PA upset over UNRWA official’s remark on refugees
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
LAST UPDATED: 10/31/2010 01:59
“The Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and lands is one of the most important rights,” says PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat in letter.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat gives a press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Photo: AP
The Palestinian Authority is extremely disappointed with a senior UNRWA official
who recently said that Palestinian refugees should acknowledge that they will
almost certainly not be returning to Israel, officials said last
week.
Andrew Whitley, outgoing director of the United Nations Refugee and
Works Agency’s New York office, was quoted earlier this month as saying, “If one
doesn’t start a discussion soon with the refugees for them to consider what
their own future might be – for them to start debating their own role in the
societies where they are rather than being left in a state of limbo where they
are helpless but preserve rather the cruel illusions that perhaps they will
return one day to their homes – then we are storing up trouble for
ourselves.”
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Whitley added: “We recognize, as I think most do, although
it’s not a position that we publicly articulate, that the right of return is
unlikely to be exercised to the territory of Israel to any significant or
meaningful extent.
“It’s not a politically palatable issue, it’s not one
that UNRWA publicly advocates, but nevertheless it’s a known contour to the
issue.”
Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat strongly protested against
Whitley’s remarks in a letter to UN Middle East envoy Robert
Serry.
Erekat praised UNRWA for quickly distancing itself from Whitley’s
remarks.
“The Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and
lands is one of the most important rights,” Erekat stressed in his
letter.
“The Palestinians haven’t given up this right since the nakba
[catastrophe] that happened in Palestine in 1948, when Israel expelled more than
700,000 Palestinian refugees. And they will never give this right
up.”
Erekat said that “despite Israel’s insistence on denying the
Palestinians’ right of return to their homes and lands, the right of return was
legitimate in accordance with international law and UN resolutions, first and
foremost [General Assembly] Resolution 194.”
Erekat added that it would
have been better had Whitley defended the rights of the Palestinian refugees
instead of asking them to accept harm and displacement and relinquish their
rights.
Zakariya al-Agha, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and
head of the organization’s refugee affairs department, condemned Whitley’s
remarks as “extremely dangerous.”
Agha said that Whitley should have
demanded that Israel implement the UN resolutions that it’s refusing to comply
with. He also urged donor countries to fulfill their financial obligations to
close the deficit in UNRWA’s budget.
Agha too said that sooner or later
the refugees would implement their right of return.
“Those who think that
the Palestinians would give up the right of return or accept resettlement are
living in an illusion,” he said, calling on the UNRWA official to apologize for
his statements.