The UNRWA and Mr. McCann did not address your questions
Reader comment on item: [UNRWA:] The Refugee Curse

Submitted by Roberto Mazorriaga Las Hayas (Spain), Mar 3, 2005 at 17:21

I can not find any logical reason why Palestinian refugees should be defined differently from any other refugees. Mr. McCann did not address this central point.

I do not know if describing the UNRWA as a "malign institution" with "monstrous works" is too elevated in tone, or not, but without this sentence, Mr. McCann would have had very little to say to Dr. Pipes.

Why are the descendants of Palestinian 1946-48 refugees granted refugee status? They are no refugees themselves. Of course the UNRWA and its bureaucracy are interested in this status: otherwise they might find themselves out of or in a different work.

Personally I believe that the refugee relief assistance and works should not be scrapped, but directed at the real refugees still alive. The certainy "mischievous" definition of refugee of the UNRWA should be scrapped (it is absolutely ilogical) as well as the UNRWA as such.

Why do not the Arab nations which participated in the Arab -Israeli war grant citizenship to the refugees and to the descendants of those Palestinian refugees? The plight of statelessness would be over; as it would have been if the Palestinians had accepted the Israeli proposals for a Palestinian State or would have remained in israel, as some did.

Regarding the plight of dispossession, this affects the real refugees (the ones who actually fled their country) themselves. The UN should help. But the descendants of the refugees should also help themselves. Palestinian leaders - as Arafat- had millions in their bank accounts, while his people suffered of disposession. Arab countries have constantely sent millions of dollars to the Palestians over the years, but the plight of dispossession continues. Energy does not dissapear, money apparently does. What does the UNRWA has to say about it? It makes no sense to me.

Altough UNRWA has no mandate to solve the palestinian refugee problem, it should not aggravate it with a false and perverse refugee definition, and should also tell us what the UNRWA thinks of how to solve the refugee issue (of the real refugees). It might sound biased to the UNRWA but refugees, by definition, resettle, returne home or died. That's a logical fact.

I think that the bizarre definition of refugee of the UNRWA is the one which is biased, and, moreover, ilogical, which is worse and which does affect negatively the spirit and development of genarations of non-refugees.

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