About those refugee camps

by Mona Charen

May 6, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com

As the Jenin "massacre" takes its place alongside other Arab 
myths - Mossad or CIA responsibility for the crash of Egypt 
Air Flight 990 in 1999, the suspicious "fact" that 4,000 Jews 
failed to show up for work at the World Trade Center on 
September 11, the Jewish practice of using human blood in 
their holiday cakes - some on this side of the Atlantic and 
this side of sanity have been asking: "What's with these 
refugee camps? Why do people remain in camps 54 years after 
Israel's founding?"

This is key to understanding the conflict. The Arab refugees 
remain in camps because of the cynical decision by Arab governments 
and the Palestine Liberation Organization to keep them miserable 
and poor. Refugee camps are distributed among Syria, Jordan, 
Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Only Jordan has 
offered citizenship to them. Before June 1967, when Egypt 
controlled Gaza and Jordan held the West Bank, neither nation 
gave the land to the Palestinians for a state because the 
idea was that they would eventually return to the real 
Palestine - Israel. A Syrian-sponsored conference in 1957 
declared that "a solution of the Palestine problem which will 
not be based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate 
Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people."

Who supports the Palestinians living in these camps? Mostly, 
the Europeans. We pay approximately 30 percent of the bill 
for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the U.N. 
agency that administers the relief. The Palestinians are the 
only people on Earth who live on international welfare. 
In 1948, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel 
gave $3 million (though the identical number of Jewish refugees 
who fled Arab states got nothing). All of the Arab nations 
combined gave $600,000.

For the next 20 years, the United States provided two-thirds 
of the funds for the Palestinians. The Arab governments, who 
claimed that no issue was closer to their hearts than the 
"plight" of the Palestinians, gave a pittance. They increased 
their contributions somewhat during the 1980s. But last year, 
according to Fox News, the United States gave $83.6 million 
to UNRWA. Saudi Arabia gave $1.8 million. All of the Arab 
nations combined contributed only 2 percent of UNRWA's budget.

We are told repeatedly that the Palestinians are "desperate" 
and that Israel's act of self-defense will only create more 
suicide killers. This is doubtful. Weakness is provocative, 
and defeat can be a wonderful teacher. Besides, passivity in 
the face of daily murders is something no society can tolerate. 
Only the certainty that she would be universally condemned 
stayed Israel's hand for 18 months.

But this also raises another question: Why are the Palestinians 
desperate? Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, 97 percent of them 
have been living under the sovereignty of the Palestinian 
Authority, not under Israeli "occupation."

And what did Yasser Arafat and his brethren do with this 
freedom? Did they welcome investment, build the infrastructure, 
settle people permanently in Arab villages and towns, and in 
general begin to behave like a people eager for a peaceful 
state next to Israel? No. In fact they spurned many offers 
of development aid in favor of building breeding grounds for 
fanatics and terrorists, importing massive amounts of weapons 
and preaching jihad. The suicide killer has become a heroic 
symbol of Palestinian "struggle." Mr. Arafat's wife lamented 
that she had no sons to send to their deaths.

In this, the United Nations is complicit. At schools funded 
and run by the UNRWA, depictions of Jews as monkeys and Israelis 
as Nazis are common fare. U.N. employees have abetted the 
vehement anti-Semitism that is bread and butter to the 
Palestinian Authority. A few days ago, the U.N. Human Rights 
Commission voted (without the approval of Canada, Great Britain, 
the Czech Republic, Germany or Guatemala) to condemn Israel 
for "acts of mass killings" (which never happened) and endorsed 
Palestinian "armed struggle" (i.e., terrorism).

The cruel decision by Arab governments to use the Palestinians 
as ticking time bombs against Israel has paid off more handsomely 
than they could have imagined in 1948. Their metaphorical bombs 
have become real. What a victory for their people.