Conference To End UN’S Palestinian Refugee Status

By C. J. Refsland on March 10, 2013 • ( 0 )

Prosor: Real obstacle to peace is right of return for Palestinian refugees, not settlements; adds transfer of status “misguided.”

A PALESTINIAN at a refugee camp in Lebanon holds 1947 ownership documents of his family home near Ac Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/ MCT

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, MICHAEL WILNER JERUSALEM

NEW YORK – At a small conference at the Harvard Club in Manhattan on Thursday, a host of dignitaries and experts, including Israel’s envoy to the UN Ron Prosor, addressed the UN’s classification of Palestinian refugees as the principal stumbling block to a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO.

The conference was the opening salvo in the direction of drafting of US legislation meant to end the automatic transmission of refugee status to the descendents of Palestinians that has been taking place since 1948, just as Filippo Grandi, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), prepared to hold a press conference on Monday on Palestinian refugees becoming a “forgotten population” in an increasingly turbulent region.

Dr. Daniel Pipes, a leading international expert on the Middle East, opened the conference, declaring that the Palestinian refugee situation is broken, sick, and detrimental to all involved. The current approach by UNRWA “creates a narrative of victimhood and leads to extremism,” said Pipes.

The Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank where Pipes serves as president, organized the conference, titled Changing US Policy on UNRWA and the “Palestine Refugees.”

“No one will admit it… the real obstacle [to a two-state solution] is the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees,” Prosor said. The “refugees problem is the main obstacle to peace, not settlements.”