On 27 August, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley made a rather rebuking set of statements on the Middle East conflict, including questioning the world body’s count of Palestinian refugees.
In all fairness, Haley didn’t explicitly accuse anyone of lying about Palestinian refugee statistics. It was more implied. During a conference at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank often sympathetic to Israel, Haley seemed to agree with a questioner who suggested that the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which helps Palestinian refugees, overcounts their number. Haley’s statement on Palestinian refugee numbers was clearly timed. Earlier this week it was reported that the Trump administration is preparing to announce a “change in policy” regarding these statistics that are so central to the conflict. According to a report on Saturday in the Israel Television News Company, formerly known as Channel 2 News, a report that is set to be published by the Trump administration at the beginning of September will cap the number of Palestinian refugees at half a million—about a tenth of the UN’s number.
The issue of America’s support of the relief organizations was also mentioned. “We will be a donor if it [UNRWA] reforms what it does…if they actually change the number of refugees to an accurate account, we will look back at partnering them,” Haley added.
Haley’s remarks are just the latest in a series of steps by the Trump administration challenging how relief aid is delivered to the Palestinians. This trend began quite a while ago. Earlier this year, the United States cut its aid to UNRWA to $60 million from a promised $350 million for the year. According to UNRWA Director Pierre Krahenbuhl, Trump’s decision landed UNRWA in it’s biggest crisis since its creation in 1949.
Next in Haley’s comments came another emotionally-charged issue. The ambassador questioned the “right of return” to Israel, claimed by the Palestinians as part of any eventual peace settlement. When asked whether the right of return should be “off the table,” Haley replied “I do agree with that, and I think we have to look at this in terms of what’s happening [with refugees] in Syria, what’s happening in Venezuela.” What Haley meant by that is a very simple but important point almost always overlooked during discussions of the Palestinian problem. The term “Palestinian refugees” includes the descendants of people that were forced to leave their homes as a result of the 1948 war that saw Israel’s creation. The overwhelming majority of people in this group today are constituted by second-, third-, or even fourth-generation refugees. The project of resettling all of these millions of people in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean would exceed all limits of reality. Haley’s reference to Syria and Venezuela was meant to highlight that the most effective solution, and indeed most often the only one possible, to address a crisis is to reestablish some semblance of normalcy for refugees outside their country of origin.
Haley’s remarks in Washington are the lead-up to the Trump administration releasing its much anticipated Middle East Peace Plan. The budget cuts earlier this year, Trump’s scathing condemnations of the Palestinian leadership, and now the laying out of a very conservative view on refugee numbers, is all setting the stage by letting the Palestinian leadership know how they are being viewed in regards to American foreign policy.
