This week on May 15, millions of Palestinians marked the annual day of mourning they call "Nakba" day, which means catastrophe in Arabic. The Nakba occurred when Arabic states and Palestinian leaders rejected the UN Partition plan in 1947, and launched a multi-front war against the newly announced Jewish state, who did accept the partition.
The fledgling Jewish state survived, but the war tragically resulted in 750,000 Palestinians fleeing, with some being expelled. In the years that followed, 10 Arab states began a barbaric campaign of expulsion, land confiscation, murder, and other forms of instituionalized apartheid and ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations in revenge. 850,000 Jews of the Middle East were expelled or forced to flee.
The Jewish refugees were resettled as all other refugees are, starting over and building new lives for themselves in other countries, including Israel. To date, not a single Arab state has made reparations for their bloody persecution campaigns and theft of Jewish property and businesses. Yet today, the Jewish Nakba is over. In contrast, for the Palestinian people, the Nakba continues due to organizations like UNRWA and the political interests of the Arab states.
After Arab states refused to take in and resettle Palestinians - a discrimination trend that continues today in various Arab states, UNRWA was established in 1949 with the mandate of assisting the Palestinian refugees. Yet in contrast to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the other UN agency which handles refugee crises around the world, UNWRA's stated purpose isn't to settle Palestinians in their new lives (in any location) but to perpetuate the refugee crisis by providing humanitarian services until a political solution to the refugee problem is reached.
Additionally, refugee status in UNRWA continues over generations, in stark contrast to the standard definition of UNHCR refugees. "UNRWA is unique in terms of its long-standing commitment to one group of refugees. It has contributed to the welfare and human development of four generations of Palestine refugees...The descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, are also eligible for registration," says UNRWA on their website. It is for this reason that a population of 750,000 refugees has turned into 5.2 million refugees today with zero known Palestinian refugees being settled permanently in any location. In contrast, in 2016 alone, UNHCR, settled 189,300 refguees.