Escalating the peace process
The visit of the Palestinian National Authority of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to Moscow against the backdrop of what is happening in the Middle East remains unobtrusive. The attention of experts is riveted on the opposition of the army and paramilitary groups in Syria and the disintegration of Iraq under the attacks of Islamist Islamic State (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), which is fraught with the beginning of a big Shiite-Sunni war throughout the region.
Approaching the next active phase of the civil war in Libya, the onset of terrorist groups in the area from the Afghan-Pakistani hub to the Sahel, the events in the Horn of Africa and the spread of the Somali problem in Kenya for the modern world is more important than the clearly insoluble conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Moreover, its intensity is so low that it is clearly not worth the disproportionately large attention that is currently being paid to it.
Against this background, the resignation of the special envoy of the US President for the Middle East Settlement, Martin Indyk, appointed to this post less than a year ago - July 30 2013, was a routine event. This de facto resignation drew a line under the attempts of the American administration to revive the frozen Palestinian-Israeli "peace process". The announcement of the creation of a Palestinian national unity government as a result of the reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah (Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine) had no effect on the terror against the Israelis, the strengthening of which caused the predictably harsh response of the security agencies.
In this regard, the attempt of the leader of the Palestinian National Authority (Palestinian National Authority) to get Jerusalem to release another group of Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for expressing readiness to return to the negotiating table with Israel, is doomed to failure. Moreover, all previous cases, the most famous of which was the exchange of Corporal Gilad Shalit, captured by militants, by one thousand and twenty-seven Palestinians (400 of whom were serving prison sentences for killing 600 Israelis), resulted in only a rise in terrorist activities, including including those released.
The current leadership of the PNA is living out its time and is unable neither to control the situation nor to complete the confrontation on the Palestinian side. However, it is doubtful that this is generally possible: the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian population is ready to recognize the principle of "two states for two peoples" only at a certain stage, transitional to the complete destruction of Israel. What the Palestinians are talking about openly, while not abandoning Israel’s financing of the PNA economy, which brings up to 40 percent of the revenues of official Ramallah.
The same applies to the supply of electricity, as well as the transfer to the PNA budget of taxes from the work of the Palestinians in Israel and customs duties. Israeli shekels remain the only means of financial settlement, not only in Judea and Samaria, but also in Gaza, which is not controlled by Hamas, which does not recognize Israel, which in itself indicates the absence of intentions to build an independent state by the Palestinians.
The declarative requirements to recognize him as such "here and now" in the UN, that in a number of agencies, committees and commissions of this organization meets with support (the adoption of Palestine at UNESCO became resonant), are regarded by Israel as proof that the current leadership of the PNA is not a partner in any or negotiations, because it violates the basic principles of their conduct. Although as a tool of pressure on Israel, from a Palestinian point of view, this approach is effective. The violation of the obligations signed by them is regarded by the Palestinian side as a legitimate military cunning.
Bloat problem
The confrontation of Israelis and Palestinians only by the efforts of the press, politicians and experts has become the "main problem of the Middle East." An outside observer may get the impression that it is necessary to achieve success in reconciling the warring parties, as all the nodes of international politics will be unleashed, at least in this region. Observing the author of what has happened over 25 for years in contact with the initiators and participants of the “Middle Eastern peace process” in Jerusalem and Ramallah, Gaza and Amman, Washington and Brussels, not to mention Moscow, gives him reason to doubt it.
What is the true place of the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation at the present stage in a long list of world problems? This conflict in itself is not unique in any of its incarnations. It does not differ from many similar (in the twentieth century) neither the political situation, nor the region, nor the era that gave rise to it. If this situation is something remarkable, then a unique information support and unprecedented political activity around the conflict itself and attempts to resolve it.
The problems of the Palestinians do not stand out in the background of the effects of climate change on the planet and the shortage of fresh water, the problems of urbanization and desert expansion, the transition of the demographic crisis in a number of third world countries into an irreversible phase, the AIDS pandemic in Africa, the seizure of statehood in many countries of the Middle East Islamist sense of vast territories and the conflict of civilizations that has become a reality.
We will say more: in spite of those who have been building their careers for them in international organizations and diplomatic departments for decades, they are not particularly relevant to outside observers. At the same time, the volume of funds invested by the world community over the decades in the infrastructure of the Palestinian military-terrorist organization, the resettlement of refugees and the creation of statehood, and the extremely low effectiveness of these investments deserve attention.
In 1950, the number of Palestinian refugees of the first wave, registered by the UN, was a little over 914 thousand, and in 1955, it was reduced to 906 thousand. The increase in their numbers due to the Six Day War 1967 of the year is less than 145 thousand people. Today, only about 300 thousands of Palestinian refugees older than 60 years are witnessing the Israeli War of Independence (or the Palestinian "Nakba" - "Holocaust"). Even with the 1967 refugees of the year, assuming for the sake of simplicity that they all survived to the present day and none of them are in the 60 + age category, we will get a figure of less than 450 thousand people.
According to the criteria of the UN High Commissariat for Refugees, they recognize people who left the country of permanent residence, but not their children and more distant descendants. If these criteria were applied to Palestinians, as they were distributed to tens of millions of people belonging to other ethnic groups, today there would be between a third and half a million Palestinian refugees — no more.
Palestinians, however, are handled by a special UN agency, UNRWA, which applies a unique criterion to them: all descendants of Palestinian refugees are considered refugees regardless of generation and birthplace. As a result, if in 1970, the number of Palestinian refugees registered by UNRWA was one million 425 thousand, in 2000, at the peak of the “peace process”, three million 737 thousand. In the 2007 year, after the Israelis left South Lebanon, Gaza and North Samaria, not to mention the Sinai peninsula returned a quarter of a century before, four million 504 thousands of people. 2013 has five million 272 thousands.
As a Palestinian refugee agency in 2014, one million 240 thousands of 82 people in the Gaza Strip (8 refugee camps), 754 thousands of 411 people in Judea and Samaria were registered in the West Bank (19 camps). Two million 70 thousand 973 people in Jordan (10 camps), 447 thousand 328 people in Lebanon (12 camps) and 517 thousand 255 people in Syria (9 refugee camps). Other Palestinian refugees lived in other countries.
The author’s direct acquaintance with the living conditions in the refugee camps in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Jordan suggests that they are no different from ordinary Arab settlements. The housing stock of the camps includes apartment buildings for the bulk of the population and villas of the local elite engaged in business or admitted to the distribution of donor funds, including the UN. It should be noted that, according to the level of infrastructure, camps for Palestinian refugees differ favorably not only from rural settlements of such countries of the Arab world as Yemen, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan or Djibouti, but also from districts of Cairo such as Fustat.
Inconvenient guests
In fact, the only country in which Palestinians live in conditions of segregation by the local population is Lebanon. At the same time, the responsibility of the structures that control the Palestinian refugee camps located here for the growth of local crime and intercommunal confrontation is extremely high. At the same time, the problems of the Iraqi and Syrian Palestinians are no different from the problems of other people in these countries.
At the same time, the course of Palestinian organizations, primarily Hamas, in relation to the hostilities unleashed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia against the leadership of Syria, gives reason to recall the traditional disloyalty of Palestinians to any countries that host them. The result of their confrontation with the surrounding population and the ruling regimes was a series of conflicts, including armed ones, with Arab countries. This is a strong argument in favor of the claim that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is essentially no different from the relations of the Palestinians with all their other neighbors.
In 1970, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was expelled from Jordan in the end of Black September, after the failure of Yasser Arafat to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy. In 1975, in Lebanon, the Palestinians played a decisive role in the beginning of the civil war, and later provoked Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. Nearly a million of them were expelled from the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries after the PLO and the Palestinian community of Kuwait supported Iraq, which occupied the emirate in 1990. From Iraq itself, the local population expelled them after the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein. Finally, a significant part of Palestinians living in Syria was a victim of the above-mentioned Hamas policy, whose leadership in 2011 – 2012 betrayed Bashar Assad, not only supporting his enemies, but also opening the way for them to the center of Damascus.
At the same time, the rapid collapse during the civil war and the American occupation of Iraq, and today Syria, is accompanied by the exodus of millions of refugees from these countries. Most of them are not even officially registered with the UN. We also note that the number of Palestinians who are forced to change their place of residence due to conflicts with the population and governments of the Arab world is much more than the number of those who became refugees during the Arab-Israeli wars. In clashes in the Arab world, tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed.
In the two most controversial episodes related to Israel, Palestinians died from 100 to 250 in the village of Deir Yassin in the 1948 year and 43 in the Kafr Kasem in the 1956. With all the desire to accuse Israel of war crimes, Palestinian propaganda does not accidentally accuse him of these incidents year after year. Although the reaction of the authorities and the public in Israel to them was definitely negative and extremely harsh towards the guilty.
Officials and refugees
The statistics of the UN agency dealing with Palestinian refugees are convincing. It does not allow us to speak not only about the possibility of solving the problem of this group of refugees in the foreseeable future, but also about the very possibility of solving it in any format without a fundamental change in the principles of the work of UNRWA - the UN Middle East Agency for Palestine Refugees Assistance and Work Organization (UNRWA). However, bringing the rules of his work to the same criteria that the UN High Commissariat for Refugees is guided by is a taboo not discussed in the general secretariat of this organization.
From 1975, the agency's budget (in 2014 – 2015 tax years - one million 961 thousand 180 dollars) is a separate line in the UN budget, independent of the size of donor’s voluntary donations, which are credited in excess of the amount allocated to the agency from the regular budget. It should be noted that the annual volume of participation in the financing of the budget of the agency of the Arab countries according to official UN statistics is six million 600 thousand dollars, and together with Turkey - seven million 850 thousand dollars.
The number of its employees paid from the UN budget only in 1997 – 2013 increased from 20 thousand 500 people to 29 thousand 138 people. According to the agency’s plans for 2015, their number will be 30 thousands of 314 people. Parkinson’s laws apply to the UN in the same way as the British Admiralty: the number of UNRWA rates, the amount of work of its staff, the budget required for this work and, consequently, the number of Palestinian refugees wards them can only grow and will grow regardless of the course and the outcome of the "peace process".
As mentioned above, the majority of Palestinian refugee camps have become ordinary Middle Eastern cities and villages with a developed infrastructure, including an education system, health care and social services. In 2014, the agency supervised over half a million school students in UNRWA 666 schools and secondary schools in Lebanon, provided vocational training for up to ten thousand students, built and repaired more than 800 educational facilities, trained about four thousand teachers.
The agency’s medical programs in hundreds of hospitals and clinics reached millions of Palestinians. Only in the field of dentistry, 700 treated thousands of refugees per year on a planned basis. UNRWA has created a one-of-a-kind system, turning Palestinian refugees living in camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank into the international community. They and their descendants have the possibility of guaranteed existence at the expense of this community for decades. At the same time, their level of well-being, education, medical care and social infrastructure is more than enough by local standards, and for some countries of the Middle East is high.
In the Palestinian circles, the problem of refugees is viewed solely from the point of view of the obligations of the world community to them with the tacit agreement with this point of view of international officials and representatives of donor countries and lobbyists of Palestinian interests. Thanks to this position, Palestine has become not only a symbol of UN concern for refugees, but also a world Harlem. Moreover, they are not grateful for the help and aspiring to stand on their own feet, but demanding it on an ever-increasing scale, alternating with offers of a truce to Israel, are “thin” periods of terrorist activity.
Without the right to permanent residence
The specificity of Palestinian society is that resettlement is also complicated in the Palestinian territories themselves: in Gaza, in the West and Jordan - on the Eastern banks of the Jordan River. It is not by chance that refugee camps in these enclaves existed for 19 years under Egyptian and Jordanian administrative control, although the surrounding population was exclusively Palestinian.
The main thing in the problem is not even the continuous increase in the number of refugees, provoked by Palestinian UNRWA officials for departmental reasons, but the question of their resettlement. The tribal and clan-clan system characteristic of traditional Arab society does not recognize the right of permanent residence within another Palestinian settlement for representatives of even a neighboring Palestinian city or village. In the absence of military suppression of attempts to settle accounts between local residents by external authorities, be it Istanbul, London, Cairo, Amman or Jerusalem, the chances of changing this position are zero.
While maintaining this model of relations in the Palestinian society, the claims of refugees can be satisfied only if they receive the right to return to those localities that they themselves or their ancestors left, that is, the entire territory of Israel. Modern international legal practice does not matter for refugees, who are well aware that they can only achieve something from Israel. This also applies to Jerusalem’s reference to the fact that Israel has already received on its territory millions of Jews from around the world, including hundreds of thousands from Arab countries, where their property was confiscated by local authorities and, if desired, can be used by them for “netting” when settling the Palestinians.
It does not matter how large the territory will be allocated to the Palestinian state. The concession of even one percent of the disputed territory is impossible for the Palestinians - some of them will remain deprived of their homeland. The Palestinian leader, who will sign the final agreement with Israel, will be killed, and the agreement terminated by his heirs. Arafat remembered the fate of the great-grandfather of the King of Jordan - Emir Abdullah, who was killed by a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem more than half a century ago. Abu Mazen understands the situation no worse than him, and that is why he refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The Palestinian President thus demonstrates that the question of a final settlement is not in principle. This position of the Palestinian leadership is unlikely to change in the future, regardless of who replaces the current Palestinian rais in the post - the “strong man” of Jericho Djibril Rajoub or the former favorite of Arafat from Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan.
Recall that at the end of 40 in Europe, there were more than 21 million refugees. The split of British India and the subsequent disintegration of Pakistan added 14 – 15 millions to them. None of them currently live in camps. After World War II, there were over 200 millions of refugees in the world. No more than 50, millions of them were helped by UN structures. Today, according to official data, at least 20 for millions of refugees and about 25 for millions of displaced people are waiting for help. All of them cannot count on an insignificant share of what the Palestinians receive, demanding more and more, and the state of affairs is unlikely to remain so for a long time. It seems that the policy of the Palestinian authorities, pursued by them against Israel, has once again demonstrated that the Palestinians never miss a chance to miss the chance ...
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