No, they illegally occupy Palestinian land
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
Gaza on the brink again tonight...
The U.S State Dept. recently released the Jan. 2015 Report (PDF) on the number of Palestinian refugees only to white out the figures! 
The Report will be fully declassified in 2025.
The Report will be fully declassified in 2025.
Exiled Hamas Leaders Enter Gaza to Discuss Truce With Israel
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza's ruling Hamas says exiled members of its decision-making political bureau have entered the territory for high-level discussions about an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire deal with Israel.
The Hamas website Safa said Friday this marks the first time all members of the political bureau have come together in Gaza. It says the delegation arriving from exile late Thursday included Saleh Arouri, a founder of the Hamas military wing wanted by Israel.
Hamas officials have said guarantees were given that the delegation would not be targeted by Israel and that progress has been made toward a truce that could pave the way for a U.N.-led reconstruction of Gaza.
Separately, Israel's prime minister has put off a planned South America trip and called a special Cabinet meeting Sunday to monitor Gaza developments.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/08/03/world/middleeast/ap-ml-israel-palestinians.html
There are reports a five-year truce is on the agenda to be implemented in several stages, with prisoner/body swaps, open crossings and development of Gaza's infrastructure priorities.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza's ruling Hamas says exiled members of its decision-making political bureau have entered the territory for high-level discussions about an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire deal with Israel.
The Hamas website Safa said Friday this marks the first time all members of the political bureau have come together in Gaza. It says the delegation arriving from exile late Thursday included Saleh Arouri, a founder of the Hamas military wing wanted by Israel.
Hamas officials have said guarantees were given that the delegation would not be targeted by Israel and that progress has been made toward a truce that could pave the way for a U.N.-led reconstruction of Gaza.
Separately, Israel's prime minister has put off a planned South America trip and called a special Cabinet meeting Sunday to monitor Gaza developments.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/08/03/world/middleeast/ap-ml-israel-palestinians.html
There are reports a five-year truce is on the agenda to be implemented in several stages, with prisoner/body swaps, open crossings and development of Gaza's infrastructure priorities.
What are the chances of this actually happening and, crucially, working long term? Would be the best news coming from over there since a long time.
I'd say the chances are extremely slim. It's a plan which seems to involve relying on the good will and trustworthiness of Netanyahu, Hamas, al-Sisi and Trump (at a minimum). And even if they all get on board with it, still a lot of scope for other actors to undermine it.
But yeah, it would be really great if it could somehow click and Gaza could breathe again.
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Well shit
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The mammoth issue here is that neither Hamas nor the Israeli hardliners yearn for a peaceful solution as it would be at odds with their respective agendas. In the case of Hamas, the status quo empowers them, allowing them to garner more support by dignifying Israel as a relentless aggressor, whereas the ultrazionists would not want to cease settlement programs or concede territory as part of any peace deal.
The victims here are the Palestinian and Israelis who only strive for a stable and peaceful existence but are instead used as pawns to galvanise both the aforementioned parties’ agendas.
Mind you, this isn’t exactly being helped by the current US administration giving the Israeli hardliners carte blanche to do as it pleases, which in turn only consolidates the status quo. This has always been a issue for the last couple of decades but the enabling role the Trump administration has played has only further exacerbated it.
did that rocket exploded in the air?
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Victims here are only the Palestines.
They’ve certainly endured the worst of it, but there are many decent Israelis who are also caught in the crossfire. Not every Israeli civilian is a Netanyahu zealot who supports apartheid and colonisation of the Palestinians, many just want to live in peace.
They keep voting for him
Hamas was elected in Gaza
Actually it was elected in the entirety of Palestine, however there hasn't been a new election in more than a decade so what Palestinians think now is unknown. The Israelis have voted for Netanyahu more recently
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More and more momentum in the direction of a long-term truce it seems, hopefully Fatah don’t succeed in scuppering it:
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Should've known it was fake.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...vement-transformed-israeli-palestinian-debate
I’ve only just gotten round to reading this piece by Nathan Thrall in the Guardian (it’s really long) but it’s a great piece. He’s carving out a rep as the best analyst in the business.
I’ve only just gotten round to reading this piece by Nathan Thrall in the Guardian (it’s really long) but it’s a great piece. He’s carving out a rep as the best analyst in the business.
The International Crisis Group have a really excellent collection of researchers and journalists producing top-notch analysis across the MENA region.
Agreed. I was however surprised to see they added Tzipi Fugitive from war crimes charges Livni to their Board of Trustees.
For all that obviously doesn't appeal to me there, Thrall actually describes the development of increasing political tribalization well. The way advocacy for compromise is increasingly smothered between the blocs of the anti-Zionist left and the (pro-)Israeli right, with liberal (pro-)Zionist Jews drawing the short straw. He doesn't hide that he welcomes that polarization, of course.
More on the proposed truce:
Fatah leader: Israel is offering Hamas an airport near Eilat
Israel has offered Hamas a seaport in Cyprus and an airport near Eilat under Israeli supervision, as well as an airline flying to Qatar, deputy chairman of the ruling Fatah faction Mahmoud al-Aloul claimed on Thursday.
According to Aloul, the Israeli offers are part of US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-unveiled plan for peace in the Middle East. “I doubt this plan will succeed,” he said.
https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-...l-offering-Hamas-an-airport-near-Eilat-565666
Fatah leader: Israel is offering Hamas an airport near Eilat
Israel has offered Hamas a seaport in Cyprus and an airport near Eilat under Israeli supervision, as well as an airline flying to Qatar, deputy chairman of the ruling Fatah faction Mahmoud al-Aloul claimed on Thursday.
According to Aloul, the Israeli offers are part of US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-unveiled plan for peace in the Middle East. “I doubt this plan will succeed,” he said.
https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-...l-offering-Hamas-an-airport-near-Eilat-565666
Jared Kushner.
What does all of this mean for palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria?
It seems that Trump is looking at implementing something long called for by right-wing Zionists in America like Daniel Pipes - bringing the UNRWA definition of a refugee into line with the UNHCR definition. They claim the UNRWA definition differs in three crucial ways:
1. It allows the descendants of the original 1948 refugees to inherit refugee status, meaning the numbers of refugees will only continue to grow while the refugee question remains unresolved.
2. It allows Palestinian refugees to retain their refugee status even after they've acquired citizenship of another country. This would primarily apply to those Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Jordan who acquired Jordanian citizenship when Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950.
3. It grants refugee status to those displaced Palestinians who ended up in the West Bank and Gaza after the 1948 war, despite the fact that technically they remained on Palestinian territory which most people expect to form the basis for an independent Palestinian state.
My understanding is that they are actually wrong re: point 1 - I believe UNHCR also allows the descendants of refugees to inherit refugee status. This seems to be the case, for example, with Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. But I think their argument may hinge on the basic mission - is the UNRWA / UNHCR actively attempting to resolve or prolong the refugees' status? They argue that UNRWA actively works to prolong the Palestinians' refugee status, while the UNHCR does the opposite for the refugees under its mandate. I'm not really well-read enough on this to judge whether they have a point or not. But if they won this particular argument, it would mean that only the surviving, original refugees of 1948 would retain their refugee status, and there's really not many of them left I don't think, probably a good bit less than 100,000.
With points two and three, they might have a better legal case. According to UNRWA, "most Palestine refugees in Jordan, but not all, have full citizenship." I believe many Palestinians on the West Bank have retained the Jordanian citizenship they acquired in 1950,* but I'm not sure how many of them have refugee status. I'm pretty sure under the UNHCR that a refugee's status ends once he/she acquires citizenship of any other country. Syria and Lebanon have never granted significant numbers of Palestinian refugees citizenship, so this would have no bearing on them.
As for point three, it does seem to be a strange legal loophole, understandable perhaps in a situation where Jordan and Egypt still ruled the West Bank and Gaza, but less so if these areas are widely recognized as constituting 'Palestine' - in that case, it could be argued that the 'refugees' present there (just over 2 million in total, more in Gaza than the West Bank) should be redefined as internally displaced. Or else these 'Palestinian' refugees would need to be redefined as 'Israeli' refugees. Or something. It's a bit of a mind-feck because there doesn't seem to be an analogous situation.
There's a good chance I've some of the details wrong on this, but this is the case that the Trump admin seems to be preparing to make.
Anyway, here are the UNRWA stats for 2017 to mull over - https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/unrwa_in_figures_2017_english.pdf
Jordan - 2,175,491
Lebanon - 463,664
Syria - 543,014
West Bank - 809,738
Gaza - 1,348,536
So let's say they fail with point 1, but win on 2 and 3. This would revoke the refugee status of those in Gaza, the West Bank, and most of those in Jordan.
*(Edit): there's a chance Jordan revoked the citizenship of these West Bankers after the Kingdom renounced all claims to the West Bank in 1988, I'm not sure.
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thanks. that helps to understand the issue.
I'm assuming the people marked as refugees in Gaza and WB are those who left their land in what is now Israel?
Correct.
Then wouldn't changing their status contribute (at the very least east) to how the conflict is viewed? In terms of the demand for the right to return, the status of these people seems important.
I'm not sure what you mean by how the conflict is viewed. The point the anti-UNRWA brigade make is that the UNHCR definition of a refugee states that "A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence." If the Palestinians regard Gaza and the West Bank as part of their country, i.e. Palestine, then the displaced peoples of 1948 who ended up in those territories shouldn't be categorized as refugees, since they are still in their own country. They point out, for example, that the displaced Arabs of 1948 who remained within Israel's borders after their displacement were never regarded as refugees, but internally displaced peoples, which is a different category. They argue that if a Palestinian state based in the West Bank and Gaza was established, it would be very strange that these "Palestinian refugees" should return to a state that is not Palestine.
It's a weird argument in some ways, but not really less weird than the argument in favour of classifying those people as refugees (by the UNHCR definition). The whole situation with the Jordanian and Egyptian occupations of 1949-1967 and now the unresolved status of the West Bank and Gaza and their relation to Israel makes the entire situation a bit unique, not something the UNHCR definition anticipates.
@2cents
One more question: you explained this in the framework of law. The trumpian perspective looks more like traditional hard-power politics: you do what we say or we cut funding.
What's the process that created the current interpretation of these definitions? Who sets these rules? Do legal arguments actually matter at all?
One more question: you explained this in the framework of law. The trumpian perspective looks more like traditional hard-power politics: you do what we say or we cut funding.
What's the process that created the current interpretation of these definitions? Who sets these rules? Do legal arguments actually matter at all?
I don't know much about the origins of these laws and all that. I believe the reason the distinction between the UNRWA and the UNHCR exists is because the Palestinian refugee problem was one of the first of its kind that the UN confronted after its formation, and at that stage the UNHCR didn't exist, so the UNRWA was created kind of on an ad hoc basis. Once the UNHCR came into existence, all future refugee cases came under its mandate, leaving the Palestinians as the only refugee case with their own specific and somewhat unique agency. But how these definitions were determined and how these arguments might play out in international law, presuming that still means something, I don't know.