American president Donald Trump seems to want a peaceful final settlement of the entire Gaza/Palestine/Israel affair. He floated an idea of resettling Gaza Arabs in Egypt or Jordan (or both). The basic idea has some merit. The ‘Arab Refugee’ problem was created by the UN in 1949 when it established UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). That organization was tasked with identifying, housing, feeding, schooling, and providing health care for ARAB refugees of the 1948-9 Arab Israel war. The problems started almost immediately. UNRWA defined anyone who had been living in Palestine during the 6 months before the British pulled out as a “Palestinian” eligible for aid. That aid would continue until the recipient could return to his home in Palestine. There was no provision for resettlement. Israel dealt with ALL displaced people inside its’ borders and politely told UNRWA to leave. The Israelis only got UNRWA (and all its’ aid recipients) back after the 1967 Six Day War. The UN recognized the need for a broader agency to deal with refugees and established the office of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees to support victims temporarily while dealing with returning them to their homes OR resettling them. Persons already being handled by UNRWA were not transferred to UNHCR. Now the “fun” began.
As usual, the main motivation is/was money. Also as usual, the problems come from who gets what, and how much. For UNRWA, the first step was recording refugees and issuing them a refugee identity card. Under the criteria used by UNRWA thousands of individuals were registered as “Palestinians” even though they had come from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan during WW II [and earlier, or later] as economic immigrants, attracted by the high wages the British were paying to build military installations, police stations, and roads. The tent cities those refugees were initially housed in have been transformed over the years into the slum districts know today as ‘refugee camps’.
UNRWA distributed food based on identity cards. There was probably a good market in forgeries, but what happened most often is that one family member collected the cards of his relatives and received a single, larger, food issue. Enter the black market operators. They bought ID cards, especially of deceased family members. It was a standing joke that refugees never died, their cards just became ‘inherited’. This same market phenomenon is being repeated today in Gaza. There are no black market operators. Hamas simply commandeers aid trucks, takes what it wants, and hands over (or sells) the rest to their supporters.
More to come about UNRWA, and Israel is expelling UNRWA again this week.
Wetherhorn 