COMMON MYTHS VS FACTS #18

Since the Second World War the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has been responsible for the welfare of all refugees in the world and has assisted in their resettlement and relocation – so that nearly all of them are no longer refugees – with one exception: the Arabs from Palestine. 

​The Palestinian refugee crisis was created by an attack of seven Arab countries against the re-established state of Israel – a defensive war that was won by Israel. During the war, the high Arab committee encouraged Arabs in mandatory Palestine to leave their homes to which they could return following the victory over the Jewish state – a victory that never happened.  

One of the greatest obstacles to peace today, and certainly the least acknowledged, is the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem and the inflation of its scale by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). If the descendants of the Arab refugees from the Arab-Israeli war were treated like all other refugees, including the Jewish ones, they would not quality for refugee status because almost all of them (upward of 80%) are either citizens of a third country, such as Jordan, or they live in the places where they were born and expect to have a future such as Gaza and the West Bank.