Israel Not Invited to UN Meeting On Refugees
UNRWA, the UN agency charged with handling refugee camps from the 1948 war, held a conference last week on the "humanitarian needs of the Palestinian Arab refugees" - but did not invite Israel. David Bedein <"media@actcom.co.il">, of Israel Resource News Agency, was the only Israeli reporter to cover the event. Excerpts from his report:
"67 nations, 34 relief organizations, the Palestinian Authority and the PLO were invited to attend the conference, held at the UN's plush international conference center in Geneva. Yet Israel was not invited to attend. Nor was any Israeli reporter invited to cover the event... I covered the conference anyway, since it would have been difficult for the UN to turn down press credentials that had been certified by a dues-paying UN member nation.
"According to the UNRWA spokesman: Israel was not invited to this conference because Israel is not a contributing nation to UNRWA. Yet until a few years ago, Israel provided more than $750,000 dollars per annum to UNRWA, and exceeded the contribution of many of the Arab countries. So why not invite Israel to attend as an observer or a discussant? To that, UNRWA and the Swiss government had no answer... The PLO [sent] a senior delegation to the conference... yet UNRWA never asks for any contribution from the PLO.
"...the UNRWA conference, from its opening moment, was held in an atmosphere of invective against Israel. As conference participants entered the hall, they were greeted by more than a hundred life size pictures of Palestinian Arab refugees who have suffered at the hands of Israel... which would lead any participant at the conference to come to the visceral conclusion the total picture of Palestinian refugee reality is oppression at the hands of Israel.
"...In the central open conference room as the participants walked in, UNRWA screened short movies, all funded by the Swiss government, and played them consecutively throughout the conference, designed to show different aspects of UNRWA's services. You could not miss the invective against Israel in some of the films. "Hoda's Story" [for instance] clearly hints that the IDF intentionally kills children. No mention of the fact that her school was caught in cross fire between the IDF and the Palestinian armed forces.
"Had Israel been invited to attend the conference, Israel could have shared its publicly available intelligence reports on how the Palestinian armed forces use UNRWA offices, UNRWA medical clinics and even UNRWA schools as a base of operations... Israel could have been afforded the chance to distribute the recent publications on the Palestinian Authority's incitement of school children, and the recent booklets that tell the story of 113 Israeli school children who were murdered in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists.
"...Since the Swiss government paid for the movies, the spokesman of the Swiss government present at the showing was asked for comment on the one-sided nature of these films. His response was to shrug his shoulders and take no responsibility for their content.
"Meanwhile, one of the films screened by UNRWA would have been appreciated by Israel..." It was a film of the Syrian rehabilitation of the UNRWA camp in Nesirat, in northern Syria. "The film showed how the Syrian government had cooperated with UNRWA to relocate people who had been in the stench of an overcrowded camp since 1950 into a much healthier facility in northern Syria, in a program financed with the help of the US and Canada. This could have been Israel's opportunity to share the approved policy of the government of Israel - which calls for the rehabilitation of UNRWA camps and their transformation into decent and humanitarian living conditions. That policy had been adopted by the Israeli government in 1983 and rejected by the UN in 1985, because of the UN commitment to not interfere with the 'inalienable right of return' for Palestinian Arab refugees to go back to their homes from 1948."
"Although UNRWA declared that the conference would not deal with the 'right of return,' UNRWA allowed the PLO Refugee Affairs Department to put up a table in which it distributed its materials to promote the 'right of return.' The PLO distributed precise maps of where and how the UNRWA camp residents could take back their homes from 1948.
"Asked about the fact that the Hamas terrorist organization had taken over the teacher's union and workers council of UNRWA, [UNRWA commissioner Peter] Hansen did not deny it, but went on to say that only one UNRWA employee had ever been arrested for terror activity. Hansen went on to say that UNRWA could not discriminate against the religious affiliation of his staffers - invoking a new understanding of civil rights and religious liberty, with Hamas recognized as a religious denomination. It is therefore not hard to imagine what message HAMAS teachers are conveying in an UNRWA classroom... Had Israel been invited, Israel could have provided films of rallies for HAMAS inside the UNRWA schools.
"The Conference... concluded with a unanimous resolution which called on all nations to protect Arab refugees and to protect UNRWA personnel, and to ensure the safe passage of UNRWA personnel to and from the UNRWA camps. Yet as the conference was concluding, a news report blipped on the computers of the reporters that residents of a UNRWA camp in Gaza had fired mortar shells into the Israeli city of Sderot, located in the Negev. The UNRWA shells had hit a factory and injured five people. No resolution dealt with the question of who is supposed to protect the people of Sderot from the armed personnel who fire mortars from the UNRWA camps."
Reporter Bedein also expressed some criticism of both Israel's Foreign Ministry, which has not responded publicly to the conference, and the US State Department, officials of which "indicated that they had concurred in the decision to exclude Israel" from the conference.
Arutz-7's Yosef Meiri noted that Conference Chairman Walter Fust summed up the conference without mentioning Israeli directly, but by referring to it twice indirectly:
"Participants expressed great concern with regards to large scale destruction of infrastructure and housing which have recently caused emergency situations, particularly in Gaza... Participants were of the firm opinion that the question of responsibility for such destructions has to be addressed."
Fust also dismissed Israel's plan to withdraw from Gaza with disdain:
"I would also like to underline that this Conference was convened to send a positive signal of our common and sustained concern for the Palestinian refugees at a moment when the peace process shows little prospect of an imminent positive development."
UNRWA, the UN agency charged with handling refugee camps from the 1948 war, held a conference last week on the "humanitarian needs of the Palestinian Arab refugees" - but did not invite Israel. David Bedein <"media@actcom.co.il">, of Israel Resource News Agency, was the only Israeli reporter to cover the event. Excerpts from his report:
"67 nations, 34 relief organizations, the Palestinian Authority and the PLO were invited to attend the conference, held at the UN's plush international conference center in Geneva. Yet Israel was not invited to attend. Nor was any Israeli reporter invited to cover the event... I covered the conference anyway, since it would have been difficult for the UN to turn down press credentials that had been certified by a dues-paying UN member nation.
"According to the UNRWA spokesman: Israel was not invited to this conference because Israel is not a contributing nation to UNRWA. Yet until a few years ago, Israel provided more than $750,000 dollars per annum to UNRWA, and exceeded the contribution of many of the Arab countries. So why not invite Israel to attend as an observer or a discussant? To that, UNRWA and the Swiss government had no answer... The PLO [sent] a senior delegation to the conference... yet UNRWA never asks for any contribution from the PLO.
"...the UNRWA conference, from its opening moment, was held in an atmosphere of invective against Israel. As conference participants entered the hall, they were greeted by more than a hundred life size pictures of Palestinian Arab refugees who have suffered at the hands of Israel... which would lead any participant at the conference to come to the visceral conclusion the total picture of Palestinian refugee reality is oppression at the hands of Israel.
"...In the central open conference room as the participants walked in, UNRWA screened short movies, all funded by the Swiss government, and played them consecutively throughout the conference, designed to show different aspects of UNRWA's services. You could not miss the invective against Israel in some of the films. "Hoda's Story" [for instance] clearly hints that the IDF intentionally kills children. No mention of the fact that her school was caught in cross fire between the IDF and the Palestinian armed forces.
"Had Israel been invited to attend the conference, Israel could have shared its publicly available intelligence reports on how the Palestinian armed forces use UNRWA offices, UNRWA medical clinics and even UNRWA schools as a base of operations... Israel could have been afforded the chance to distribute the recent publications on the Palestinian Authority's incitement of school children, and the recent booklets that tell the story of 113 Israeli school children who were murdered in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists.
"...Since the Swiss government paid for the movies, the spokesman of the Swiss government present at the showing was asked for comment on the one-sided nature of these films. His response was to shrug his shoulders and take no responsibility for their content.
"Meanwhile, one of the films screened by UNRWA would have been appreciated by Israel..." It was a film of the Syrian rehabilitation of the UNRWA camp in Nesirat, in northern Syria. "The film showed how the Syrian government had cooperated with UNRWA to relocate people who had been in the stench of an overcrowded camp since 1950 into a much healthier facility in northern Syria, in a program financed with the help of the US and Canada. This could have been Israel's opportunity to share the approved policy of the government of Israel - which calls for the rehabilitation of UNRWA camps and their transformation into decent and humanitarian living conditions. That policy had been adopted by the Israeli government in 1983 and rejected by the UN in 1985, because of the UN commitment to not interfere with the 'inalienable right of return' for Palestinian Arab refugees to go back to their homes from 1948."
"Although UNRWA declared that the conference would not deal with the 'right of return,' UNRWA allowed the PLO Refugee Affairs Department to put up a table in which it distributed its materials to promote the 'right of return.' The PLO distributed precise maps of where and how the UNRWA camp residents could take back their homes from 1948.
"Asked about the fact that the Hamas terrorist organization had taken over the teacher's union and workers council of UNRWA, [UNRWA commissioner Peter] Hansen did not deny it, but went on to say that only one UNRWA employee had ever been arrested for terror activity. Hansen went on to say that UNRWA could not discriminate against the religious affiliation of his staffers - invoking a new understanding of civil rights and religious liberty, with Hamas recognized as a religious denomination. It is therefore not hard to imagine what message HAMAS teachers are conveying in an UNRWA classroom... Had Israel been invited, Israel could have provided films of rallies for HAMAS inside the UNRWA schools.
"The Conference... concluded with a unanimous resolution which called on all nations to protect Arab refugees and to protect UNRWA personnel, and to ensure the safe passage of UNRWA personnel to and from the UNRWA camps. Yet as the conference was concluding, a news report blipped on the computers of the reporters that residents of a UNRWA camp in Gaza had fired mortar shells into the Israeli city of Sderot, located in the Negev. The UNRWA shells had hit a factory and injured five people. No resolution dealt with the question of who is supposed to protect the people of Sderot from the armed personnel who fire mortars from the UNRWA camps."
Reporter Bedein also expressed some criticism of both Israel's Foreign Ministry, which has not responded publicly to the conference, and the US State Department, officials of which "indicated that they had concurred in the decision to exclude Israel" from the conference.
Arutz-7's Yosef Meiri noted that Conference Chairman Walter Fust summed up the conference without mentioning Israeli directly, but by referring to it twice indirectly:
"Participants expressed great concern with regards to large scale destruction of infrastructure and housing which have recently caused emergency situations, particularly in Gaza... Participants were of the firm opinion that the question of responsibility for such destructions has to be addressed."
Fust also dismissed Israel's plan to withdraw from Gaza with disdain:
"I would also like to underline that this Conference was convened to send a positive signal of our common and sustained concern for the Palestinian refugees at a moment when the peace process shows little prospect of an imminent positive development."