by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Israeli government study disputes U.N. aid agency's quote of 5 million Palestinian refugees, shares findings with Washington
An Israeli government study shared with
Washington argues that Palestinian refugees number in the thousands, not
the millions designated by a U.N. aid agency whose funding has been
slashed by the Trump administration, an Israeli official said on Friday.
The fate of Palestinians displaced by the
1948 War of Independence and their descendants has long clouded
U.S.-sponsored peace efforts.
Palestinians demand a refugee right of
return to lands now in Israel. For its part, Israel rejects this demand,
insisting that they settle where they are or in a future Palestinian
state. Negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip stalled in 2014.
Demographics loom over the dispute. The
U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, puts the number of refugees
at some 5 million, a tally including descendants of the some 700,000
Palestinians who fled or were expelled in 1948.
Israel says only survivors among the
original 1948 refugees should be considered refugees today - an idea
fiercely opposed by the Palestinian leadership, which hews to the UNRWA
numbers.
The Israeli study has not been published,
and there was no immediate reaction from Palestinian officials or from
UNRWA on its numbers.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely
described 2018 as a "turning-point" for UNRWA and its definition of
Palestinian refugees, "in that the United States has said 'no more' and
the State of Israel is closing rank with this policy."
Speaking to Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM,
Hotovely said researchers in her ministry and in Israel's National
Security Council have compiled a report determining that there were "a
limited number of thousands" of Palestinian refugees today.
"It does not come close to millions," she
said, without elaborating on how Israel's researchers had calculated
those lower figures.
Asked to respond to Hotovely's remarks, a
U.S. official who requested anonymity told Reuters: "While the United
States believes the UNRWA model is not appropriate or sustainable, we
will not elaborate further at this time."
Last month, Israel Hayom was granted exclusive access to a position paper,
in which officials maintain that U.S. President Donald Trump's decision
to defund UNRWA "made it clear that the organization is not part of the
solution but part of the problem."
In the policy paper, ministry officials
conclude that UNRWA is a political organization that perpetuates the
status of Palestinian refugees and feeds the cycle of violence and
desperation.
"By inflating the number of registered
'refugees,' UNRWA sustains the demand for '[the right of] return' – a
euphemism for Israel's destruction," the paper argues. "Actual
Palestinian refugees deserve to receive the same international
assistance that other refugees around the world receive from the U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees, in order to bring an end to, and not
perpetuate their status."
In the paper, the Foreign Ministry outlines
findings that indicate UNRWA has ties with Hamas, the terrorist group
that rules the Gaza Strip, saying that the agency, in fact, helps to
incite against Israel.
In August, U.S. envoy to the United Nations
Nikki Haley said UNRWA should "change the number of refugees to an
accurate account" in return for a restoration of U.S. funding for the
agency. U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton lambasted UNRWA's aid
program as "the only one in history based on the assumption that
refugee status is hereditary."
Members of the U.S. Congress are demanding the State Department make public a key report that includes precise figures on the number of people who became refugees in the 1948 War of Independence.
Sources who have seen the report say that
the State Department's assessment was that only 20,000 of the 700,000
Arab refugees who fled Palestine during the War of Independence are
still alive and displaced from their homes.
In an open letter issued the following month,
UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl said "the protracted
nature of the Palestine refugee crisis" was not unique. He said the
children and grandchildren of long-displaced refugees in Afghanistan,
Sudan, Somalia, Congo and elsewhere are also recognized as refugees and
assisted by the United Nations.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/10/14/number-of-palestinian-refugees-in-the-thousands-not-millions-israeli-study-finds/
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