More reading: https://pij.org/articles/1168/the-discrimination-against-pal...
> Some Israeli officials have wanted to shut down UNRWA for years, accusing the agency of helping to prolong the conflict. They have seized the moment to press their case. For its supporters, meanwhile, the agency is above reproach, a group of selfless humanitarians doing vital work. As ever, life is more complicated than a morality play. The continued existence of UNRWA is a problem—but not for the reasons its critics think...
> This is a problem—but not one of UNRWA's making. Blame instead the Arab states that have refused, for decades, to offer citizenship to the Palestinians in their midst. The 1.7m registered refugees in Gaza (or their ancestors) lived under Egyptian control for almost two decades until 1967. Instead of offering them rights, Egypt left them in squalor.
Similarly:
> In many ways, UNRWA was the government. Hamas officials have all but admitted this in interviews over the past few months. They said Hamas’s role was to build up its military capabilities, not to care for their people—they had do-gooders for that. Israel, too, relied on UNRWA to mitigate the consequences of the draconian blockade that it (along with Egypt) imposed on Gaza. Even today, as Israel tries to abolish UNRWA, it still relies on the agency to prevent mass starvation in Gaza.
It's not the UNRWA that is trying to perpetuate itself. It is the actions of several countries that force the continued status of refugee on the Palestinians, Hamas not taking over basic governmental services, and Israel not providing humanitarian services in Gaza. The UNRWA is doing its best to do necessary humanitarian work when others aren't stepping up.
The idea that UNRWA is the primary party responsible for perpetuating the situation, in order to therefore perpetuate its existence, couldn't be further from the truth.
[1] https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/02/15/...
That this has not happened is the clearest proof against what you wrote. Tell me: If what you said is correct, why does the unrwa even still exist as a separate entity?
The unrwa has a policy of always expanding the number of refugees, the unhcr has the opposite policy.
Yes, it's true the Arab states have not made things easy, but the unrwa is not even trying - it's simply not part of the mandate. It is however the mandate of the unhcr.
Do you think host countries want to admit refugees as citizens? They never do, but the unhcr manages to make things work. If the unrwa would try as hard they would cease to exist, which is a perfect example of this article.
That's a very specific claim. Where can we find support for it?
https://www.unrwa.org/what-we-do/eligibility-registration
And this nice graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_number_of_Palestini...
There is actually no mechanism to take someone off of UNRWA membership roles! Once a member, always a member, and so are all their kids. Forever.
This is silly.
It's just registration to receive services. You don't need to "take someone off of UNRWA membership roles" -- just stop using the services.
You make it sound like an organization that's trying to sinisterly enroll everyone it can find for nefarious purposes, even their children, with no escape! It's a humanitarian aid organization for goodness sakes. If you don't want to use its services, then just don't.
I mean, if a humanitarian aid organization provided services to people but not to their children, that seems like it would be a pretty big problem, no? I'm baffled how you can think that providing services to children is a bad thing.
We can all easily imagine wanting to distance ourselves from certain organizations. To find you cannot disentangle yourself, that anyone can look you up and draw conclusions from your affiliation, is an problem. Not 'silly'.
I can't find anything in the (extremely long) Wikipedia article that suggests anything like that, or anything from a quick Google search.
It's not a political party. It's an institution -- a UN agency -- that provides education, social services, and health care, that someone may or may not be eligible for.
If you attended a school run by them as a child, or received health care from them, I'm having an extremely difficult time trying to imagine how that becomes a "stigma" that you need to "disentangle" yourself from, or why anyone would ever describe that as an "affiliation". It's just where you went to school and got medical care. (Which, you know, is usually better than not going to school or not getting medical care.)
UNRWA registration puts people into that status.
Unless you can explain further how the right of return is somehow a political party, or a "stigma" that people are trying to "disentangle" themselves from?
I guess I assumed you had some basic knowledge of the situation there.
Explaining properly would take too long, but in short part of the reason there is no political solution to the conflict, is that the Palestinians insist on the right of return to decedents of former Palestinians into Israel proper. Israel would obviously never agree to that. (They could return to the newly created Palestine, but apparently that's not an option for them - they only want Israel.)
So that's your political party connection. And as for stigma anyone who is listed on that register is basically permanently excluded from citizenship in their country of birth.
Former Palestinians who were born in Lebanon would prefer to be Lebanese citizens and work there, but they can't, because of that registry. etc, etc, etc, for all the other Arab countries in the area (Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, etc). No one wants Palestinians, so I'm sure a ton of them would prefer to shed that label and live like other Arabs in those states, but they can't.
And I do have some basic knowledge. But I still don't think what you're saying has anything to do with a "stigma" or "political party".
The whole "citizenship in their country of birth" thing is a red herring. Lots of countries don't provide citizenship to the children of immigrants who are themselves not citizens. There are jus soli countries that provide citizenship if you are born there, and jus sanguinis countries that determine citizenship based on the citizenship of your parents. Lebanon is a jus sanguinis country.
So I don't see how this has anything to do with whether someone received services from UNRWA. Lebanon isn't providing citizenship to Palestinians if their parents aren't Lebanese. They wouldn't provide citizenship to an American born in Lebanon either, if their parents weren't Lebanese.
You're using the UNRWA as some kind of stand-in for nationality, but past history with the UNRWA isn't the relevant part here.
Unless you can tell me that a Palestinian, born to Palestinian parents, on Lebanese soil, does somehow get Lebanese citizenship if their name doesn't show up on any UNRWA data? Which I don't believe is the case.
In other words, none of this has to do with some affiliation with UNRWA. It's just quite simply your citizenship period.
> I mean, if a humanitarian aid organization provided services to people but not to their children, that seems like it would be a pretty big problem, no? I'm baffled how you can think that providing services to children is a bad thing.
At the very minimum they should hold two lists: Actual refugees and poor people who might need help.
But worse, they are perpetuating permanent refugees - because it's against the UNRWA policy to pressure host countries to give citizenship to people who were born there, if those people are registered with the UNRWA. The country in turn is quite happy to let the UNRWA pay for services for them.
The easiest way to understand this is to compare to the policies of the UNHCR. There are no permanent refugees with the UNHCR.
UNRWA though is what enables them to do so. If a state has 1m refugees on your soil that don't have any support mechanisms, it's this state's big problem and they'd be soon forced to find some solutions, as it routinely happened with other refugees. To be clear, not all of these solutions are very good, but at least there would be a pressure on the host country to find one. With UNRWA, it is taking care of the "refugees" - who aren't actual refugees for 2 generations already, btw - so no pressure on somebody else to do anything. In fact, it's an established policy - when one of the prominent Hamas leaders was asked, why don't you work to take care of Gaza population, he answered - it's not my business, my business is to fight Israel (he didn't use the word, of course), and UNRWA business is to take care and feed people. Without UNRWA, this wouldn't be possible - no people would tolerate a government that doesn't bother to provide even minimal care to them. But UNRWA provides this safety net that enables the perpetuation of that situation. Hamas can be 100% full time terrorists, because they know the population wouldn't revolt - they have UNRWA to supply their basic needs.
> It's not the UNRWA that is trying to perpetuate itself. It is the actions of several countries that force the continued status of refugee on the Palestinians
UNRWA certainly isn't doing anything to stop it or voice any objection at all to it, as far as I know. They never asked or acted in any way to make anybody except them to step up.
> Israel not providing humanitarian services in Gaza
Israel provided a ton of humanitarian services to Gaza. Of course that was before people from Gaza murdered over 1300 of people from Israel and kidnapped over another 200. Then the idea kinda lost its attraction for a bit. One of the most cruel parts here that many of those who were murdered were of the most active participants in providing those services, and in fact for many of them that was exactly the reason they went to live so close to Gaza - because they wanted to help.
Actually - Hamas and Netanyahu are apparently an example of the Shirky effect aren’t they? I havent followed this that deeply, so maybe there is some nuance lost here - but Netanyahu’s and his party kept Hamas alive, so that their position would be strengthened.
Sounds suss, like a "Jews created the Holocaust, actually" narrative. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but whenever someone presents their "evidence" of things like this it's invariably something like a badly shot 4 hour lecture from a "Bible scholar".
Here's a Times of Israel article about it: https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
That's some bullshit right here. Nothing like that happened.
Here's a Times of Israel article about it: https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
> But in reality, Netanyahu has been doing all that - under the mistaken impression that Hamas can be, eventually, converted from purely military genocidal terrorist group to kind of hostile, but manageable government of Gaza.
That is literally the opposite of what Netanyahu himself said. He told Likud directly that propping up Hamas in Gaza was good for Israel because Hamas would never be accepted as a legitimate government, and that would prevent 2-state talks from ever seeing progress.
Stop making up b.s. just to excuse Israel's fault in this.
Netanyahu said a lot of things over the years - including, yes, that Hamas is not going to be accepted as legit government by the world (though I'm not sure it's true) - but in his actions, he was treating it as de-facto government, even if not legitimately accepted formally. Actual political reality is a bit more complex than one slogan. And part of this reality has been that Israeli government tolerated Hamas - and it's significant abuses - because they thought it's a manageable evil and the alternatives were worse. This is a far cry with "keeping Hamas alive" - it's "not destroying Hamas because it's too hard and politically untenable, so we should make the best of what we have". If you think that there was some way for Netanyahu to magically make Hamas go away and he didn't because he like it - that's what I'd talk "talking out your bum" - nothing of the sort was ever possible. You can see what it actually takes to do this right now - and this only became politically possible after October 7. And even now the final destruction of Hamas is not assured at all - Biden admin, for example, works very hard to somehow avoid it (without saying it publicly of course), and they may yet get their with and Hamas will be spared - to repeat the same again for another 20 years.
However-
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-op...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-israel-gaza-hamas...
> A year later, Netanyahu was further embarrassed when photos of suitcases full of cash going to Hamas became public. Liberman finally resigned in protest over Netanyahu's Hamas policy which, he said, marked "the first time Israel is funding terrorism against itself."
By the looks of it, this was going on for years.
But I am more interested in understanding if this had any impact on you? Do you still think this is BS? Are you cautiously looking for more evidence? Is the evidence sufficient to have changed your position? If so how?
Yes, Israel had to cooperate to some measure with Hamas as the de-facto government of Gaza, absent any other and absent any desire to re-occupy Gaza. That included, yes, sending them goods and money, or allowing the money to be sent by other parties (note that Israel still is charged with making Gaza "open-air prison" simultaneously, because nothing has to make sense anymore). Because if Israel didn't do that, the whole world would cry out "Israel is blockading and starving Gaza" - there would be no way to pay the salaries of any civil servants (and not like there's much thriving business, except for contraband and drug trade, that can sustain Gaza economy) and deliver any goods. So yes, Israel was allowing money and goods to come to Gaza, and sometimes supplying them, because the only alternative was either to remove all the population there, or let them starve, or re-occupy them - and neither of these options were attractive. This is very far cry from "Netanyahu kept Hamas alive" - that's bullshit framing, Hamas was very much alive by itself, there wasn't a choice of not keeping them alive short of starving the whole population of Gaza or killing all the Hamas members. The former wasn't acceptable, and the latter is what Hamas eventually forced to happen, but Israel was hoping not to go there. Now when it's forced to go there, everybody is crying "how dare you!". Truly, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
> Do you still think this is BS?
Absolutely, it's complete and utter BS, and it's not news for me either - I know about the history of it much more than you'd ever hope to learn from occasionally reading a terribly biased article or quickly googling for a hot take. I lived there, I witnessed all the history of it happen, and I have read tons of materials about it for decades. What for you is a deep and profound revelation, for me is something that I knew for years, and unlike you, I know the full picture, I also know the context of it, the reasons for it and the consequences of it. That's why I say the idea that Netanyahu dreamed of Hamas never going away is complete and utter bullshit. Netanyahu and his policies leave a lot open to criticism, but this thing is on "doctors cause disease because that's how they get paid" level of conspiracy bullshit.
> Is the evidence sufficient to have changed your position? If so how?
There's no realistic "evidence" possible to change my position in such a question, because it goes contrary to decades of knowledge and context that I learned and witnessed. That would have to be evidence on the level that the whole Middle East history for the last 50 years has been some kind of staged conspiracy aimed at deceiving me, Truman-show style. It's on the level of proving with evidence that the Moon is actually made of Swiss cheese and you can get to it by jumping really hard, and that's actually how Swiss cheese is made - by going to the Moon and mining it there. If you can provide such evidence, go ahead, but I'm pretty sure no such evidence exists or can exist, because I don't see how it's existence is possible given what I know about the world around us. Maybe I am just crazy and we all live in simulation and anything is possible, but that's not likely. Much more likely is that some folks have read some biased bullshit - produced in part by people with very clear agenda - and decided they now know everything about the question.
This is a gross (and bizarre) distortion of why people are taking issue with the current operation in Gaza, of course. In a nutshell: no, they are very obviously not simply taking issue with the IDF "being there" in some form in response to October 7.
Imagine what would happen if Netanyahu started an action like this on October 6. The whole world would be sure that he's the next Hitler hellbent on committing genocide. He'd probably be declared international war criminal and Israel would be under sanctions in mere days. And everybody knew that. So Netanyahu instead did what the world demanded him to do - worked with Hamas. His mistake was (not only his personally of course, it was a widely shared delusion) that he believed it's really working and Hamas is slowly moving towards accepting Israel and becoming the real government of Gaza, and not just a terrorist group relying on UNRWA to perform essential government functions while they rob, murder and shoot rockets. But even if he weren't deluded, he's likely still have to cooperate with Hamas to some measure, because there weren't many realistic options otherwise. And that means, yes, that there would still be pictures of the boxes of money sent to Hamas, available for anybody to build their conspiracy theories on.
It's not, as you seem to be insinuating, the very idea of there being some kind of military response to October 7 that they take issue with.
Rather - they don't buy your contention that the current operation, the way it is being conducted, is necessary for (or even helpful towards) that goal. Or even for the safe return of the hostages.
Meanwhile, by now they find themselves forced to acknowledge certain ulterior motives at play -- based on how the current operation has been conducted on the ground, all the rather abhorrent statements by government officials and public figures, all those batshit insane TikTok videos that the IDF's best and finest have proudly broadcast to the world, etc.
> they don't buy your contention that the current operation, the way it is being conducted, is necessary for (or even helpful towards) that goal.
Destroying Hamas is not helpful for the goal of destroying Hamas? That's certainly a novel take. I wonder how do you imagine a military operation with the goal of destroying Hamas looking like. Is it, in your mind, being conducted by sending them a sternly formulated emails, expressing your grave concern? Do you realize that Hamas has - or, rather, by now "had" - over 30k soldiers (that we know of), 18 years to dig in and stockpile weapons, explosives, build miles-long tunnel system, establish command points in every hospital, school and mosque that exists in Gaza, and they couldn't care less about any "international law" or war crime statutes? A war with such type of an enemy is not going to look very pretty on your screen. Fortunately, it's also not the goal of it.
> all those batshit insane TikTok videos that the IDF's best and finest have proudly broadcast to the world, etc.
I have no idea what you're talking about (I don't use Tiktok, for starters, neither I recommend it to anybody else, and I would agree that any IDF soldier that uses it at the site of military action probably should get a stern talking-to by the unit commander, but of course it's inevitable since the soldiers are people, sometimes - very young people, and would occasionally do things that aren't in the best judgement). But whatever "batshit" things you've seen on Tiktok, I don't see how it's relevant to anything.
> Meanwhile, by now they find themselves forced to acknowledge certain ulterior motives at play
Again, I have no idea what you mean - could you speak your point plainly?
What's the point of not objecting in theory, if you object to any instance in practice?
Unfortunately it appears that you're either grossly misreading what I'm saying, or (intentionally or otherwise) going through a lot of weird mental gymnastics to make it look like I'm saying things that I'm plainly not. So I'll have to bow out, and let you sort this stuff out on your own.
What they object to, rather with extremely high (by all appearances intentionally so) number of civilian fatalities. Combined with numerous blatant statements by government officials and public figures in support of a complete removal of the entire population of Gaza.
What is normally called a genocide, in other words.
Do note, I am not condemning Israel here.
I do not want to change your worldview or anything like that, nor am I litigating your lived history. This would be silly and rude.
That said, you have stated that there is no chance your position could be changed. Unfortunately expected.
So given that your position cant be changed, and I have gotten what I needed, let me help a bit by addressing a few assumptions made -
1) The Haaertz article is inaccessible to me, so I do not have any input from that individual biased against Netanyahu.
2) The second article is from CBC.ca, so I assume is also free of the dismissal causing bias. The quotes are from there.
> The idea that UNRWA is the primary party responsible for perpetuating the situation, in order to therefore perpetuate its existence, couldn't be further from the truth.
The article elides much. The reason for neighboring Arab nations not really trusting Palestinians, for instance. The work of UN Watch in exposing UNWRA as being too cosy at best with Hamas, for another. "... couldn't be further from the truth" is quite a stretch.
I see no evidence that UNRWA is the one trying to maintain the status quo.
Rather, other parties are trying to maintain the status quo, and UNRWA is providing humanitarian aid until things change, to alleviate misery.
I think it's quite obvious that if a peaceful solution were found in Israel and Palestine, the UNRWA would very quickly wind down its operations. With a lot of its staff possibly being hired by the local government.
The full situation over there is extremely, astonishingly complex. But the "Shirky principle" tries to posit some kind of simplistic answer. And it's just wrong.
You are one of the rare few. UNRWA is losing funding precisely because this evidence exists and is compelling.
UNRWA could not have been ignorant of the terror tunnels beneath its HQ. UNRWA school curriculum has taught anti-Israel rhetoric to children for decades. UNRWA telegram channel promoting and celebrating terror attacks. Not to mention Hamas employees working at UNWRA.
This is all beside the main point of the number of Palestian refugees ballooning from 500K in 1948 to 5.6 million today.
> I think it's quite obvious that if a peaceful solution were found in Israel and Palestine, the UNRWA would very quickly wind down its operations.
Indeed. That + Shirky's Principle goes far to explain UNWRA's behavior.
And the things you're saying have nothing whatsoever to do with "Shirky's principle", whether they are true or false.
I'm not taking any kind of political position on UNRWA.
But what I am saying is that they don't hold any kind of power to change the situation here. They're not any kind of major player in the geopolitical situation. There's not a state actor that has the power to be negotiating over the status of the Palestinians with Netanhayu.
The idea that, if it weren't for UNRWA, there would be no more refugees because they'd all have gone back home or been peacefully resettled elsewhere, is absurd. To suggest that they are the ones creating the sitution -- rather than the actions of Israel, Hamas, and the PA, together with neighboring countries and the US -- is totally at odds with all historical fact.
It's like saying that the Red Cross foments war so that it can have wartime casualties to treat. It makes no sense.
In Lebanon Lebanon refuses to give even basic services to the people who were born there, because the UNRWA does it. If Lebanon was on the hook for schooling and other basic services they would probably grant work permits to the parents.
This would eventually lead to integration with the host country.
But instead the UNRWA does it, leading to perpetual refugee status.
Would you say that the Red Cross should refuse to provide services that the local military and health services you think are "obligated to provide"? Because by treating wounded soldiers and civilians, they might extend the length of fighting? In other words, that the Red Cross shouldn't exist at all either?
Your argument suggests that any and all international humanitarian aid is illegitimate in any conflict, because without it one side might "drop the idea" of making war -- or, more sinisterly, "drop the idea" of defending themselves.
I'm not taking any sides in this particular conflict. But the idea that assigning responsibility for prolonging a conflict to a humanitarian aid agency trying to help civilians seems morally absurd.
"Moral responsibility" is a non-sequitur. The discussion is whether UNRWA perpetuates the problem it purports to solve. Several of us have demonstrated that they do this.
You seem each time to reject the evidence because you find the premise itself incredible. It is indeed a bitter pill to swallow, that one of the bulwarks of civilization such as the Union of Nations would be so corrupt, but the evidence is clear.
> ecause without it one side might "drop the idea" of making war -- or, more sinisterly, "drop the idea" of defending themselves.
Well, see, you are taking sides in this conflict. Historically, Israel only attacks when it is attacked. In other words, Israel would like to be left alone. No one argued against Palestinians defending themselves, but there is no legitimate reason to attack Israel, and particularly not Israeli citizens. As we've demonstrated repeatedly in this thread, UNWRA has enabled Palestinians to maintain a perpetual war against Israel for 75 years. If UNWRA had not been doing this, it's at least arguable that Palestinians would have devoted their energies to making a legitimate state that took care of its citizens rather than the situation as it is today: Gaza ruled by a well-funded terrorist organization that literally has "destroy Israel" and "never compromise with Israel" in its charter, while legitimate government operations are left to UNRWA. Even if you believe the Palestinians have some kind of right to "resist" the "occupation" of "their land" (which is taking a side) and so commit acts of terror, it should not be the UN that funds it.
This is incorrect. To determine whether an organization is perpetuating the problem it is trying to solve, one has to assign blame for that problem being perpetuated. Also known as moral responsibility. Just because a problem is being perpetuated, and some organization is trying to solve it, doesn't mean the problem is being perpetuated by the organization trying to solve it.
This is the fundamental logical mistake people are making why they try to claim that UNRWA is the one perpetuating the situation.
> You seem each time to reject the evidence because you find the premise itself incredible. It is indeed a bitter pill to swallow, that one of the bulwarks of civilization such as the Union of Nations would be so corrupt, but the evidence is clear.
Please stop trying to make these assumptions about me. And this conversation has nothing to do with whether the UNRWA is corrupt or how much. It is solely about whether it is an example of "Shirky's law".
> Well, see, you are taking sides in this conflict.
Please stop reading things I didn't say into things I actually did say. You took a totally generic sentence of mine, that I intentionally made generic, and are then somehow accusing me of taking sides. I don't know how to be clearer that I am not.
I am saying that UNRWA is not an example of Shirky's law. You're bringing all sorts of claims about the UNRWA that may be interesting in other conversations, but are irrelevant here.
And it's funny how nobody seems to want to answer my question of why, if they think UNRWA is perpetuating the conflict, the Red Cross isn't similarly perpetuating every conflict it provides services in. Because of course it's not. And logical consistency would require one to admit that therefore UNRWA isn't either.
To recap, here is a list:
UNRWA collaborates with Hamas. UNRWA schools teach anti-Israel rhetoric to children. Hamas employees work at UNWRA. UNRWA expands the definition of refugee beyond that of UNHCR to include children of refugees and those who have citizenship in other countries. UNRWA replaces the normal operations of government leaving Hamas free to use vast resources to commit terror.
To demonstrate that Shirky's Law does not apply to UNRWA, you should refute each of those specific claims.
Sorry, that's just not how it works.
You're making a number of highly controversial, cherry-picked statements that are being heavily debated in the news. It doesn't really matter if a handful of Hamas employees may or may have worked at UNRWA, when it has a staff of 30,000. It's irrelevant if some educational materials take a locally-biased political viewpoint, when the history curriculum in every nation takes a locally-biased political viewpoint.
But I don't have to refute any of your arguments because none of them have any relevance whatsoever to Shirky's law applying. Whereas you continue to refuse to engage with the analogy to the Red Cross, even after I've pointed that out that you aren't responding to that. So I just can't take this discussion seriously anymore, when you keep trying to divert the discussion into irrelevant tangents, and won't engage with the simple, direct comparison that reveals the foundational inconsistency in your logic.
And yet this is exactly what the UNHCR does. A refugee settles, and they are no longer a refugee.
> To suggest that they are the ones creating the sitution
You're arguing against a strawman. The Arab war on Israel in 1948 created the refugee crisis. No one argued any different.
There is evidence that UNWRA is perpetuating the situatiyon, your personal incredulity notwithstanding. This is but a single example, but it is enough to demonstrate that they intentionally exacerbated it. https://www.timesofisrael.com/unrwa-textbooks-still-include-...
Even the wiki states so: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_a...
Wikipedia itself says that no one should rely on it as a source. It is not a source.
The standard (and perversely broken) right-wing narrative of said events, anyway.
A lesson that is apparently difficult for Palestinians to understand.
At least you're making clear for us where you're coming from.
> The Palestinian refugees have been forced into abject poverty by the Lebanese government's denial of their rights to remunerated employment, social security, public health care, public education and property ownership. The argument that Palestinian integration into Lebanese society would either cause them to lose their right of return or would upset Lebanon's sectarian balance is just a pretext the Lebanese government uses to discriminate against the Palestinians, whom many Lebanese blame for causing the Lebanese civil war.
Nowhere could I see how the UNRWA is "generating ever increasing numbers of refugees"? Do you have any other sources?
What you are missing in that conclusion is that the UNRWA has no mandate to even try to get their members full citizenship in Lebanon. It's easy to blame Lebanon, and you should, but UNRWA is utterly complicit be encouraging this status.
The issues around the UNRWA are a lot more complex than what's presented in the article. I appreciate you bringing documentation to back up your posts when I've asked for it.
I've realised from reading most of what you've brought so far that I'm not going to be able to develop a sensible opinion on the matter. It requires a lot more background and understanding of the region than I have. With that said I'm going to let this thread go. You may be right- I'm not convinced yet, but I think I've gone as far as I care to for the sake of an HN thread.