Elise's To-Do List (Item #3)

Snuff out UNRWA

Last week, despite a slew of reports of corruption of UNRWA over the past several years —particularly the corroborated allegations of its involvement in the Oct 7 massacre— the Norwegian government, already a top donor to the UN agency, introduced an insane proposal to increase its funding to the agency, as well as to the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon. The additional $15.9 million will be equally divided among the three beneficiaries.

I’m left to wonder if Al Jazeera the only news network in Oslo.

As far back as 2014, allegations of corruption have been leveled against UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East. However, the agency was dirty long before that.

Okay, real quick:

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations adopted General Assembly Resolution 181, the partition plan for Palestine following the end of the British Mandate.

The resolution called for the partition of the region into two states; one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under international administration.

Nobody was all that crazy about the plan, except for maybe the Brits, because it meant they could finally get the hell out of dodge. (An essay for another time.)

The Jews were granted 57% of the land in question, but 60% of it was in the Negev Desert, so not all that desirable.

While they got less of the overall acreage, the Arabs (Palestinians, though they were just referred to as Arabs, at the time) got the vast majority of the arable land and the all of the major aquifers and waterways.

The plan was to take effect after the British had departed, which was to be no later than August 1, 1948, and the resolution called for the new states to come into existence no later than October 1, 1948.

The Jews bit their lips and pretty quickly accepted the less than ideal terms, thankful just to have a slice of their ancestral turf and “in order to acheive peace and prosperity.”

The entire Arab world, on the other hand, had other plans.

Israel declared itself an independent nation on May 14, 1948 and, at 4:00 that afternoon, its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, stood before the Cabinet of the People in Tel Aviv and recited the brand new nation’s Declaration of Independence.

The document stressed the desire of the Jewish people to live peacefully and tolerantly beside their Arab neighbors.

“The State of Israel… will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,” it reads. “[And] it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

The Declaration promised “Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel...full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”

Now, that hardly sounds like the words of a genocidal, apatheid occupier, but I digress.