UNRWA en de PA: waarom wonen er nog Palestijnse vluchtelingen op de Palestijnse Westoever?

Elder of Ziyon plaatst weer eens een paar kritische kanttekeningen bij het werk en het bestaansrecht van de UNRWA. Waarom leven bijna een miljoen Palestijnen zestig jaar na dato nog in vluchtelingenkampen? Waarom hebben de landen waar de kinderen en kleinkinderen van de vluchtelingen uit 1948 leven hen niet allang het staatsburgerschap en gelijke rechten gegeven? En waarom doet zelfs de PA dit niet, en zijn de Palestijnen in gebied dat zij zelf controleren vluchteling? Het zijn vragen die journalisten om een of andere reden nooit lijken te stellen, evenmin als mensenrechten- en vredesorganisaties.

 

RP

--------------

 

UNRWA workers in West Bank on strike

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/10/unrwa-workers-in-west-bank-on-strike.html

From Ma'an:

UNRWA's West Bank director met Friday with representatives of donor countries in East Jerusalem to discuss the latest employee strike action over pay.

Barbara Shenstone told US, Danish, Swiss, Dutch, Irish, Belgian, Canadian and Austrian officials that the strike would deprive 56,000 school children of their rights to education as well as more than 5,000 patients of daily medical care.

As is usual when UNRWA workers strike (something that happens at least once a year), the UNRWA web page is silent on the matter.

But it brings the perennial question: why are there still "refugee" camps in the PA-administered territories at all? As far as I can tell, all or perhaps practically all of the UNRWA camps in the West Bank are in "Area A," fully under PA administrative control, in an area that everyone assumes will be part of a Palestinian Arab state. These people are no longer "refugees" even by the UN's definition, as they are in "Palestine."

Has the PA made any moves to dismantle these camps? Has it requested help from donor nations to get money in order to reduce the number of residents in these camps and get them self-sufficient?

If the PA intends to be a state, shouldn't mainstreaming some 200,000 of their own people into full, equal citizens be a high priority?

Shouldn't the donor nations that bankroll UNRWA be pressuring the PA to create a plan to eliminate all of these camps within five years or so? This would reduce the UNRWA budget, reduce the number of people counted as "refugees" worldwide, and stem the perpetual welfare machine that UNRWA has become.

Unfortunately, the reality is that UNRWA wants to keep the camps, the PA wants to keep the camps, and the Arab world wants to keep the camps - all paid for almost entirely with Western dollars. It is past time that UNRWA donor countries start demanding a plan from UNRWA as to how it will reduce the number of people dependent on it, and a plan from the PA on how to mainstream these so-called "refugees" into the statelet that the PA already has.

Of course, the fact that the PA hasn't shown the least interest in helping grant equal rights to its citizens within its own borders indicates that the PA is not really interested in building a state for Palestinian Arabs to live in, but rather to build a state that Jews cannot live in.