URNWA - Hamas investigation. Thread 2

The Palestinians do not possess a ‘right’ to return. Please see above.

It’s depressing that this is accepted without actual evidence.

I guess they haven't been successful with that argument, the one where Israel wants everyone to forget about the right of return, so they're resorting to calling them terrorists now without evidence.

@Alwayslookonthe but the point is there has been no evidence given to say that a single member of UNWRA is a member of Hamas. 0 evidence.

It doesn’t matter if 12, 5, 3 or 0 UNWRA employees participated in the massacre of October 7th because UNRWA is the ideological backbone that gives birth (decade after decade, generation after generation) to the idea of return.
It is absurd that UNWRA doesn’t operate under any international standards and creates perpetual refugeehood.

It counts 5.9 million refugees.
Almost none of them by International standards are refugees.
40% of them are citizens of Jordan.
40% are in the West Bank and Gaza, somewhere they consider to be Palestine and indeed engage in efforts to have Palestine recognised.
The rest are in Lebanon and Syria of which 2/3 have left and become citizens of other countries.
My favourite Palestinian refugee is Mohammed Hadid, the multi millionaire who is an American citizen and father to supermodel Gigi. Yes, he is still on the list as no one is ever removed.

Had the rest of the world been recognised as refugees in the same way as UNWRA does for the Palestinians the (relative) peace that has marked much of the world since WW2 would have been replaced by constant war.

This is the reason why UNWRA should be defunded/dismantled.

There is no excuse. It should be reinstated immediately given that it was stopped based on unsubstantiated allegations.

I personally believe we should also significantly increase funding given the U.K. government’s support on the indiscriminate bombing campaign and refusal to stop sending weapons to Israel.

What's the UK's excuse? Cutting the funding was disgraceful, but not reinstating it is next level.

Interesting to note no evidence has been submitted to support the claims made by Israel.

They don't need to, their claim had the desired effect, suspicion thrown at UNWRA enough for some countries to withhold aid. They are snakes (Israeli government).

I’ve just read the article above. Interesting to note no evidence has been submitted to support the claims made by Israel.

“Israeli authorities have to date not provided any supporting evidence nor responded to letters from Unrwa in March, and again in April, requesting the names and supporting evidence that would enable Unrwa to open an investigation.”

Funny how the deliberation to reverse this is being framed as not wanting to make a ‘snap decision’, when in contrast the decision to suspend funding from the most important provider of aid in Gaza was taken almost immediatley, and without a thorough review of evidence.

Again, there is no international law that requires Israel to allow Palestinians and their descendants to return to Israel.

The view that resolution 194 created a Palestinian right of return mischaracterises the resolution’s legal status. The UN General Assembly’s powers are limited, it cannot confer legal or binding rights. Therefore, the resolution is purely advisory it does not and cannot create a ‘right’ to anything including ‘return’.

Civil war in Syria highlighted even further the paradoxes inherent in the UNIQUE manner in which Palestinian refugees are classified and treated differently from every other refugee.
Millions of Syrians have been forced to flee including Palestinian refugees living in Syria. Palestinian refugees who have managed to flee to Europe and become citizens of Germany remain on UNWRA’s books in Syria as registered refugees, whilst Syrian refugees that have become citizens of Germany are (quite rightly) no longer considered refugees.

No one comes off UNWRA’s list. There are currently 5.9 million registered refugees.

UNWRA ensures that the conflict with Israel will continue and remain intractable.
This is why UNWRA should be dismantled/defunded.

www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-797615

And using it for continuing conflict goes directly against the UN 1948 resolution.

And would Israelis who had lived in the West Bank / Gaza or were descended from them also have a right of return to the Palestinian state? And would they be treated as equal citizens (as we expect Arab Israelis to be)?

After all, the Palestinian Right to Return is conferred just for having lived in the Palestinian mandate for a short time, not necessarily being indigenous. Many Arabs came from other surrounding areas in the few decades before 1948.

It all seems like a bit of a recipe for continuing conflict.

That's an interesting one. I think the Israeli argument against it is that the state of Israel didn't exist at the time most people left. So the people who left what was the Palestinian mandate were never citizens of Israel and didn't leave it and so are not entitled to return. The country they left no longer exists. That does seem a bit like cheating!

When you emigrate and your children are born elsewhere, then they may or may not have citizenship of your country of origin - depending on that country's rules. In the UK for example, you can only pass nationality down for 2 generations without the descendant being born in the UK. I appreciate that for Palestinians, the parents may have wanted to be in the country when their children were born and not have been permitted to be.

Could a right of return into a newly formed Palestinian state break the deadlock?

Does anyone even know how many are descendants of people from the West Bank and Gaza, and how many from what is now Israel? I guess this gets harder and harder to determine with each generation.

There is no International law that requires Israel to allow Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to Israel. No treaties or binding UN resolutions were violated by Israel's expulsion of Palestinians during the 1948 conflict and none provide a right to return for Palestinian refugees.

Refugee status in itself does not entail a right to return to ones original country.

The major treaty on refugees, the Refugee Convention (1951) and its 1967 UN protocol relating to the status of refugees does not even address the issue of repatriation.
It is primarily concerned with preventing the forced return of refugees to their state of origin and guaranteeing their rights in the state to which they fled.
The convention promised its signatories the right to decide which refugees, if any, would be allowed to settle in their territories.

UNWRA has registered millions of people as refugees over the decades who do not meet the basic criteria applied to EVERY other group of refugees in the world. It seeks not to settle refugees but by registering millions as refugees its desire is to keep the 1948 war going. This is why UNWRA should be dismantled/defunded.

@@Alwayslookonthe
Well at least you are honest and admit that you want to deny the right of return that was agreed by the UN.
It’s more honest at least than just making up lies about UNWRA
Your point does not sit well though with the “return” to the West Bank of the settlers after 2000 years.