Israel Matzav: 'Palestinians' to US; 'We'll decide who's a refugee'

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

'Palestinians' to US; 'We'll decide who's a refugee'

The 'Palestinian' response to Senator Mark Kirk's legislation requiring the State Department to differentiate between real 'refugees' and their descendants is what we would refer to in Israel as si ha'chutzpa (the height of gall).

“It’s very dangerous. It can have a very bad reaction on the ground,” said Ghaith Al- Omari, a former foreign policy advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas now with the American Task Force on Palestine. “It will just make any US ability to push for a responsible solution suspect in the eyes of the Palestinians and refugees in particular.”

Before committee passage, the amendment was weakened slightly from the original proposal by Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois – which would have also mandated a count of how many of each category of Palestinians lived in the West Bank and Gaza as well as were citizens of another country – after objections from the Obama administration.

“This proposed amendment would be viewed around the world as the United States acting to prejudge and determine the status of this sensitive issue for decades,” wrote Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides in a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee urging it to reject the amendment.

“Final-status issues can and must only be resolved by the Israelis and Palestinians in direct negotiations,” he said, arguing that the amendment would hurt efforts to build confidence and encourage talks between the two parties.

Backers of the legislation, however, say the measure would do the opposite.

One GOP Senate aide said that puncturing the “UNRWA myth” of millions of refugees – as opposed to a much smaller number that were personally displaced between 1946 and 1948 – would help resolve what has been a major stumbling block in previous rounds of negotiations.

“In the end you will find a very manageable problem with practical solutions,” he said. “This is a dramatic stop in what has been maybe the thorniest and most difficult challenge to Middle East peace.”

But the New America Foundation’s Leila Hilal, who has served as a legal adviser on refugees to the Palestinian negotiating team, charged that the amendment was merely an attempt “to put pressure and preempt political negotiations” at a time when the Israeli and American governments had both warned the Palestinians against taking unilateral steps.

“Congress is engaging in a way and a place that it doesn’t belong,” she said.

But the Republican aide said that Congress was not only allowed but obligated to track where taxpayer money is spent, and this amendment was also an effort to “provide oversight” to the millions of dollars in funding the US provides UNRWA.