Dear UNRWA, citizens of Palestine can’t also be Palestinian refugees

For the past 76 years, UNRWA has operated in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, serving Palestinian “refugees.” UNRWA defines Palestinian refugees as Palestinian Arabs who left their homes during the 1948-1949 war and their descendants – in perpetuity.

UNRWA also says it makes no difference whether Palestinians who left their homes in 1948-1949 relocated to third countries or simply moved from one part of Palestine to another part of Palestine. Thus, according to UNRWA, if someone relocated from Lod (inside the recognized borders of the State of Israel) to Ramallah in the West Bank, their refugee status is the same as someone who moved from Haifa to Lebanon.

But there is a conceptual problem with UNRWA’s definition of refugees as including people born and raised on Palestinian territory after 1949. The Palestinian Authority and the international community regard the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as the “State of Palestine.” If that is the case, then how can someone born and raised in Ramallah after 1949 be considered both a Palestinian citizen and a “Palestinian refugee”? Moreover, why is UNRWA operating inside Palestine in the first place?

The only possible explanation would be that Palestinians living in refugee camps located in Palestine trace their origins to other areas of Palestine, such as Haifa and Jaffa, that the United Nations allocated for Jewish statehood in the November 1947 partition plan – a plan the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected.

Most of the Arabs living in Haifa and Jaffa remained there and became Israeli citizens after May 1948. Those who moved the short distances south to Gaza, or east to Ramallah and Nablus, simply relocated from one part of Palestine to another part of Palestine, like moving within New Jersey from Newark to Trenton.

Those who left Palestine for Lebanon or Jordan might well have been correctly designated as refugees, but not those who remained in Palestine. If they moved from one part of Palestine to another, how can they be considered refugees? How can their children and grandchildren, all of whom were born in Palestine, also be considered Palestinian refugees?

The international community has not granted refugee status to any other people in similar circumstances. For example, no one considers the Hindus who left the Punjab and relocated to Delhi in 1947-1948 to be “refugees.” Nor has the international community accorded refugee status to the nearly one million Jews (or their descendants) who fled North Africa and the Arab world during the first half of the 20th century.

So why is it different for Palestinians who simply moved from Jaffa to Gaza, especially after their own leaders rejected the UN’s offer of the two-state solution in the November 1947 partition plan?

Which takes us back to the question of why UNRWA is operating inside Palestinian territory. UNRWA traces its roots to three UN General Assembly resolutions. The first, Resolution 212 (III) of 19 November 1948, requested the Secretary-General to appoint a Director of United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees. The text of the Resolution made clear that the purpose was to assist people who were alive at the time, had actually left their homes, and were in danger of starvation and distress. The Resolution says nothing about their future descendants.

The second, General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948, promulgated the so-called “right of return.” But the wording makes clear that the right of return was not intended to be read broadly, saying, “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so.”

The third, General Assembly Resolution 302(IV) of 8 December 1949, formally established UNRWA. That resolution again focused on assisting refugees who were alive at the time and who faced risks of “starvation and distress.” It said nothing about the descendants of refugees. Nor did it define “refugees” as including people who moved from one area of Palestine to another area of Palestine.

None of the three resolutions provides any legal authority for UNRWA to operate inside Palestinian territory today.

First, the texts of the resolutions make clear that they apply only to “the” refugees. The use of the definite article “the” before the word “refugees” means the drafters limited the coverage of the resolutions to those who were alive in 1948 and who actually left their homes in that year. Thus, the term “the refugees” does not cover descendants of the original refugees. Once the original refugees pass away, there will be no further legal basis for UNRWA to operate anywhere.

Second, none of the resolutions define the term “refugees.” The term is more logically read to cover those who left Palestine in 1948 for third countries such as Jordan or Lebanon rather than those who simply relocated from one part of Palestine to another.

Third, the wording clearly states that only those wishing to live in peace with their Israeli neighbors would be permitted to return. That formulation places the burden on those wishing to return to prove their intent to live peacefully within Israel. There is, unfortunately, little evidence that any of the so-called refugees could satisfy that burden, given how UNRWA propaganda has promoted hatred of Zionism and Israelis for the past 75 years, and especially since UNRWA recognized the PLO in 1975. Further evidence can be gleaned from a quick stroll through the Al Amari “refugee camp” in Ramallah (which is actually a neighborhood, not a “camp”), where the walls are splattered with posters paying homage to suicide bombers and other terrorists.

Therefore, because Palestinians living in Palestine are not truly “refugees,” UNRWA has no legal authority to operate inside Palestine. This is not simply a technical anomaly. It is a huge waste of US and European taxpayer money, which has funded the lion’s share of the billions of dollars spent on UNRWA’s operations in Palestine for the past nearly eight decades.

Finally, we now know that several Gaza-based UNRWA employees were Hamas members and participated in the October 7, 2023, massacres and hostage-takings. At least one UNRWA employee held one or more hostages as prisoners in his apartment in Gaza. The British-Israeli former hostage Emily Damari was held in an UNRWA facility during her time in captivity.

Moreover, Hamas has used UNRWA schools in Gaza for the past 18 years as bases for launching rockets against Israel and using children as human shields. Hamas even concealed a command-and-control center in a tunnel directly underneath an UNRWA location.

The bottom line is that UNRWA has no lawful basis to operate inside Palestine, serving Palestinians who are not true refugees and providing both implicit and explicit support to Hamas. The time has come to terminate UNRWA’s operations inside Palestine once and for all.

Steven E. Zipperstein is Associate Director and Distinguished Senior Scholar at the UCLA Center for Middle East Development. The views expressed here are his own.