The Palestinian Proletariat The UN agency devoted to Palestinian refugees is the primary obstacle to peace By Michael S. Bernstam

RITISH PRIME MINISTER David tos. Altogether, they combine the features of a refugee Cameron recently called Gaza a camp and a military camp and, cut off from the world, “prison camp.” Former President look to some extent like the cages Carter mentioned. Jimmy Carter has called it a “cage.” These camps were established in 1949 and have At fi rst glance, these characteriza- been fi nanced ever since by the United Nations Relief tions of the Hamas-ruled province and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near seem like rhetorical excesses de- East (UNRWA). Yet far from seeking to help residents signed to cast Israel in the role of the unjust jailer build a new and better life either in Gaza or elsewhere, B blockading the strip. But Cameron and Carter have UNRWA is paying millions of refugees to perpetuate got it right, in a way. Gaza is a totalitarian paramilitary their refugee status, generation after generation, as camp at war with its neighbors and other Palestinians. they await their forcible return to the land inside the It is a paramilitary camp because it is a unique type of State of Israel. refugee camp. The narrow confi nes of the 139 square Though pundits and foreign-policy experts focus miles of the Gaza district—surrounded by Israel to the on the question of settlements or the current tempera- north and east, Egypt to the south, and the Mediterra- ture of negotiations between Israel and the Palestin- nean Sea to the west—feature eight separate Palestin- ians, UNRWA’s institutionalization of refugee-cum- ian refugee camps, plus dozens of surrounding ghet- military camps is, in my view, the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East. The chances of achieving Michael S. Bernstam is a research fellow at the peace and security in the Middle East will continue to Hoover Institution, Stanford University. be remote as long as UNRWA is, in effect, underwriting

Commentary 33 a self-destructive Palestinian cycle of violence, interne- Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The U.S., Western cine warfare, and a perpetual war against Israel. Europe, the Arab states, and even Israel voted for it. The core issue is a phenomenon we can call “refu- Acting on Stalin’s orders, the Soviet Union and all the geeism.” For 60 years, UNRWA has been paying four gen- other Communist-bloc countries abstained. Ever since, erations of Palestinians to remain refugees, reproduce UNRWA has been among the most bizarre humanitar- refugees, and live in refugee camps. It is UNRWA that ian organizations in human history. It is a refugee-relief put them in refugee cages and watched the number of effort whose defi nition of “refugees,” a term meant inhabitants grow. The Palestinian refugee population in to describe those in emergency fl ight from imminent Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza has ex- peril, includes the descendants of refugees. ploded from 726,000 in 1950 to 4.8 million in 2010. About UNRWA is unique by design. Whereas all oth- 95 percent live under UNRWA care. The unprecedented er refugees and deportees fall under the jurisdiction nature of this guardianship is rooted in the unusual na- and care of the Offi ce of the UN High Commissioner ture of this institution. UNRWA is a supranational wel- for Refugees (UNHCR), the Palestinians belong to fare state that pays its residents not to build their own UNRWA. Only actual refugees qualify for aid under the nation-state, for, were they to do so, they would forfeit UNHCR, and that on a short-term basis. This draws a their refugee status and its entitlements of cash, housing, clear line between refugees as such and various ethnic health care, education, credit, and other largesse. diasporas. The UNHCR’s mandate is to resettle and It is these perverse incentives above all that have integrate all refugees in their historical homelands undermined efforts to improve the lot of the Palestin- or in new host countries —to un-refugee them, so to ian people, such as those measures aimed at fostering speak. Out of the millions of refugees and deportees economic development in the West Bank undertaken who emerged after World War II and since—Germans, by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Finns, Russians, Ukrai- and the Israeli government. If the international com- nians, Japanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Jews, Turks, munity truly wishes to serve the needs of the Palestin- Chinese, Koreans, Algerians, Cubans, Vietnamese, ians and improve their lot, its fi rst task would be the Cambodians, and many others—the UN provided Pal- abolition of UNRWA. estinians a different sort of relief. The UNRWA charter specifi ed that the Pales- N THEIR 1845 pamphlet The German Ideology, tinians who lived in British Mandate Palestine dur- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the term ing the years 1946-48 and who subsequently fl ed in I lumpenproletariat. Marx later defi ned it as “nei- 1948-49 qualifi ed for refugee status together with ther wage-earning workers nor peasants,” “classless all their descendants. This open-ended defi nition of elements,” “beggars, alms-seekers, dole-seekers, pau- refugees applies for generations to come. It bestows pers, and vagabonds.” In 1949, Josef Stalin, who knew housing, utilities, health care, education, cash allow- his Marx, instructed his envoy to the United Nations to ances, emergency cash, credit, public works, and social services from cradle to grave, with many cradles and grand-cradles UNRWA’s mandate created a multi- along the way, to its benefi ciaries. generational dependency of an entire In practice, this means multigen- erational refugee camps and ghet- people—a permanent, supranational toes in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. Close to one- refugee state that placed most third of today’s refugees, about 1.4 Palestinians on the international dole. million, live in 59 refugee camps. There is no room in UNRWA’s man- date and agenda for resettlement oppose a refugee agency devoted to Palestinian Arabs. and integration. In 1959, UNRWA discarded the last He wrote: “We should not vote for UNRWA. The goal remnants of such programs. should be to return Palestinian refugees to normal UNRWA’s mandate created, in effect, a multi- productive labor so that they work for a living. We generational dependency of an entire people—a per- need the Palestinian conscientious working class, not manent, supranational refugee welfare state in which the Palestinian parasitic lumpenproletariat.” Yet on simply placing most Palestinians on the international December 8, 1949, the UN voted overwhelmingly to dole has extinguished incentives for work and invest- create the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for ment. It has succeeded with a vengeance. It has thwart-

34 The Palestinian Proletariat : December 2010 ed economic development, destroyed opportunities for Poland, and East Prussia from Russia. In Asia, it would peace in the Middle East, and created, along the way— mean the right of the Pakistanis to parts of India. both metaphorically and literally—a breeding ground This is not the right of return; this is a claim for international terrorism. The great-grandchildren of the right of retake. In the world of historical eth- of East Prussian refugees do not blow up pizzerias in nic diasporas, the right of return-cum-retake means what used to be Konigsberg and is now the Russian city a Hobbesian war of all against all. More than being Kaliningrad. But the great-grandchildren of the origi- detrimental to Israel, it is destructive for the Palestin- nal UNRWA refugees do blow up pizzerias in Jerusalem. ians because it gives more belligerent groups, such as It is this open-ended ref- ugee status—which necessar- ily envisions a victorious re- The Palestinian right of return is turn to the Israeli part of the intended for one historical ethnic former British Mandate Pales- tine—that puts bread on the diaspora of the descendants of perennial table in the rent-free house, to- gether with an array of social refugees to repopulate another people’s services. Only the triumphant existing nation-state, Israel. return of the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren to the ancestral land will mark the fi nal deliverance in this Hamas, an upper hand and prevents reunifi cation of ideology. Until then, the permanent refugee welfare the two potential Palestinian nation-states. It converts state means permanent war. It is no longer the epito- what was meant to be a civil right into a civil war, on me of former British prime minister Clement Attlee’s top of the war with Israel. dichotomy of warfare state and welfare state: it is both. FTER Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza HE PERMANENT refugeeism of the UNRWA in August 2005, conditions were in place for welfare state generates a particular “right of A building a Palestinian nation-state. The Pal- T return” claim—the argument that Palestinians estinian Authority could have taken over the physical should be given title to the land they occupied before infrastructure of the aid pipeline as well as social ser- Israel’s independence—that fuels perpetual warfare. vices from UNRWA. Instead, there soon followed a vio- To see its pernicious demographic and physical mean- lent takeover by Hamas, an internecine war with other ing, consider what this claim is not, and then what it is. Palestinian factions, and an escalation of the Palestin- First, it is not the right of return of actual refugees (as ian war against Israel. This war became international- opposed to descendants) that was created by interna- ized by fl otillas sent by foreign organizations to break tional conventions since 1948 to prevent deportations the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the terrorist re- and to mitigate the conditions of concurrent refugees gime ensconced in Gaza. The Palestinian failure to take who fl ed the ravages of war. Nor is it the right of return advantage of Israel’s withdrawal to improve their lot is of historical ethnic diasporas to their own nation- reminiscent of the old joke about the Soviet failure to states that Germany extends to all Germans, Armenia manufacture personal computers. The punchline was to all Armenians, Greece to all Hellenes, and Israel to that no matter which blueprint the Russians took from all Jews. Nor is it the establishment of new nation- the West, they always ended up making a machine gun. states where there were none, such as the partition of Similarly, the perennial refugeeism of the UNRWA British Mandate Palestine into the Jewish and Arab welfare-warfare state always results in paramilitary states or the partition of the British Raj into India and formations, perpetual warfare, and terrorism. Pakistan. Rather, the claim of the Palestinian right of Indeed, UNRWA sponsors terrorism in two return is intended for one historical ethnic diaspora ways—one general and one specifi c. The general way is of the descendants of perennial refugees to repopulate the incessant warfare that is a corollary of permanent another people’s existing nation-state, Israel. refugee status and the concomitant claim of the right This is not the right of return to a country; this is of retake. James G. Lindsay, UNRWA general coun- the right of return of a country, a reconquest after a lost sel in 2002-07, summarized this experience: “UNRWA war. In Europe, a similar claim would apply to the right encouraged Palestinians who favor re-fi ghting long- of the Germans to a return of the Sudetenland from the lost wars, discouraged those who favor moving toward Czech Republic, Farther Pomerania and Silesia from peace, and contributed to the scourge of confl icts that

Commentary 35 have been visited upon Palestinian refugees for decades.” addition to Gaza and West Bank ambulances. They are The UN’s High Commissioner on Refugees dis- the medical troops on one side in the war. And more: qualifi es individuals who committed war crimes, Hamas members have been employed as UNRWA am- crimes against humanity, and acts against peace from bulance drivers to transport combatants, weapons, and refugee status. explosives in both the West Bank and, especially, Gaza. UNRWA does not exclude them. The point is not that terrorists have infi ltrated UNRWA. The point is that, by the logic of institutional AMES Lindsay described it from the inside: evolution, even regardless of the policies of specifi c “UNRWA has taken very few steps to detect and Western managers, UNRWA has become a terror- J eliminate terrorists from the ranks of its staff or sponsoring organization. its benefi ciaries, and no steps at all to prevent members of organizations such as Hamas from joining its staff.” HIS is not, of course, what the U.S., Western And again: “The agency makes no effort to discourage Europe, and Israel had in mind when they supporters of members of Hamas or any other terrorist T voted for UNRWA (or Stalin and his stooges group from joining its staff.” Indeed, of some 30,000 when they abstained). But institutions tend to evolve UNRWA employees, fewer than 200 are “internation- according to their own intrinsic and devilish logic als” and the rest are Palestinian recruits, many of whom beyond the good intentions of their founders. Malthus use UNRWA facilities and equipment to serve terrorist pointed out in his classic treatise on population that organizations. Since it is the claim of the right of retake the English Poor Laws, rather than alleviating poverty, that accompanies the eternal refugee welfare state, and actually reproduced, expanded, and perpetuated it. By warfare and terrorism enforce that claim, the staff of subsidizing poverty, they created a demand for pau- UNRWA must ultimately converge with the terrorist pers, and demography duly provided the supply. This paramilitary organizations. Natural selection, if you created the multigenerational underclass that Marx will. later dubbed the lumpenproletariat. Lindsay cites numerous instances from his for- The same pattern of demand and demographic mer agency’s history. From 1975-82, UNRWA’s Siblin supply characterized the evolution of the U.S. welfare Vocational Training Center in Lebanon was used for system’s Aid to Families with Dependent Children storing weapons, housing combatants, and retooling (AFDC). AFDC was established during the Great De- military equipment. At this facility, education con- pression in 1935 as a complement to Social Security. As verged with military indoctrination and recruitment. the name indicates, it was intended as relief support for UNRWA textbooks represent what Lindsay calls a “war preexisting families with underage children who lost curriculum.” Since 1987, UNRWA schools have exhib- their breadwinner—primarily the middle-aged wid- ited posters glorifying militants and suicide bomb- ows of workers like the Appalachian coal miners. The ers and served, in effect, as recruitment centers. In program evolved into a multigenerational dependency program for young, often teen- aged, unmarried mothers of the Hamas members have been employed permanent underclass. Senator as UNRWA ambulance drivers to Edward M. Kennedy described the mechanism: “We go to a transport combatants and explosives in young girl—a child of 18, or 16, or even younger—and this is what the West Bank and Gaza. UNRWA is a we say: Abandon all your hopes. terror-sponsoring organization. You will never have a decent job. You will live in neighborhoods of endless unemployment and vio- 2000-01, Palestinian children received military train- lence. And then we say to this child: Wait, here is a way, ing in militarized summer camps. UNRWA vehicles and one way. We will give you an apartment and furniture to drivers periodically transported armed fi ghters. fi ll it. We will give you a TV set and a telephone. We will A most telling example of this institutional adap- give you clothing and cheap food and free medical care, tation is the conversion of the most important humani- and some spending money besides. And in return, you tarian service, ambulances, into a lethal force. UNRWA only have to do one thing: Just go out there and have a ambulances routinely serve Palestinian combatants baby.” It was not until the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and wounded fi ghters during hostilities with Israel, in that this trend was reversed.

36 The Palestinian Proletariat : December 2010 Ancient Rome was the fi rst to encounter the pro- ished immediately. If the new, merged agency adopted letarian problem when it instituted a welfare state in 58 UNHCR’s program of short-term emergency relief, it b.c. According to British historian Arnold Jones, it was would signal the beginning of the end of the world intended initially just for the 220,000 plebeians who body’s support for continuance of the Palestinians’ had lagged behind the general rise in living standards. agony. Alternatively, UNRWA could be held in place The program began with grain allowances. But because and phased out gradually, say, over three years. the recipients did not want to bother baking bread, the The process is not important. What is important grain allowance was converted into free bread. The is the change in mission. The new mandate should be right to welfare became heredi- tary, and by 284 a.d. there were millions of recipients. Bronze Since UNRWA creates incentives for war tablets, an equivalent of food and disincentives for peace, conditions stamps, were issued to recipients to control welfare rolls. N. S. Gill for Palestinian misery and disincentives reminds us that “the fi rst part of the word proletariat derives from for economic development, it cannot be the Latin word proles, which reformed and must be removed. means offspring. The proletariat were ‘producers of offspring.’” By the latest count, there are some 250 theories resettlement, integration, and naturalization—or at of the decline of the Roman Empire: moral decay, fi scal least the former two or the latter two, with integration failure, infl ation, unemployment, endless wars, bar- being a central and necessary component. The task is, barian onslaught, etc. This 251st is as good as any, and in short, to transform 4.8 million people from depen- synthetically subsumes the others: Mighty Rome could dent refugees into productive citizens. not sustain, simultaneously, the welfare state and the Another option is for UNRWA funding to be warfare state. converted into international subsidies earmarked ex- However, the mighty UNRWA can. It can do so clusively for resettlement, integration, and naturaliza- indefi nitely because the United States and the Euro- tion. The funds could be applied in the countries of pean Union fi nance it. current residence (reimbursing, too, those countries’ expenses), in Palestinian jurisdictions, or in whatever NRWA has been one of the most inhuman country would admit refugees on an individual basis. experiments in human history. Since UNRWA Israel is obviously unsuitable as a country of resettle- U creates incentives for war and disincentives ment because integration there is not feasible, and for peace, conditions for Palestinian misery and dis- such a plan would defeat the whole purpose of the incentives for economic development, it cannot be scheme. reformed and must be removed. The change in the Most important, the transfer of UNRWA funding Palestinian incentive structure is necessary for both to the Palestinian Authority and local authorities would peace and statehood. Palestinian sovereignty will dispose of the very institution of the refugee camps. only be achieved by liberation from UNRWA and, like They would become regular neighborhoods and dwell- peace, cannot be truly achieved without this libera- ings once their refugee status is removed. Integration tion. The fi rst order of business, then, is to dismantle would also become easier once the refugee stigma is the UNRWA welfare-warfare state. If this were to be removed from these neighborhoods. UNRWA schools, done, the future Palestinian state, or at least the West medical facilities, fi nancial institutions, and all social Bank, would be able to join the family of prosperous services could be given outright to the Palestinian Au- nation-states. To juxtapose President Carter and the thority, which would enhance its status, scope, and last canto of Dante’s Inferno, open the cage and enter power as a sovereign government of a new nation-state, the world. and to local governments elsewhere. But given the intractable nature of the problem In fact, the dismantling of UNRWA would, by it- and the strong support this destructive program re- self, facilitate and accelerate the task of resettlement, tains in the international community, how can this integration, and naturalization. This process has been end be achieved? One possible fi rst step is to merge it forestalled in many places by the very existence of with the United Nations High Commissioner on Refu- UNRWA and its refugee designation of the Palestinians. gees. Such a measure could allow UNRWA to be abol- In Jordan, more than 1.8 million of the nearly

Commentary 37 2 million registered refugees are already natural- welfare. However, the transfer of the array of social ized citizens of that country. Lindsay aptly calls them and fi nancial services and facilities from UNRWA to “oxymoronic citizen refugees.” Another 170,000 have the Lebanese authorities would contribute to integra- permanent residency rights. Both citizens and perma- tion and help create jobs. nent residents are integrated into the labor market Those Jordanian, Syrian, and Lebanese Palestin- and commerce and are isolated from other Jordanians ians who cannot integrate into those countries could primarily by the stigma of refugeeism—encaged, to re- be resettled in the nascent Palestinian nation-state, phrase President Carter. These Jordanian Palestinians which would master an expanded scope of sover- eignty after the liberation from UNRWA. An end of UNRWA would automatically The end of UNRWA would nullify the pernicious issue of the right automatically nullify the perni- cious issue of the right of return- of return-retake. It is unsolvable in the cum-retake. It is unsolvable in the presence of UNRWA, be- presence of UNRWA because it implies cause it implies the repopulation the repopulation of Israel with refugees. of Israel with millions of peren- nial paramilitary refugees. But once UNRWA is discarded, the or Palestinian Jordanians prefer to send their children refugee status expires instantaneously or after a tran- to Jordanian schools that teach English and computer sition period, and the right of return becomes a non- science rather than to UNRWA schools that teach his- issue due to immediate and actually pressing needs. torical mythology and use maps without Israel. Though its defenders may claim that criticisms In Syria, since 1957, Palestinian residents have of this agency are ill-intentioned or biased against the had the same rights as citizens in employment, com- Palestinians, the phasing out of UNRWA is not only merce, and social services. They lack formal citizenship the Palestinians’ sole hope of fi nding a viable future. and full property rights because the Syrian govern- It also fi ts well with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s ment, in a concordat with UNRWA, committed itself hope of creating a viable independent state. Though to “preserve their original nationality,” that is, to keep supporters of the Palestinians and even some friends them trapped in their permanent refugee status and the of Israel have come to believe that UNRWA is indis- ensuing claim on retaking Israel. Without UNRWA, this pensable, nation-building from within is the only vi- obstacle to integration would weaken even if the Syrian able form of nation-building. Instead of perpetuating hostility toward Israel remains intact. the dead end that the international welfare state for Lebanon is the most diffi cult case. Of 414,000 the Palestinians represents, ending UNRWA’s horrifi c registered refugees, only 70,000 are citizens. Others six-decade reign would instantly create the conditions do not enjoy employment rights, cannot own land, and for an honest, meaningful, and viable peace process to do not qualify for public education, health care, and begin in the Middle East.q

38 The Palestinian Proletariat : December 2010