WASHINGTON – Trying to do good, we may often make a bad situation a lot worse. Back in 1950 the United Nations, in its wisdom, created a special agency to assist Palestinian refugees –in perpetuity, as it turned out– called UNRWA, (United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in The Near East). It is reasonably well-funded and essentially unsupervised.
Permanent refugees
And here is the perversity. A temporary relief agency became a permanent aid body funded by the international community. At the beginning it recognized 750,000 refugees. Now this number has grown to 5.3 million. Essentially, for most Palestinians refugee status is a permanent entitlement. UNRWA is staffed by Palestinians and its employees in Gaza work with Hamas.
And here we get the picture. As the UN body provides basic aid and services that allow the poor Palestinians to survive in Gaza, Hamas is free to focus on its war plans against Israel.
In the meantime, nothing is done “to solve” the refugee problem, And so the poor Palestinians are in the unhappy condition of permanent refugees.
It is Israel fault
And this means two things. First of all, the international community is led to believe that it is all Israel’s fault because it created the refugee problem. And, secondly, all Palestinians get an international endorsement for their permanent grievances.
Refugees problems should be solved
Taking care of refugees is good. But the ultimate goal should be to find a permanent solution to a crisis. Refugees should be relocated, and not kept in camps and/or other (supposedly) short-term locations, essentially for ever.
Whatever its actual mission and intentions, UNRWA made a bad humanitarian situation a lot worse.