JLI: How UNRWA Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict

This lecture was given by Dr. Asaf Romirowsky.

UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) is meant to help refugees until they graduate from that status, but when it comes to the “Palestinian problem” they aren’t doing that, and it’s because their definition of “refugees” includes descendants, so instead of just considering the 40,000 Arabs that were living in Israel between 1946 and 1948 as refugees, they include all their descendants as well, making the number go up to 5 million.

Now the Arabs see the “right of return” as essential, and it isn’t up for negotiation even in a “two-state” proposal, obviously, Israel will never agree to a law of return for 5 million people as it would outnumber their majority. In addition, when refugees are naturalized in Israel and the USA they still call themselves refugees, since the existence of refugees serves their purpose which is that the “refugee” status doesn’t end for the Arabs thus maintaining their “victimhood”. This is why Arab countries will not give citizenship to these “refugees”, and since UNRWA only exists as long as “refugees” exist, there is no reason why they would create a situation that would end their need to exist. Moreover, UNRWA is run by Palestinians, they employ 30,000 more people than any other U.N. organization, and get 400 million dollars a year, so obviously they don’t truly want to resolve the problem, and would rather keep it going for as long as possible. Even more problematic is the fact that they employ terrorists without doing background checks, and they haven’t allowed any external entity to audit them so what they do with the money is not regulated. Their schools were used to hide bombs.

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