Fun fact: More than 95% of today's UNRWA "refugees" were not even born when Israel was created in 1948

(Gatestone Institute) Here is a paradox: UNRWA, the United Nations agency that manages the Palestinian refugee issue, follows rules that contradict United States law and policy, and its practices result in perpetuating and multiplying the refugee problem rather than resolving it. Yet the U.S. Department of State gives unquestioning support to UNRWA's refugee designation rules[1], even on occasion defending them in detail. How can this be?

For example, almost two million Palestinians who have long been settled in Jordan and have for decades enjoyed Jordanian citizenship[2], are routinely counted as "refugees" by UNRWA, and the State Department supports it. This, in spite of the fact that, under U.S. law, a person who has citizenship in the country where he resides, and enjoys the protection of that state, cannot lawfully be eligible for refugee status.[3] How can State justify this contradiction?

Here is a second example: Another two million Palestinians already settled in the West Bank and Gaza, and who, by their own account, lived in the declared Palestinian state as its citizens under a Palestinian government, are registered as "refugees" by UNRWA.[4] By American legal standards, these Palestinians are "firmly settled" and therefore ineligible for "refugee" status[5]. Further, according to American policy reaffirmed by three Presidents, these Palestinians already reside in their own future state, the place where Palestinian refugees are meant to be settled.[6] Yet the State Department supports UNRWA's decision to count two million Palestinians well established in the West Bank and Gaza as "refugees," too.

Here is a third example: Under U.S. laws and regulations, only an individual who was personally displaced, or is a spouse or an underage dependent of such an individual, can be eligible for refugee status or derivative refugee status.[7]

Grandchildren and great-grandchildren are specifically not entitled to inherit refugee status merely because their ancestor was a refugee.[8] But under UNRWA practices, any descendant of a male refugee, no matter how many generations and decades have passed, is automatically entitled to be counted as a "refugee."[9] More than 95% of today's UNRWA "refugees," in fact, were not even alive when Israel was born in 1948; were never personally displaced by Israel's creation, and are listed by UNRWA as "refugees" only because of this peculiar practice of inheriting refugee status as a birthright .

Amazingly, the State Department defends all this, sometimes with great specificity. In response to critics of the descendancy principle, for example, the State Department recently reported, with approval, that UNRWA is not the only UN agency following this inheritance rule; the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) occasionally does, as well.

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