UNRWA

Silke in the comments points to a UNRWA document showing the increase in Palestinian "refugees" since 1950. Here it is (transposed to make it easier to read):

Year	Jordan	Lebanon	Syria	West Ban	Gaza	Total
1950	506,200	127,600	82,194	-	198,227	914,221
1955	502,135	100,820	88,330	-	214,701	905,986
1960	613,743	136,561	115,043	-	255,542	1,120,889
1965	688,089	159,810	135,971	-	296,953	1,280,823
1970	506,038	175,958	158,717	272,692	311,814	1,425,219
1975	625,857	196,855	184,042	292,922	333,031	1,632,707
1980	716,372	226,554	209,362	324,035	367,995	1,844,318
1985	799,724	263,599	244,626	357,704	427,892	2,093,545
1990	929,097	302,049	280,731	414,298	496,339	2,422,514
1995	1,288,197	346,164	337,308	517,412	683,560	3,172,641
2000	1,570,192	376,472	383,199	583,009	824,622	3,737,494
2005	1,795,326	401,071	426,919	690,988	969,588	4,283,892
2008	1,930,703	416,608	456,983	754,263	1,059,584	4,618,141

If you prefer charts:

A couple of things struck me when looking at this.

First of all, there is a missing column in the table. There is one other country that had people defined as Palestinian refugees in 1950 not listed here - and that country is Israel.

According to UNRWA, Israel had 48,000 Palestinian refugees:  31,000 Arabs and 17,000 Jews. Israel managed to integrate the refugees, Arabs and Jews alike, into its society and they disappeared from the refugee rolls within a couple of years.

If Arab countries had worked at treating their Palestinians as well as Israel did (reducing the population by 25,000 refugees a year,) they would have eliminated the refugee problem within 20 years rather than let it fester for thrice that time.

Not only that, but the percentage of refugees compared to total population was about 8% in Lebanon, 2% in Syria, and 4% in Israel. So there is no excuse that the other countries were overwhelmed and couldn't handle the refugees - Israel not only absorbed these refugees but took hundreds of thousands of additional refugees from Arab countries at the exact same time - all without help from any UN agencies. (In Jordan, the percentage of refugees was about 40% of the population, but keep in mind that Jordan also gained a lot of land in the 1948 war that many of the refugees were already living on.)

Isn't it interesting, though, that UNRWA doesn't acknowledge the Palestine refugees in Israel in their statistics? It's almost as if they are embarrassed that the single success story for Palestinian Arab refugees came in the country that they have a seething hatred for.

Another very important fact that we glean from these statistics: Nearly all of the "refugees" that live in Jordan are Jordanian citizens! Not only is UNRWA's definition of a "refugee" skewed by including the descendants of refugees, but they also include a huge population that is not stateless at all!

UNRWA actually admits this, with tendentious logic. This past February, Michael Kingsley-Nyinah, Director of the Executive Office of UNRWA, gave a speech in Malta about how UNRWA looks at Jordanians of Palestinian origin, and his words are amazing:

Refugees residing in Jordan and Syria enjoy a wide range of rights and freedoms that have helped to mitigate the hardships of displacement. Many are granted economic rights and access to the employment market, and the stability of these countries means they are spared the trauma of armed conflict. Among the relatively less disadvantaged are the refugees in Jordan who enjoy the privileges of special categories of Jordanian nationality.

The advantages of residing in Jordan and Syria are welcome and beneficial. Yet they do not obscure the vulnerability inherent in the refugee label. Neither do they detract from the distinctness of the refugee identity.

The refugees and host communities share an implicit understanding that the sojourn of Palestine refugees is temporary – and that this transient state is unchanged by the lengthy duration of their exile. As a corollary, “refugee consciousness” is strong among Palestinians, including the younger generation. The passing years have left intact a sense of injustice, a demand for acknowledgement and a desire for their travail to be justly resolved. Across the Middle East, Palestine refugees define themselves (and are defined by others) by reference to the historical experience of exile.

For any other group of refugees, the UN (meaning the UNHCR) bends over backwards to remove the "refugee label," but UNRWA applies it even in situations when it shouldn't exist. Arab nations refused to treat the early refugees like human beings, and UNRWA eventually not only went along with this evil plan, but institutionalized it.

A person who was born and raised as a citizen of another country cannot be called a "refugee" by any sane definition. Yet the UNRWA does exactly that. With a stroke of a pen, they could have reduced the number of "refugees" by 40% - and they instead kept the label.

One result is that even Jordanians are discriminating against Palestinian Jordanians, sixty years after their ancestors became citizens. UNRWA has made their "otherness" official and has justified it by using the words of those who hate them most by claiming that their status is temporary. By defining Palestinian Jordanians as somehow only temporary Jordanians, UNRWA is justifying their discrimination.

There is another implication of using the word "temporary" to define the "sojourn" of the PalArabs. If their status is only temporary, then surely Israel's status is temporary as well, and will end with their "return."

As I've mentioned before, on two occasions when Lebanon allowed a limited number of so-called "refugees" to become citizens of that country, the Palestinian Arabs jumped at the opportunity. Many more would happily trade in their "refugee" status for the opportunity to be normal, functioning citizens of their host countries, or of other Arab countries. They are not being given that choice, and a good part of that is because UNRWA is doing everything they can to perpetuate and expand the purported number of "refugees" for decades after they no longer should have that label.

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From the Jordan-based Ammon News: Former advisor to late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Muhammad Abu Tayr, called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to "stop distributing smiles in front of television cameras while Jerusalemite homes are being demolished every day before the eyes of the whole world by the occupying Israelis." In a statement distributed Wednesday, a copy of which was sent to 'Ammon News, Abu Tayr added that "the Arabs, since the beginning of peace negotiations, are moving backwards, and everyone else –with no exception - are running ahead of the Arabs." "Day after day, we lose.. a home here, another there, a piece of land here, and another there, and yet we come out in front of photographers’ lenses always surprising them with our smiles!” the statement said. “Until when, Mr. President, will you keep smiling while Israelis are moving forward in Judaizing Jerusalem?" Abu Tayr said. Maybe a fatwa will follow, banning all Palestinian Arabs from smiling.

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From MEMRI, republishing an article by former PLO ambassador to Vienna Dr. Ghazi Hussein,  in Al-Ba'th, the daily of the Syrian ruling party, "The ideological similarity between the two racist [movements] – Zionism and Nazism – as well as the persecution of the assimilated (non-Zionist) Jews by the Nazis and the signing of the Transfer Agreement between the Nazi economic authorities and the Jewish Agency, drove German and Austrian Jews to immigrate to Palestine in order to establish [the state of] Israel over the remnants of the Arab Palestinian people. "Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the racist Nuremberg Laws, the Kristallnacht, and the collaboration between the Nazis and the Zionists all led to the realization of the Nazis' and Zionists' mutual goal, namely purging Germany of Jews and deporting them to Arab Palestine. The immigration of these Jews spelled the success of the Jewish settlement [of Palestine], thanks to the know-how, money and abilities provided by Germany [to these Jews] under the Transfer Agreement. "World Zionism took advantage of the fact that the U.S. and the other countries of the world had closed their gates to Jewish immigration in accordance with a request by Golda Meir at the conference on refugees, held in Evian, Switzerland in 1938 with the aim of rescuing the Jews of Germany and Europe from the Nazis. The conference agreed to close the gates of all [countries] to Jewish immigrants, in order to channel [the Jews] to Palestine alone. The goal of the Zionists and the U.S. in taking this decision was to [leave the Jews] with only two options: either immigrate to Palestine or be thrown into the Nazi detention camps. "The Zionist [movement] managed to convince the superpowers that the only way to rescue the Jews and [provide them with] a safe haven was to establish a [Jewish political] entity in Palestine. As the persecution of the non-Zionist Jews by the Nazis grew, the political and moral pressure on the European countries to establish this entity grew as well, because these countries had closed their gates to Jewish immigration in accordance with the resolutions of the Evian Conference and at the request of the Jewish Agency... "In talks between representatives of Nazi Germany and the Zionist movement in Turkey, the Zionist movement turned down a Nazi proposal to hand over all the Jews in the Nazi detention camps in return for thousands of trucks and many tons of tea and coffee.  "The link between the persecution and the extermination of the non-Zionist Jews by the Nazis and the establishment of 'Israel' is very strong... because the persecution of the Jews, the [Zionists'] collaboration with the deportation [of the Jews] to Palestine alone, in accordance with the Transfer Agreement, and the despicable exploitation of the exaggerated [stories] about the Holocaust and antisemitism [all] caused a massive emigration of Jews to Palestine. The immense humane sympathy and support [enjoyed by] the Jews, the pact between the U.S. and the Soviets in fighting the Nazis, the warm relations of the Jews with [the American and Soviet?] governments, and the interests of these government in the [Middle East] region [all] led to the approval of [U.N.] Resolution 181 by the General Assembly immediately after the end of World War II." "Since its establishment, Israel has been perpetrating against our Palestinian Arab people [crimes] far worse than those allegedly committed by Nazi Germany in Hungary and [against] the non-Zionist Jews and its [other] enemies. This is perfectly clear from the Holocaust perpetrated by Israel in Gaza in 2008-2009, from the oppressive siege, from the collective punishments imposed on the [Gaza] Strip, from the Judaization of Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi [the Cave of the Patriarchs] in Hebron and the Bilal bin Rabbah mosque [Rachel's Tomb] in Bethlehem, from the construction of 62 synagogues, including the Hurva Synagogue, around the Al-Aqsa mosque in order to Judaize it and build over its ruins the false [Jewish] temple, from the destruction of homes [of Arabs] in Jerusalem and their deportation, and from the criminal terrorist violence against civilians on the Freedom Flotillas in international waters.     "Today, the Israeli army and the Mossad are much more barbarous and despicable than the Nazi army and the Gestapo were, because when the Nazi army perpetrated its crimes, it used the pretext that there were no international charters prohibiting war crimes and crimes against humanity, while the Israeli army is now committing war crimes and crimes against humanity despite the existence of international charters and agreements that prohibit these crimes and punish the perpetrators.  "The deeds perpetrated today by the Zionists against the Palestinian people are worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews in Czechoslovakia, and especially in Terezinstadt. Even today, [the Zionists still] exaggerate the persecution stories and the number [of victims], despite the huge sums of money and the huge amounts of weapons they have received. They employ ideological, political, diplomatic and media blackmail and pressure in favor of 'Israel' and World Judaism, over the backs of the Nazis' victims, the taxpayers in Germany, Switzerland and other European [countries], and our Arab Palestinian people. They steal its land, water, property and rights, impede its progress, and [try to] eliminate it in order to transform Palestine into the homeland of all the Jews in the world. "The largest of all Jewish ghettos, established in the heart of the Muslim Arab region, is a base that is hostile to the countries of the region and serves the interests of World Zionism and of American and Western imperialism. "Had the [Holocaust] really been as extensive as claimed by the leadership of American Jewry and by the famous liar Elie Wiesel, it would have caused an earthquake and a crisis among Jews worldwide, and their perspective and position on the colonialist, imperialist and terrorist crimes perpetrated by 'Israel' against the defenseless Palestinian people would have been different.    "Israel did not take a lesson from the atrocities committed by the Nazis. It only exploited them, and continues to exploit them, in order to commit horrors [even] more barbarous [than those of the Nazis] aimed at realizing the aspirations and claims of the Torah, the Talmud and the Zionist [movement]..." OK, let me get this straight. The Zionists were complicit in the Holocaust against non-Zionist Jews. But the Holocaust really didn't happen. Even so, what the Israelis do to Palestinian Arabs is worse than the non-existent Holocaust. And most Jews weren't Zionist, and the Nazis' nonexistent persecution of Jews was only towards the assimilated non-Zionist Jews, while they kept the Zionists alive. The Zionists of the era were the ones who follow the Torah and Talmud - like Golda Meir, who worked hard to ensure that no Jews could emigrate to any other country in accordance with Torah teachings. That's OK, because the Jews only went to "detention camps." After the war, presumably, there were lots of Zionist Jews who were spared by their Nazi friends who then used the non-existent Holocaust that they engineered to make the world give them a new ghetto in the middle of hostile Muslim Arabs, an ideal location in order to persecute the then-unknown Palestinians. There is an internal logic here. That logic is simple: Zionist Jews, and any Jews who are religious, are unbelievably evil. The good Jews like Noam Chomsky and MJ Rosenberg and Richard Silverstein are off the hook. Thank G-d! By the way, the PLO is not an irrelevant vestige of pre-Oslo days - it controls the PA.

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