Aug 9, 2018

In January, the Trump administration informed the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that it was cutting tens of millions of dollars in aid to the organization. Recently, the administration declared that UNRWA’s mandate must be changed.

The campaign launched by the Trump administration against the UNRWA has directed the spotlight once again at the issue of the Palestinian refugees who fled their homes or were expelled from them in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, a tragedy they dubbed “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe.” In emails he sent in January that were reported by Foreign Policy magazine, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner suggested that the Arab states take in the Palestinian refugees and ensure their rehabilitation. Someone should remind Kushner that the Arab states did not expel the Palestinians and turn them into refugees, nor did they confiscate their property. On the other hand, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, North Africa and the Gulf states did expel the Jews living there, confiscate their property and turn them into refugees.

What Trump calls the “ultimate deal” that presumes to find a regional solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict must also offer a practical resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem and at the same time seek to rectify the injustice to the Jews who were expelled from their homes in Arab countries and Iran or fled from them. The riots against Jews and the anti-Semitic incidents that followed the UN’s 1947 Partition Resolution and the declaration of Israel’s independence turned 865,000 Jews into refugees. In 1957, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees recognized them as refugees in accordance with the UN Convention on Refugees. Ambassador Zvi Gabbay, who died July 29, wrote in 2012 that while the UN has adopted dozens of resolutions in support of the Palestinian refugees, established the UNRWA to aid them and allocated huge budgets for its operation, the organization did nothing for the Jewish refugees. “This one-sided approach,” the Iraq-born diplomat said, “has not solved the problem and has exacerbated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

In September 2012, Israel’s Foreign Ministry launched the “I am a refugee” campaign to promote international awareness of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab states. A Facebook page highlighted the stories of Israelis who had fled Arab states or had been expelled from them. “For the sake of true reconciliation with our Palestinian neighbors,” wrote then-Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon of the Yisrael Beitenu party, “the issue of Jewish refugees must be resolved.” He took pride in the “storm” generated in the Arab world through the campaign he was spearheading.

Four years ago, the Knesset designated Nov. 30 as an annual commemoration of the Jews’ expulsion from the Arab world. The law tasks the minister of education with ensuring the issue is taught in schools and the foreign minister with raising international awareness of the existence of refugees from Arab states and Iran and their right to compensation for the personal and communal property confiscated by the countries where they lived. Nov. 30 was chosen as the closest date to the UN Partition Resolution of Nov. 29, 1947, that created the State of Israel and forced many Jewish communities in Arab countries and Iran to uproot virtually overnight for fear of the pressure their neighbors had begun to exert on them.