mass murderers.
“Resistance”
The political-terrorist group Hamas calls itself a “resistance force.” It is a designated terrorist group by dozens of western countries because of the hundreds of attacks it has perpetrated on civilians around the world. Its foundational charter is an anti-Semitic screed which calls for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel. The people of Gaza continue to support killing Israeli civilians in every poll.
The Palestinian “resistance” is to the mere presence of Jews which they have made clear in 100 years of riots and wars, even though Palestinian supporters will portray the Arabs as only protesting “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.“
“Desperate”
Palestinian apologists claim that Palestinians are “desperate” which is why they take such vicious actions against Israeli civilians. That’s outrageous. Desperate people gladly take whatever they can; entitled people refuse to take anything less than full demands.
Palestinians have refused every offer for peace for generations. They demand a country without a single Jew living in it. They categorically refuse to acknowledge that Israel is a Jewish State as part of a final settlement. A desperate people clinging for a chance at self-determination would never deny such things, unless their actual goal is to deny Jews of their own homes and country.
“Resorting to violence”
Anti-Israel opinion rags like The New York Times sometimes go beyond painting Palestinians as “desperate” people “resisting” Israeli occupation. It states that the political-terrorist group Hamas (which it never calls a terrorist group) has “resorted to violence.” The feeble-minded gray lady writes this despite the Hamas making its genocidal intentions public for the whole world to see.
“Impatient”
Doubling-down on a twisted portrayal of Hamas, The Times excuses violent flare-ups from Gaza as “localized expression of Palestinian impatience,” as it wrote on the front page of its May 6, 2019 paper. According to the anti-Israel paper, Israelis get shot because Gazans are impatient, not because they are the most anti-Semitic people in the world who are in favor of killing Israelis.
“Free Palestine”
Chants of “Free Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” and “we don’t want two states, we want all of it” are spun as simply a desire for equality in the holy land for Jews and Arabs. It is nothing of the sort but a call for the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.
Liberal media inverts the “from the river to the sea” as actually the chant of Jewish extremists who want to annex the West Bank, an area that was part-and-parcel of the British Mandate which called for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland there.
“Arab Land”
Sorry, but Israel is not part of the Arabian Peninsula. It’s also not part of the League of Arab States. It’s also not European nor African. It’s a little swatch of land connecting many continents.
Are the people who use this expression arguing that land itself has the DNA of a particular people? Would the same people say that Europe is “White Land” or Africa is “Black Land?” If someone were to argue that some lands truly are part and parcel of a specialized group of people, they would have to admit that the Land of Israel is “Jewish Land,” as Judaism is the only religion with a tie to specific land.
The term “Arab Land” is deliberately designed to sever the thousands of years of history that Jews have in the land. It is an example of the fictitious narrative that “Jesus was a Palestinian” and not a Jew, in an attempt to not just evict the current Jewish presence in the land but to expunge the entirety of Jewish history.
“Dignity”
Politicians state over and again that Israel deserves “security” while Palestinians deserve “dignity.” It seems like such a simple ask of Israel, to afford the Palestinians some semblance of dignity.
But if the parameters of Palestinian dignity is that Jews cannot have sovereignty, cannot live in the West Bank, cannot pray on the Temple Mount, cannot buy land from an Arab and demands the denial of Jewish history, why should that sort of “dignity” be endorsed, let alone entertained?
“Refugees”
Palestinian supporters have used and abused the term “refugees” for Palestinian Arabs in ways that have no bearing on the word, and in doing so, harm over 30 million actual refugees fleeing war zones today.
The Palestinian Arabs cared for by UNRWA are not refugees but stateless. They deserve to become citizens of either a new country or an existing country but that doesn’t make a child whose grandparents left a town five miles away during a war a “refugee.” Yet, these Palestinian “refugees” are taking billions of dollars of support when such monies can be used for children actually fleeing for their lives to foreign lands where they don’t speak the language and have no family support or infrastructure.
A “Viable” State
Anti-Zionist supporters of the Palestinians argue that there are certain minimum standards that a new country of Palestine must have in order to be viable.
As discussed above, “viability” means that there can be no Jews. “Settlers” undermine the foundation of the country for some reason. While Arabs can live in Israel without destroying the state, seemingly a Jewish presence in Palestine undermines the very viability of the country.
Similarly, a Palestinian state would need to be much wider than Israel is today. If Israel were to annex land up to the town of Maale Adumim west of Jerusalem, critics warn that Palestine would be cut in two and non-viable with a country only 15km wide at one point. Meanwhile Israel is that wide along its main population centers without the cry to widen Israel.
“1967 Borders”
People use the term “1967 Borders” even though the 1949 armistice agreements struck between Israel and Jordan as well as between Israel and Egypt specifically stated that those lines have no meaning and do not function as borders.
“Palestinian Citizens of Israel“
Israel afforded all Arabs the opportunity to be citizens when it declared statehood in 1948 and affords all Arabs in Jerusalem to become Israeli citizens today. Over 20% of Israel’s population is Arab.
Pro-Palestinians don’t like the notion of “Israeli Arabs” as they think it somehow acknowledges the liberalism of Israel being an open society. Instead, they opt for the very wordy “Palestinian Citizens of Israel” to market the proposition that their tie to the land of Palestine is permanent as is their identity which are distinct from Israel. Should a new state of Palestine ever be created, there is no question that these same Palestinian propaganda promoters would call the Jews in the country “Palestinian Jews,” (G-d forbid, if they are allowed to live there), not “Israeli citizens of Palestine.”
“Palestinian East Jerusalem”
The anti-Zionist media will have you believe that “East Jerusalem” exists today even though it only existed as an artifice of war for 19 years that ceased to be over fifty years ago. To extend the fiction, they will promote that it is a Palestinian city, even though there is no recognized country of Palestine and no part of the city was ever conceived to be Arab in the 1947 UN Partition Plan.
The anti-Zionist lexicon is not only attacking the Jewish state but sanitizing Palestinian Arabs of their anti-Semitism and terrorism in an attempt to wish a State of Palestine into being. Everyone should readily recognize the abuse of language that has become mainstreamed by anti-Israel voices.
The Biden Administration announced that it is going to send $150 million of American tax dollars to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. This “temporary” agency was established after the Arab war to destroy Israel in 1948-9, to care for “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” It has continued to extend its mandate for decades, now caring for grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those “persons.”
Several parties voiced their disapproval with the United States’ UNRWA donation. Former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said “UNRWA, is among the most corrupt and counterproductive of all UN agencies. President Trump was right to abandon it.” Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan added “We believe that this UN agency for so-called ‘refugees’ should not exist in its current format.“
UNRWA office in Jerusalem. (photo: First One Through)
To consider how the U.N. has handled “so-called ‘refugees'” in this “counterproductive” agency, imagine two Arabs leaving Palestine during the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. One had come to Palestine from Iraq in 1925 and the other from Syria in 1935, both settling in Jaffa. The Iraqi-Palestinian owned his home and his business and was reluctant to leave everything he had built but concluded that the war zone was too risky and returned to Iraq in 1949. The Syrian-Palestinian was renting his home and worked on a farm outside of town. He returned to Syria early in the war, assuming that the five invading Arab armies would finish the Zionists in short order and he could return to a Jew-free city, maybe even under the flag of Syria.
At war’s end, the Zionists were able to hold onto land – more than suggested under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan and less than allocated under the British Palestine Mandate – and had no interest in allowing the return of those Arabs which wanted to see Israel destroyed.
The Iraqi-Palestinian Arab decided to abandon his Jaffa home and business and started life anew among his cousins in Iraq. However, the Syrian-Palestinian opted to not start again in his old neighborhood where he lived fifteen years earlier, and instead decided to take the free housing, food, education and medical services offered by the United Nations as part of its UNRWA initiative. His grandchildren continue to live as wards of the world because of that decision.
Another person impacted by the Arab-Israeli War was not an Arab but a Jew. He came to Palestine from Yemen at the end of the 19th century and moved to Jerusalem. The Jordanian army routed him from his home during the war and he returned to Yemen. Not long after, the anti-Semitism in Yemen became intolerable and he and his family moved to Canada.
All three of these individuals were “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict,” but only one got services from UNRWA. The Palestinian Jew and Iraqi-Palestinian Arab each lost their homes and livelihood and were offered nothing from the United Nations. Only the Syrian-Palestinian Arab who chose to not move to his hometown in Syria, became a special grantee class. As long as he and his descendants remained a grantee, there was a U.N. promise that they would get property and/or money from the country which was transforming Jaffa and the surrounding region it controlled into an economic and technological miracle.
Today, the grandchildren of that Palestinian Jew and the Iraqi-Palestinian Arab are both successful businessmen and pay less attention to politics than they do to football. They think about the United Nations as much as they contemplate a hangnail from five years ago.
But the grandchildren of the Syrian-Palestinian have built their entire way of life around the largess of the United Nations and its promise that it will force Israel to hand them money or land as long as they continue to take UNRWA’s free education, medical services and housing. The U.N. is mother’s milk, a teat which has fed their entire family for generations with more gifts to come.
Watching these three “refugees” is an elderly fifth generation Palestinian Arab who had participated in the 1936-9 riots to keep the Jews out of Palestine and lobbied the British to halt their immigration as the Holocaust started in Europe. He headed to Gaza as the first tanks from five Arab armies invaded Israel. His roughly 60km trip from Jaffa to Gaza is about the same as from Manhattan to Stamford, CT. Had there never been a war and he had decided to relocate to Gaza (as several cousins did before the 1948-9 War), he would receive neither cries of empathy nor charity, but today he has over 100 descendants living for free in UNRWA housing around Gaza.
If the U.N. is attempting to resolve the lost property of people who fled the war zone, why should it matter whether they are registered as “refugees” and take services from UNRWA? Shouldn’t the Iraqi-Palestinian Arab and Palestinian Jew be entitled to consideration? Why should the Syrian-Palestinian get so much compensation when he never owned property?
The UNRWA policy leads one to conclude that its goal is not about money and property but to physically relocate a select sub-segment of the persons impacted by the war – only Arabs – into the Jewish State. Such UNRWA policy is in direct conflict with the stated U.N. goal of a two-state solution, one Arab and one Jewish, by injecting nearly 6 million Arabs into the Jewish State. One cannot be simultaneously in favor of two states and maintaining UNRWA.
There are significant issues to consider in the Arab-Israeli Conflict but the matter of Palestinian “refugees” has long been artificially manufactured. It is well past time to shut it down.
First One Through 