Israel Matzav: UNRWA 1952: The more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same

Monday, November 08, 2010

UNRWA 1952: The more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same

As you might have suspected, the solution to the 'Palestinian refugee' problem has been known since shortly after the War of Independence ended. In light of the recent Whitley fiasco, it's worth looking at how UNRWA handled similar disclosures nearly 60 years ago.

SOMETIMES UNRWA will simply deny its internal critics even existed. In 1952 Lt.-Gen. Sir Alexander Galloway, a noted British soldier-diplomat who was then UNRWA director in Jordan, made what was to become a famous statement to a group of visiting American church leaders: “It is perfectly clear than the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”

Galloway’s solution was straightforward: “Give each of the Arab nations where the refugees are to be found an agreed-upon sum of money for their care and resettlement and then let them handle it. If... the United Nations had done this immediately after the conflict – explaining to the Arab states, ‘We are sorry it happened, but here is a sum of money for you to take care of the refugees’ – the problem might have been solved long ago.”

In an op-ed in the same year Galloway was even more blunt about UNRWA: “Staff begets more staff. Plan follows plan. Typewriters click. Brochures and statistics pour out. The refugees remain and eat, and complain and breed; while a game of political ‘last touch’ goes on between the local governments and the director, UNRWA.”

He went on to say: “There is need to distinguish between a tempting political maneuver and the hard, unpalatable fact that the refugees cannot in the foreseeable future return to their homes in Palestine. To get this acceptance is a matter of politics: It is beyond the function of UNRWA. Second, a determined effort should be made to get the ‘host’ countries to take over relief from the agency, thus freeing it to get on with the much more important task of resettlement.”

For his honesty, Galloway was fired at the demand of the Jordanian government, which wanted UNRWA to hire local citizens instead of foreign nationals. Indeed, since that time UNRWA has done the precise opposite of what Galloway recommended, opting for the “tempting political maneuver” of lying to Palestinians about the future, never demanding that host countries resettle Palestinians and instead becoming the Palestinian ministries of health, welfare, education and, to an astonishing degree, foreign affairs.

Through a strange series of events historians and journalists transformed Lt.-Gen. Sir Alexander Galloway into “Ralph Galloway,” which has permitted UNRWA officials to this day to deny that any such person ever existed.

But the problems he found in 1951 and 1952 remain, only vastly larger, more entrenched and more expensive.

The solutions he recommended may be equally valid today.

UNRWA’s raison d’etre is the existence of Palestinian “refugees” and it has in turn created dependency within Palestinian society on its services. Galloway may have been forgotten, but Lindsay and Whitley are harder to ignore in today’s information age. If there is any chance for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Western leaders need to find the political will to tell the truth to the Palestinians and exercise control over UNRWA, otherwise the organization will continue to lie, spend money and demand omerta from its officials.

Indeed. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Labels: Andrew Whitley, Palestinian refugees, UNRWA