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The Palestinian Proletariat the UN Agency Devoted to Palestinian Refugees Is the Primary Obstacle to Peace by Michael S

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The Palestinian Proletariat the UN Agency Devoted to Palestinian Refugees Is the Primary Obstacle to Peace by Michael S 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.
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