By Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations– As Israelis cope with their fourth election in two years, Americans must wonder what U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be under the Biden administration—no matter who wins in the Israeli vote. A State Department memo entitled “The US Palestinian Reset and the Path Forward” gives some…
By Richard Goldberg and Jonathan Schanzer, Wall Street Journal— Lost amid President Trump’s unceremonious send-off were a pair of Jan. 14 tweets from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo : Of the more than five million people identified as “Palestinian refugees” by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, fewer than 200,000 meet the criteria for…
By Arlene Bridges Samuels, CBNISRAEL— Imagine waking up one morning to news that the Eiffel Tower is no longer considered French. That the pyramids are not Egyptian. And that the Statue of Liberty is not a beloved symbol of the United States. Your reaction would be astonishment. Yet, here’s a fact that is barely a…
By Andrea M. Berlin, J. Andrew Overman, The National Interest— Against the backdrop of normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and more recently Bahrain, are continued condemnations by Palestinian leaders. Palestinian president Abbas called the moves a “stab in the back,” “despicable,” and a “betrayal.” Even so, rumors regarding Saudi normalization continue to…
By Simon Waldman and Asaf Romirowsky, The Brussels Times— No-one in UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, appears to understand that the troubled UN agency needs to adapt in light of the devastation wrought by COVID-19. UNRWA lost no time making a flash appeal for US$14…
By Times of Israel— All 100 US senators signed a letter to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres Thursday demanding an end to the “unacceptable” anti-Israel bias in the international body. The strongly worded letter, authored by Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and released on Friday, was signed by every member of the…
By Elliott Abrams, Israel Hayom— I’ve written about a half dozen times in the past about UNRWA, the U.N. agency that deals with Palestinians. Simply put, UNRWA has long employed individuals who are sympathetic to Hamas, and who engage in acts of anti-Semitism, but the organization has overlooked their actions and indeed often protected them.…
By DAVID RUBIN— Anyone who travels through Israel sees the many brand new SUV vehicles of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Its main activity in Israel is providing assistance to the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, the so called West Bank. These residents are commonly known as “the Palestinian refugees”. In…
“The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it an open sore, as an affront to the UN and as a weapon against Israel.” –Ralph Galloway, former Director of UNRWA, August 1958
The Israeli Palestinian conflict is an often misunderstood political battleground where facts are mixed with opinion, preference, and prejudice. There’s so much confusion around the conflict that we want to bring light to what is truth and what is myth. What issues are actually standing in the way of bringing peace between the Israelis and…