Let Turkey Pay for UNRWA
More money! is the cry from Filippo Grandi, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. Speaking in Beirut on Saturday, Grandi was lamenting what he described as the agency’s growing funding shortage.
Another way to describe it would be UNRWA’s ever-expanding budget, which in places like Gaza is spent on providing the staples of a welfare enclave, thus freeing up the ruling terrorists of Hamas to spend their pocket money on things like weapons to attack Israel — the state they are dedicated in their charter to destroying.
Grandi, in his remarks, was rattling the can for the European Union to make up an anticipated $100 million deficit in UNRWA’s budget — which last year soared to $1.2 billion — by some standards a whopping handout. Grandi thanked “generous” Arab donors, but apparently forgot to thank the U.S., which is the single biggest donor (an interesting situation, given the UNRWA beneficiaries who danced for joy and passed out candies when news broke of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America).
UNRWA was set up by the UN as a “temporary” agency more than 60 years ago, and today has a “refugee” clientele about five times the size of the original refugee population it was meant to serve, with more than 20,000 Palestinians on its payroll. This whole scene is one of the UN’s most astounding swamps of warped incentives, perverse payoffs, and ballooning budgets, dangerous to the Israelis and damaging to the Palestinians themselves — in looking at it I have thought more than once that the best move for all concerned would be to just dissolve UNRWA and turn over its entire budget to private missionaries trying to help North Korean refugees escape from China. That, folks, is a genuine, wrenching, refugee crisis, which the UN over many years has done virtually nothing to address.
But if the commissioner-general of UNRWA is determined to bring in more funds, here’s a thought. Let him direct his lamentations to Ankara, where the Turkish government has professed itself so deeply concerned about getting aid to the Palestinians that it was willing to bless a terror-linked flotilla that sailed from its shores in May — inspiration for the raft of flotilla plans with which friends of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc. are now proposing to try again to break that Israeli blockade meant to keep weapons out of Gaza (the real solution to Gaza’s troubles is to end terrorist rule in Gaza, but that’s not remotely what this flotilla gang is aiming for).
Recently I took a look at Turkey’s donations to UNRWA (Turkey’s Two-Faced Aid for Gaza ) and discovered that Turkey is one of the stingier donors. Relative to the size of the Turkish economy, its status in the G-20 and current seat on the Security Council, and UNRWA’s swollen budget, Ankara has chipped in nothing but small change for the UN relief efforts. Why should the EU or U.S. pay any more for UNRWA? (One might well ask, why should they pay at all?) What they get for their pains is a rising terrorist threat in the Middle East from Iran-backed Hamas, which rules the enclave where the world’s major democracies foot most of the bills for the welfare handouts. This is a result that Turkey’s current Islamic ruling party, the AKP, seems to want more of — at the very least, let them pay for it.
Claudia, with all due respect, why are you trying to resurrect what is hopelessly dead?
Get a copy of “Paris 1919″ by Margaret MacMillan, and look at the proposal made by the Canadian Prime Minister to the British Prime Minister, just in case if the League of Nations did not work.
It is one thing to point to what is wrong, it is something else, and well within your writing and investigative abilities, to write about what could be. I’d appreciate more writing like that.
Thank you.
You go first … what “could be?”
I’m serious.
But you have to stay within the confines of sensible reality.
Go.
I accept your challenge. First of all, how sensible is it to employ short term, medium term, and long term strategies?
For I see as the long term goal the discrediting of the theories of Antonio Gramsci. In order to get there (and
you can see that this is more than the activity within the political arena), certain attributes have to be built upon.
One is, agreement that the best measuring stick is timelessness. For I see what we decry being justified this way, “It seemed to be a good idea at the time”.
Before that is done, Jerusalem (who is condemned less now than just after the flotilla incident) contact Canada, Italy, and any other capital which defends Israel having room to defend itself, and float this: a council to co-ordinate the defense of democracy.
I’d like to see your contribution.
Thanks for asking.
“best move for all concerned would be to just dissolve UNRWA”
I think the best move for all would be to dissolve the U.N. period.
I disagree that we should quit the UN. We should stop funding any activities provided or sponsored the UN. It is a horribly bloated and corrupt bureaucracy and we should start demanding reforms using the current economic environment and Northern Europe’s newly discovered fiscally responsible spending policies as an excuse. While having the UN in NY City inconveniences commuters it does make it easier to keep an eye on not to mention getting our hands on some of the UN’s less responsible executives.
The UN is unreformable, the barbarians own it lock, stock, and barrel, and don’t want it to be reformed.
The only two options are stay in it and endure, or leave it and ignore it.
Here is something worth investigating, but I wouldn’t know where to start.
To the best of my understanding, during the first years of its existence UNRWA registered anybody who declared himself refugee from Palestine, no questions asked. This is how by 1950 they arrived at some 900,000 or so ‘refugees’, twice the possible number according to the last British census of Mandatory Palestine. I suppose the incentive to register was aid, which presumably drew the poorest of the poor.
UNRWA did this in full knowledge that people on their lists are automatically deprived of citizenship, they and their descendents for ever, at least in Lebanon (I am not sure about other countries; did those on UNRWA’s list in Gaza have Egyptian citizenshop between 1949 and 1967?). This is not the same for the millions of refugees worldwide in the care of UNHCR, whose descendents do not count as refugees. In other words, UNRWA has knowingly participated in an arrangement that deprives the descendents of citizenship in the countries in which they were born, notably in Lebanon.
In my book this is serious abuse of human rights. The poor descendents are simply held hostage, with UN blessing and participation.
make them pay and then they will claim the right to have ultimate say in all palestinian affairs, including everything that relates to israel. sure it won’t be much change in the hostility toward israel, but who wants to allow radical turkey, who is already very friendly with syria and iran, to become such a major player in the already contentious tug-of-war between sunnis and shi’ites? turkey of old yes, turkey of today no.
They are already making that claim. Along with every other arab/muslim country.
Basically what subsidizing of UNWRA by the US and European nations has done is help the Arab League keep the grindstone turning on Israel.
Claudia Rosett is on solid ground here. Star Parker, WND.com,in one of her recent columns,mentioned how some of those Jews forced out of Gaza moved on a piece of barren land and piped in desalinated water to start a new business of produce that is thriving while Gaza is still not self sufficient. What that tells me is that opportunity does exist and we should show the Palestinians how to find those opportunities so they could work with their own hand to produce what they need and a little over for their neighbor. It is evident that this refugee status is a never ending expense that does not really help the victim. ++ Th 4:11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; ++ Its a known fact that everyone who needs help cannot work but common sense will reveal who they are We are not obligated to help those who are able to help themselves but are not willing to do so. This should be ample reason for us to cut off our aid to the UN which was set up to Russian specification at the time it was launched and is not founded on Christian principles. Since the UN is, and has been, on the wrong path from the beginning there is no prosperity in the wake of its passing. We have ample direction but few, very few, leaders that know the way .
Yes, let the sharia-born-again Turks pay the tab for these eternal pawns. Let the Muslim nations pay. If any American president were to take such a step, his approval numbers would shoot up twenty points. Americans HUNGER for some common sense … some mental courage … some rock-solid pro-American grit from its leaders. It is SO frustrating! I see great pain in our national future. Very great pain, and no end in sight once it descends upon us.
UNWRA has made a dependent welfare population out of the Palestinians who are used as pawns by the Arab world to use hatred of Israel as a diversion from repressive dictatorships. When money is given directly for business and infrastructure projects, like those recently under Tony Blair, the economy has picked up immediately(not to mention a decline in terrorism).