Gaza _ Palestine News Network
In the light of press reports that the administration of US President Donald Trump, at the beginning of September to announce steps to change the modus operandi of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), aimed at abolishing the right of return of refugees, Palestinians believe that any American steps in this direction, It will make Washington and Israel face direct confrontation with the world and may ignite the region.
"The News Company" (formerly Channel 2) said last Saturday that the US administration "will consider the number of Palestinian refugees to be only half a million, not 5 million as it says (UNRWA)," referring to the recognition only of persons who have been abandoned by Zionist gangs from their villages and cities in general 1948.
According to the Israeli channel, the Trump administration will also take a series of actions in this framework, namely, announcing the cessation of full funding for "UNRWA" in a number of areas, and creating a new legal formula to ensure that refugee status is not inherited from grandparents and fathers to children.
She noted that these steps may be effectively launched next week, pointing out that some Israeli officials are familiar with their details, describing them as "historic."
Ahmed Rafik Awad, a writer and political analyst, said the US-Israeli goal was to remove UNRWA and transfer the responsibility of refugees to the Palestinian Authority.
"They want to extricate themselves from the responsibility of the refugees, and to exert pressure on the authority to manage their affairs and to spend on them," Awad said.
Instead, this scheme "is fully in line with what is rumored to be the number of refugees by only half a million."
He said Israel is also seeking to "remove the idea of the refugee so as not to be a witness to what happened during the Nakba in 1948."
He warns against the dangers of all this, by pressuring the refugees in their various locations, which could constitute the nucleus of violence in every camp.
"The refugees will become unemployed, hungry and sick, and this is fertile ground for violence, and America and Israel will be stung by fire," he said.
Awad believes there are "persistent attempts, Israeli and American, to subjugate the Palestinians and Arabs to the existing reality that Israel is a Jewish state, that settlement is continuing and will not stop, and that the Palestinian Division is permanent."
He says the world is "responsible for the survival of UNRWA, and that any infringement of it means a confrontation between the United States and the world, the fact that its continued existence is the responsibility of the world and its deletion is contrary to UN resolutions."
The United Nations says that "UNRWA" needs 217 million dollars, warning that the agency may have to drastically reduce its programs, which include food and pharmaceutical aid.
Agreeing with Awad, the Director-General of the Refugee Affairs Department of the Liberation Organization, Ahmed Hanoune, said that "UNRWA" received significant political support, and any U.S. directions for its abolition meant a confrontation with the international community.
He said the United States and Israel have no authority over the UN agency, not in terms of delegation or anything else.
In the context, Hanoon is talking about keeping U.S. aid to the agency in a region and isolating it in another region, "political blackmail by Washington in attempts to impose a century deal."
He added that the Palestinian leadership will not deal with all the decisions of Washington and will confront them, and rejected the announcement of Trump Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The PLO official stressed that the relief agency is empowered to determine the numbers of refugees and not any other parties.
Ayman Yusuf, a professor of political science at the Arab American University (especially in Jenin), referred to attempts by the Trump administration to put new obstacles in front of the Palestinian Authority and pressure them to approve projects.
Yusuf said Washington is exploiting the Arab and regional changes to pressure power, taking advantage of the "Palestinian issue is a priority in the region."
"There are interconnected steps to confine the Palestinian people to humanitarian relief issues and to take them out of the political conflict on the ground," he said.
The "UNRWA" was established by a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in 1949 to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees in its five areas of operation: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The number of Palestine refugees residing inside and outside Palestine amounts to some 5.9 million, according to the latest official Palestinian statistical data.
The right of return, No. 194 of 11 December 1948 of the General Assembly of the United Nations, provides for the right of Palestinian refugees to return and to receive compensation.
