What will wake Americans up to Israel's role in our foreign policy? Here is an AP story on the Senate amendment that pushes for the stripping of millions of Palestinian refugees of their rights.
In recent months, however, Knesset member Einat Wilf has talked of restructuring UNRWA and addressing the refugee issue.
Wait, what does the Knesset have to do with American legislation? I guess some Americans care what the Knesset wants, though:
"There's a sense with the peace process really flat-lining right now, it's not going to get tackled at the negotiating table," [Foundation for the Defense of Democracies VP Jonathan] Schanzer said. "The sense among the Israelis is maybe this is the time to do it."
Kirk and his staff acted on that signal, pushing an amendment in the Senate committee that asked which refugees lived in the West Bank and Gaza and which ones lived elsewhere.
The senator is still recovering from a stroke suffered in January and Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., introduced the amendment for him.
Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides wrote the committee to oppose the amendment, saying the refugee issue "strikes a deep, emotional chord among Palestinians and their supporters, including our regional allies." Nides said forcing the United States to take a position on permanent status issues could undermine Mideast peace efforts and have a destabilizing impact on key allies, such as Jordan, with its significant Palestinian refugee population.
The AP is clear about the political implications. It says the Obama administration is opposed to the legislation. But how forcefully?
Whatever step the Obama administration takes in an election year is certain to resonate as Republicans and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney persist in questioning the president's commitment to Israel.
And here is the State Department briefing the other day. Notice how Mark Toner evades any real condemnation of the Senate action.
QUESTION: I’m curious, is there a position – do you have a position on the final language that was put into the foreign ops bill by Senator Leahy, which watered down what Senator Kirk wanted? Are you okay with this idea that – of counting Palestinian refugees?
MR. TONER: Well, you know there was a letter that Deputy Secretary Nides did write to – about – to the chairman about this proposed amendment. And what he – what this letter raised was simply that the status of Palestinian refugees is clearly a final status issue between Israel and --
QUESTION: Yeah, I know. But I want to know if you take a position on the language that ultimately ended up in the bill.
MR. TONER: Well, again, we – the final language I haven’t seen, frankly. But our position on this is that we want to see UNRWA funding continue. It’s to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees, as well as those displaced by the 1967 conflict in Jordan and Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza and the West Bank.
QUESTION: Well, can you take the question --
MR. TONER: Yeah, sure.
QUESTION: -- as to what the Administration’s position is on --
MR. TONER: I’ll look at the final wording and see if we’re --
QUESTION: -- what the Leahy language is, because it was at least a little bit different than what Senator Kirk --
MR. TONER: Right.
QUESTION: -- had first proposed. And I’m not sure that I’ve seen any answer on whether you’re okay with that – with the revised language.
MR. TONER: But fundamentally, where we come down on this is that we don’t want to be viewed as prejudging or --
QUESTION: Right.
MR. TONER: -- predetermining the outcome of --
QUESTION: No, I understand that. But it’s the just the case if --
MR. TONER: Refugee status.
QUESTION: -- you’re okay – but if you’re okay with that language, then I would wonder if you were also okay with language that would say: Okay, you have to map out the area that – where there are illegitimate – what you consider to be illegitimate settlements – how much land that actually is. So I mean, I want to know if you’re okay with this, which involves counting the refugees – which is, as you say, a final status issue – are you okay with also inserting yourself into other final status issues?
MR. TONER: Well, again, just to be clear, and I’ll – we will look at the final language as it appeared – UNRWA does have a specific number of refugees that it does count for this. That said – and we continue to support funding for UNRWA, but that said, we still consider the final status of refugees to be something that needs to be worked out between the parties.
QUESTION: Two quick --
QUESTION: A follow-up on that.
MR. TONER: Yeah, go ahead.
QUESTION: I had two quick –
QUESTION: Just on that --
QUESTION: Go ahead.
QUESTION: Just a quick follow-up. Would the United States – considering that the refugee issue is part of the final status of talks that the United States has shepherded for a very long time, would the U.S. be – or does it do independent, sort of, survey of how many Palestinian refugees there are in the --
MR. TONER: Not – certainly not that I’m aware of. As I said, UNRWA does have a number – a global number that they work with, the number of Palestinian refugees. But again, we’re not saying that that’s the number in and of itself that we want to see going forward. That final status would be something for the two parties to negotiate.
QUESTION: So absent American conduct of independent, let’s say, census of Palestinian refugees, the U.S. Government would take the figures that UNRWA does submit, correct?
MR. TONER: Not at all. I said that that’s – that ultimate number is something to be determined through the parties.
hey gilad. have you read jennifer rubin, cliff may, daniel pipes, kredo, micheal rubin, a guy named hornik @frontpage mag? all of them are going bonkers over this in the last couple days. really pushing it. elliot abrams too. there’s more than one way to skin a cat and you’ll do it by shrinking palestinians down to size won’t you? no negotiations? eliminate the refugees.
i see thru your game.
Annie, it looks like one of the moderators to this article, you or Philip, has removed my post to which you have just responded. Great way to manage debates and attempts to get to the truth. Keep up the great work.
By the way, why don’t you explain to us why the refugee camps in the Gaza (fully controlled by Palestinians) and the west bank (full administrative control by Palestinians) have not been dismantled? Is there apartheid in Palestinian society with some Palestinians being worth more than others? They are brothers for heaven sake. Why keep the camps? Absorb them into their families. They are of the same family, so they tell us.
gilad, check the timestamps, i responded 9 hrs ago.
btw, isael doesn’t allow building materials and you are suggesting the refugee camps be dismantled? brilliant.
Why keep the camps? Absorb them into their families
gazans are already absorbed into families. perhaps you do not grasp the fundemental basics of what is means to be a refugee. they have a family, they have no state, rights, or citizenship. scroll down and read hostages comments.
Israel once made a credible offer to rebuild the camps in Gaza and the west bank. For political reasons, the Palestinians refused. A small percentage of the Palestinian refugees may be able to find their original homes, maybe? These numbers are very small and Israel would be able to, and has made various offers, at various times, to allow some to do so, but only under an end of conflict agreement. The Arabs do not want an end of conflict agreements with Jews. They don’t want an independent Jewish State, anywhere. I suggest you dig up the Hamas Charter and give it a little look-over.
So regarding the invented and bloated number of millions of refugees, where exactly would you like them to return to? Israel does not even have enough housing for its citizens and is currently implementing a building frenzy, inside of what you call Israel proper. Those who use the Palestinian refugees and dangle old brass keys, from houses that have long gone, are being cynical and do not have the best interests of the genuine refugees as heart.
Gilad’s post is certainly a good example of Nakba denial, but it’s also a good example of why it’s a bad idea to moderate Nakba denial from Mondoweiss. He’s expressing the standard mythological account of Israeli “independence,” a mythology that’s a hulking roadblock to peace and justice in Palestine. Discrediting that mythology wherever it appears is an urgent mitzvah for those who hope for a durable (= just) resolution of the Middle East conflict, whether or not they’re Jewish. So let us patiently pick apart Gilad’s main arguments.
1. Yes, of course Palestinians and their Arab supporters rejected the 1947 UN partition plan, which was also rejected by all UN member states with a sizable Muslim population. What right did that organization have to give away 56 percent of the Palestinian homeland to some recent European invaders openly bent on taking away all their homeland if they could? invaders who at the time owned less than 10 percent of the land, and who represented only a third of the population despite decades of effective control of immigration by the Jewish Agency. Does Palestinians’ resistance to this UN-sanctioned theft mean they forfeited all subsequent right to struggle for their lost land and property?
2. The Arab armies didn’t “invade” Palestine until May 14-15, 1948, by which time a quarter of a million Palestinians had already been expelled from their homes. The “Arab invasion” was an attempt to intervene in the ongoing ethnic cleansing (i.e., the “episode of Palestinian refugees,” in Gilad’s sanitized language), not its cause. It was a feeble attempt, undertaken with great reluctance on the part of Arab leaders, who knew only too well how futile it would be, but who felt compelled by the strong feelings of their subjects.
3. And in case there are those who sometimes get confused with all the terminology …. White Europeans = Ashkenazi Jews of Palestine. Ashkenazi Jews of Palestine are white Europeans. Ashkenazi Jews of Palestine are part of the white European family. It was a white European army who attacked Palestine in 1947-1949 with the sole purpose of wiping the indigenous Palestinian Arabs off the map.
“but only under an end of conflict agreement. ”
That’s kind of the rub, isn’t it. You foreign invaders destroy the indigenous people’s abodes and you “offer” to rebuild them in connection with them giving up their homeland to you. You can maybe see why
“The Arabs do not want an end of conflict agreements with Jews.”
That’s a libel. The Arab Peace Plan has been on offer for 10 years, and not a peep from the Jews about it. It provides everything that you people supposedly want, but it would require you to abandon you dreams of Lebensraum, you would have to treat Arabs with human rights. So you ignore it and spread your dirty, racist lies.
“I suggest you dig up the Hamas Charter and give it a little look-over.”
LMAO. It looks like a mirror version of the Likud position, and those of Lehi, Irgun, Hagganah, the so-called Israeli Declaration of Independence.
“where exactly would you like them to return to? ”
Where ever they want to go.
“Israel does not even have enough housing for its citizens and is currently implementing a building frenzy, inside of what you call Israel proper.”
Then kick some Jews out of their homes and give them to the Palestinians. You don’t have any problem putting Palestinians, whose land this is, on the street? Put some Jews on the street. Start with your politicians responsible for the crimes against the Palestinian people. I’m sure they have fine residences.
Oops. I meant this to go after another giladg comment below. I’ve reposted it there.
Israel does not even have enough housing for its citizens and is currently implementing a building frenzy, inside of what you call Israel proper.
links? where?
The Arabs do not want an end of conflict agreements with Jews. They don’t want an independent Jewish State, anywhere.
It’s actually more like the Israelis want to illicitly establish a Jewish State in all of Palestine.
The Arab Peace Initiative (API) of 2002 has been cited in so many UN resolutions in the past decade that I’ve lost count. The Arab States offered Israel full recognition and an end to the conflict in return for withdrawal from all of the territories captured in 1967 and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194. link to al-bab.com
Israel consciously chose to ignore the offer, while dramatically expanding its illegal colonial enterprise.
“So regarding the invented and bloated number of millions of refugees, where exactly would you like them to return to? Israel does not even have enough housing for its citizens and is currently implementing a building frenzy”..gilad
Well the obvious solution is for the Israelis Jews to return to all the European countries occupied by Hitler that they originally came from…
I think those countries ‘deserve’ to get their Jews back and the Jews deserve to go back….so everyone would get what they deserve….LOL.
“They don’t want an independent Jewish State, anywhere.”
No-one should want such a thing. The very idea of an ethnically based state is wrong. Nor does that fact that there have been a number of such states make it right.
giladg,
Your earlier comment was Nakba denial. That is probably why it was deleted, at some time after Annie made her comment as did several other people, including me. I pointed out what it was, and I suspect that my objection was taken to heart by the moderators and so they removed your comment.
When it comes to the Nakba it’s not denial – saying it didn’t really happen – that concerns me, but justification and claims that it was the right thing.
MHughes, are these aspects not often intertwined?
When it comes to the Nakba it’s not denial – saying it didn’t really happen – that concerns me, but justification and claims that it was the right thing.
Agreed. Publicly justifying war crimes or crimes against humanity that have targeted an identifiable ethnic, religious, or national group is a hate crime in many jurisdictions. Websites that condone or tolerate that sort of commentary are engaging in conduct that can be viewed as criminal too. The operators are also at risk of having access blocked by web filtering software or the Courts.
“Great way to manage debates and attempts to get to the truth. Keep up the great work.”
I think they call it “Mordechai Vanunu” mode. Except that he’s a hero and you’re a hasbara-spewing troll spreading the filthy lies of zionism.
>> Hitler said that the bigger the lie, the greater the chance people will believe it.
And the hateful and immoral Zio-supremacists and their oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and supremacist state took Hitler’s message to heart.
Reach for the bottom, boys, reach for the bottom!
And the lie was? Remember that the Jews accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan. By accepting this plan there was no room to dabble in lies. One state for Palestinian Arabs, one state for Jews. Now please remind us who rejected that plan?
The Palestinian geopolitical positions are all based on trying to hide and/or mask the mistake they made when they rejected this plan. It was only after the Arab armies invaded the Jewish State did the entire episode of Palestinian refugees begin. So who should bare responsibility for the refugees. I believe it is the Arabs themselves. An in case there are those who sometimes get confused with all the terminology …. Arab = Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs. Palestinians are part of the Arab family. It was the Arabs and Muslim armies who attacked in 1948 with the sole purpose of wiping the new Jewish state off the map.
>> And the lie was?
giladg @ June 3, 2012 at 7:14 am
giladg
So, if the Partition Plan had been accepted, you will explain to us why the Jews decided to fight outside the lines and take so much more land (dispossess and expel so many hundreds of thousands more Palestinians) than they were allocated, including West Jerusalem, which had been intended as a seperate entity? How does hasbara central reconcile this?
“And the lie was?”
There was a lot of them. The biggest of all was that some random Jew had a connection with land far from his home in Europe or America or Russian — especially one that would supersede (hell, even equal) the rights of the people whose land it actually is, who actually live there — simply because he is a Jew.
“Remember that the Jews accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan. By accepting this plan there was no room to dabble in lies.”
And yet there is more than sufficient evidence to establish that even that supposed acceptance was a lie. The Jewish leadership is undeniably on record that this acceptance was never intended to be a final step. It was the first step in the foreign conquest of the Palestinian’s land.
“It was only after the Arab armies invaded the Jewish State did the entire episode of Palestinian refugees begin. ”
False. First, let’s remember that it was European Jews who invaded Palestine, starting in the 1900s, that started this conflict. Second, the attacks on the Palestinians started before 1948. The attempt by the Arab armies to prevent the genocide of the Palestinians, limiting it to a mere ethnic cleansing, followed the assaults by the Yishuv.
“So who should bare responsibility for the refugees.”
Zionists, where ever they are. They are the ones who started this whole evil process of shipping foreign Jews to invade and take over Palestine from it’s rightful owners, the Palestinians.
“An in case there are those who sometimes get confused with all the terminology …. Arab = Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs. Palestinians are part of the Arab family. It was the Arabs and Muslim armies who attacked in 1948 with the sole purpose of wiping the new Jewish state off the map. ”
Rarely is such vile racism simply put out there on display like this. What disgusting people you zionists are.
I never read your original comment but can easily spot multiple lies in this one. Remember you’re talking with adults now, not schoolchildren you can brainwash.
In word only, not deed. If zionists accepted the UN Partition plan they would not have invaded and occupied any territory outside the UN-specified borders. They would not have ethnically cleansed vast numbers of Palestinians from within the Israeli partition. They would not have committed looting on a national scale. They would not have spent the next few years inventing bogus legal tricks to steal Palestinian refugees land.
Which arab armies invaded Israel and when? Bet you can’t tell me, because it was zionist forces that invaded the Palestinian partition, not the other way around.
The arab state armies joined the conflict mid-May 1948, by which time there were already 250-400,000 Palestinian refugees – they had been ethnically cleansed by the zionist forces, and it is Israel that “bares” responsibility for that.
Funny how the Arab League notified the UN of their intention to enter the conflict, and the UN accepted their notice without issuing any condemning resolution. The Arab League’s intention was to come to the aid of Palestinians, and in the case of Abdullah of Jordan – to take control of the West Bank.
By what magical means were they join going to be “wiping the new Jewish state off the map” when the arab state armies were in the Palestinian partition only? Voodoo muslim mind control? Anti-semitic flying carpets abducting jews? Genies in bottles zapping zionists?
Really dismal giladg. Everything you say is easily disprovable by pointing to Israeli sources.
Why wouldnt they gilad? It was free land for your ideology. Stolen land. Why don’t you go try break Germany up for your cause? Palestinians had nothing to do with your so called plight and nobody of sane mind would want their country partitioned up for foreigners. Your thought process is extremely disturbed and irrational. Besides, the zionist leadership met and decided against accepting the UN partition borders prior to their declaration of independence. The side that prevailed argued that they should keep any extra territory won in warfare.
giladg June 3, 2012 at 7:14 am
“Remember that the Jews accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan”
Indeed, as “binding” according to the Jewish spokesman at the UNSC
” Now please remind us who rejected that plan?”
Irrelevant who rejected UNGA Res 181. The two parties were offered a chance to declare INDEPENDENCE. “The setting up of one State was not made conditional upon the setting up of the other State .”
“The Palestinian geopolitical positions are all based on trying to hide and/or mask the mistake they made when they rejected this plan”
A) It cannot be demanded that an entity declare ‘independence’. It is completely against the notion of ‘independence’. The Arab States were not obliged to accept a deal to give away half of Palestine, when such a deal was against the notions of self determination under the UN Charter. They had (and still have) the right of persistent objection going back to 1922 and the LoN Mandate.
B) Even had they wanted to, the Arab States could not have declared ‘independence’ on behalf of the Palestinians when the LoN Mandate ended on the May 14th 1948. Jewish forces already controlled part of the area allocated for an ‘independent’ Arab State by the time the Mandate by May 14th 1948. One cannot be ‘independent’ unless one is completely free of all other control. Palestine in all its shapes and guises since the Roman era has never been free of the control in part or whole of some entity or another. Israel is the last “Occupying Power” in a long line.
“It was only after the Arab armies invaded the Jewish State..”
Er “Palestine” is not in Israel, Israel has never been in Palestine. It is impossible for an Independent Sovereign State to be in or a part of a non-self-governing territory. Prior to Israeli Statehood, Israel didn’t officially exist. Palestine officially did exist. After Israeli Statehood was declared, Israel existed independent of all other entities, including what remained of Palestine.
In order to say “the Arab States invaded Israel”, Israel must have had BORDERS!!!! Otherwise, how does anyone know what parts of Israel were invaded???
According to the Israeli Govt website, the Arab States invaded “Palestine” (first paragraph)
“..did the entire episode of Palestinian refugees begin”
Problem…. before May 15th 1948 Jewish forces under Plan Dalet began dispossessing non-Jews from areas within what was to have become the Jewish State and; outside of what was to become the Jewish state
“So who should bare responsibility for the refugees”
Simple, the country of return for not allowing them to return. The refugees fled and as civilians they had and still have, a right to return.
“I believe it is the Arabs themselves”
Why? The refugees didn’t flee from the Arab States. They fled the violence. It’s irrelevant why or who told them or who made them. They fled, they didn’t fight anyone. They’re protected persons under Customary Laws of War in place BEFORE Israel was ever declared and obliged itself to Customary International Law
“An in case there are those who sometimes get confused with all the terminology …. Arab = Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs. Palestinians are part of the Arab family”
I guess there’s simply no Arab Jews in Ziofantasyland.
“It was the Arabs and Muslim armies who attacked in 1948 with the sole purpose of wiping the new Jewish state off the map”
Where are the UNSC resolutions condemning the Arab Regional Powers for invading “Israel”? Fact is, there aren’t any. As was their right under the UN Charter, they invaded Palestinian territory in order to protect it from Israeli forces already “outside the State of Israel”
Your Hasbarrow is empty dude… always has been, always will be
Remember that the Jews accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan. By accepting this plan there was no room to dabble in lies.
LOL! We’ve debunked that myth already.
link to mondoweiss.net
In fact, the representatives of the Jewish Agency said that they only accepted the principle that the plan required the establishment of their Jewish State.
They stated for the record that they did not accept:
*The principle that the Plan required the establishment of an Arab State or Corpus Separatum including Jerusalem;
*The collection of the revenues that were necessary for the provision of essential public services in the Arab State under the Plan of Economic Union;
*The termination of the Mandate with respect to the non-Jewish communities. They refused to accept the right of the Emancipated and Independent Arab States of the former Mandate to determine their own status and dispose of their own territory as free peoples. The Jewish Agency continued to cite Article 80 of the Charter and demanded a fresh round of UN deliberations and territorial revisions in favor of the State of Israel when the two neighboring Arab countries entered into a voluntary federal union, e.g. link to unispal.un.org.
So when a Zionist claims that Jews accepted the 1947 Partition Plan, they are either extremely simple-minded, to the point of mental incompetence, or simply lying.
It’s not that difficult to understand. It’s called geometric progression. If I have been evicted, my two children would be evicted as well. It happens that one is not willing to understand others’ point of view.
Excuse me, moderators, but wasn’t giladg’s comment above an example of Nakba denial which is supposedly prohibited on this site?
Excuse me, moderators, but wasn’t giladg’s comment above an example of Nakba denial which is supposedly prohibited on this site?
Mondoweiss certainly has a similar comment policy that would prohibit anyone else from making allegations like the one giladg made about the magnitude of the Holocaust.
Yes, tree. That policy exists. giladg is a serial abuser of it and should have, in my opinion, been banned a while ago.
giladg says:
“Hitler said that the bigger the lie, the greater the chance people will believe it.
And so it goes with the “millions” of Palestinian refugees.”
So what lie is it today you want to spread, giladg? That ONLY the descendants of Palestinian refugees can acquire refugee status? Or that most of the Jews are descendants of ancient Hebrew “refugees”?
Freud’s cousin, Bernays, the father of modern Marketing, agreed with Hitler, who himself deduced the The Big Lie from Allied propaganda against “The Hun” in WW1.
Hitler figured out, and wrote about it in the pages of Mein Kampf, that most people only allow themselves “little white lies,” so cannot imagine the chutzpah that is the Big Lie. Goebbels, of course, remains the most efficient student of Bernays, in the arena of government Big Lies. Of course again, he worked within a dictatorship. The American government and mainstream media today work Hitler-Bernays-Goebbels seamlessly. So Dick and Jane think they are coming when they are going, and visa versa. BTW, Bernays is famous for addicting millions of Americans to smoking cigarettes–not for nothing was he related to Freud: His idea was: Bare-legged young ladies parading in NYC smoking cigs! Lucky Strike!
“And so it goes with the “millions” of Palestinian refugees.”
And so it goes with “millions” of needy Holocaust survivors. A thorough accounting of well over $1 billion collected for needy survivors would be an eye opener wouldn’t it, giladg? Who collected it, who put it in their pockets, and who are the remaining survivors still languishing in poverty? Now that would be worthy of an investigation supported by the US Senate.
So Palestinians will have to prove they were “original” refugees, not descendants, in order to have any rights. Sounds fair … as long as the same standards are applied to the Israelis. May be a bit tough, though, to prove they were actually the ones that were there 2000 years ago and not just their descendants. Mel Brooks, the “2000 year old man”, may end up being the only one who can stay!
So Palestinians will have to prove they were “original” refugees, not descendants, in order to have any rights.
No the language which Kirk attempted to insert which said “It shall be the policy of the United States with regard to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that a Palestinian refugee is defined as …” was axed and does not appear in S.3241. link to danielpipes.org
The UN General Assembly can decide who is or isn’t a refugee and also who is or isn’t an observer state for its own purposes. More importantly, it can push-back on the US and Israel by deciding exactly how much of the cost of operations is going to be borne by the two on a non-voluntary basis. While Sen Kirk and Rep. Ros-Lehtinen have grandiose plans to reform the UN through the use of US legislation, the UN Organization is governed by a multilateral treaty that doesn’t permit modifications to the Charter without the consent of the P-5 and all of the members. Here is the type of reform the UN has been demanding:
–Address to the Plenary session of the General Assembly of the United Nations by Judge Stephen M. Schwebel (United States), President of the International Court of Justice, 26 October 1999
So, if the Palestinian refugees can’t be supported by voluntary contributions, the General Assembly can always make up the difference by levying a mandatory assessment against the responsible member state or states. Israel has been outsourcing the costs of its wrongful acts of state, including ethnic cleansing, the illegal colonial enterprise, and the illegal occupation for too many decades. It has done that with US assistance, despite the frequent objections of various UN organs.
In addition, Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention stipulates that the final status of any refugees is determined in accordance with the applicable resolutions of the United Nations, not by negotiations.
It says that refugees receiving relief from any other UN organs, like the UNRWA, will automatically be covered by the protections of the Convention and the UNHCR in the event that they loose the other UN-provided relief before their final status is resolved in accordance with the applicable resolutions of the General Assembly. In this case that would include UN GA resolution 194(III) and any other dispositive resolution that the General Assembly adopts in accordance with Article 18(3).
link to yale.edu
So Israel and the US are risking the possibility of paying the lion’s share of the bill for 5 million refugees (as determined by operation of international treaty law) if they aren’t wise enough to leave well enough alone.
Who will force Israel and US to pay for lion’s share for 5 M refugees? Nobody. Who will pay actually in any event, USA! There is no way Israel will B accountable for what it does so long as the average American allows its reps to be bought by AIPAC et al, and a precondition of this, the current status quo in USA, is that the USA mainstream media is effectively controlled, as majority share-owned by #IsraelFirst American Jews who have the highest priority a foreign state, Israel.
Saying that Jews of circa 2000 years ago who left Palestine did so as refugees is highly dubious. A few might have left Palestine because of Roman suppression of rebellions, but in fact Jews of the period were sending out missionaries to convert people to Judaism, and as citizens of the Roman empire were also able to conduct trade throughout it. At one time a large proportion of the Roman empire had converted to Judaism. Nor do we know if those ancestors of Jews who emigrated from Palestine for whatever reason were even Jews when they left, the Phoenician/Canaanite sea trade empire lasted a good 1000 years and preceded the advent of Judaism. They also had colonies around the Mediterranean.
That The Exodus is a myth has long been rationally argued by a significant number of historians combined with archeologists. Israeli land strata is ignored today by Jewish archeologists, diggers, when it refutes Jewish myth. Logical questions, e.g., “Gee, if the people who’ve lived in the former Mandate of Palestine for thousands of years, have no right to said land, then what right does an American Jew born in Brooklyn in 1990 with a family line who immigrated from Poland in the 20th Century have to said land?”
The next logical question left unanswered by the world PTB, led by the USA, is: “What did the Palestinians people have to do with what Hitler did during his regime?”
Real politic is real in that it is bloody, and led by the spirit of Herman Goering, which does not mean it’s not a fantasy, but rather that controlled and manipulated ignorance means adults are easily made to pay for the Tooth Fairy.
And giladg and his equally sad-sack buddies are just waiting for the day they can hop all over the comment threads croaking “refugees, what refugees? There are none! We waved our kosher wand over the Capitol, and pouffe! They all disappeared!”
For the UN’s position on who qualifies for refugee status, see this interview with UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness, link to unrwa.org, who says (the rest is a block quote):
UNHCR’s Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for determining Refugee Status provides in paragraph 184: “If the head of a family meets the criteria of the definition, [for refugee status] his dependants are normally granted refugee status according to the principle of family unity.”
In effect, refugee families everywhere retain their status as refugees until they fall within the terms of a cessation clause or are able to avail themselves of one of three durable solutions already mentioned — voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement in a third country.
Also, Chapter 5 of the UNHCR publication, Procedural Standards for Refugee Status Determination under UNHCR’s Mandate is very clear that in accordance with the refugee’s right to family unity, refugee status is transferred through the generations. According to Chapter 5.1.2 “the categories of persons who should be considered to be eligible for derivative status under the right to family unity include:” “all unmarried children of the Principal Applicant who are under 18 years.”
Chapter 5.1.1 makes it clear that this status is retained after the age of 18. It states “individuals who obtain derivative refugee status enjoy the same rights and entitlements as other recognised refugees and should retain this status notwithstanding the subsequent dissolution of the family through separation, divorce, death, or the fact that the child reaches the age of majority.”
In addition, UNHCR typically cites a Palestinian refugee population number in their State of the World’s Refugees reports: see as an example this document. This makes clear that the practice of registering descendants of refugees is not disputed.
For the UN’s position on who qualifies for refugee status
A bit of clarification is in order: Even if the UNRWA were to magically disappear tomorrow, the status of the refugees can only be definitively settled in accordance with the resolutions of the General Assembly, not by the US Senate; not through bilateral negotiations; and not according to UNHCR guidelines. The 1951 Refugee Convention contains an express provision whereby the participating states assigned the ultimate authority on status decisions to the resolutions of the General Assembly. The ipso facto application of the provisions of the Refugee Convention to Palestinian refugees is strictly limited to its “benefits”:
In the Certain Expenses, the Namibia, and many other cases the ICJ has patiently explained that the General Assembly can adopt legally binding decisions on budgetary matters:
– See printed pages 163-64 (pdf file page 29-30) of Certain Expenses of the United Nations (Article 17, paragraph 2, of the Charter).
*link to icj-cij.org
So the General Assembly can adopt a decision in accordance with Article 18 of the Charter and Article 1 of the Refugee Convention which disposes of any question a participating state might have regarding the final status and number of registered Palestinian refugees. It can also adopt a binding resolution with respect to the allocation of expenses among the member states for their support if necessary.
Phil, Annie — you must have missed this bit:
ha!
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have long considered their head to be an ex-officio job of whoever is Israel’s Prime Minister. Many of them have pledged their loyalty, as Zionists, to the state of Israel in clear violation of their oath to the US Constitution.