Wetherhorn

UNRWA just lost financial support from the US. That decision was obviously reached only after some careful consideration, UNRWA clinics and schools are often the only source of education and medical care for a very large number of people. The humanitarian impact could be considerable. But several European countries and also other Arab states that can afford to provide more aid have refused to increase their contributions, and left the us to pay for most of the costs.  Predictably, the Palestinian Authority is crying about the decision because it probably means, at least in part, that some of their own funding will have to be used to provide health and education to their own population. Up to now, they have been able to support terrorist families with significant amounts of money and spend freely on anti-Israel propaganda.  Those funds might need to be used to support the functions that UNRWA provided up to now,

The most important part of this US decision has nothing to do with humanitarian aid,  medical services, or schooling. The main point is that the US has focused on the refugee status of millions of individuals who have been defined as “Palestinian Refugees” under UNRWA. The status of refugee under the UN High Commission on Refugees does not allow for that condition to be passed on unconditionally to generations of descendants that were born to refugee parents. UNHCR is mandated to resettle refugees when repatriation is not considered practicable. UNRWA, at the insistence of many Arab states, continues to grant refugee status to “Palestinians” even when they have citizenship in other countries, are gainfully employed,  and neither they nor any of their forefathers were born in any part of what the Palestinian Authority claims is their land.

It seems to me that the real aim of this American move is similar to what President Trump did with regard to Jerusalem. Trump said that by recognizing the fact that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel he removed the issue of final status for the city from the negotiating table for a future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.  This new decision may go a long way towards doing the same thing for another previously intractable bone of contention between those two parties; the so called “right of Return”  of Palestinians to locations that the PA considers their hoes.

I’ll write more in a future post about one of the remaining problems, the claim of the Palestinians that Israel usurped “their land”. Meanwhile, it looks like the removal of one more difficult question from consideration in a potential future peace plan may give some strength to President Trumps idea that he can solve the decades old conflict by negotiations.