by James M. Wall
The Israelis want the Palestinians to give up their right of return in order to get “peace”. The joint Israeli-American “vision” for the Palestinians basically means the imposition of apartheid. My people will never accept this.
This statement from Ramzy Baroud comes from his essay, “Diary of an UNRWA Kid”, which appeared in Al Jazeera, and is now circulating on the international internet.
Ramzy Baroud is currently the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is also the author of My Father was a Freedom Fighter.
He is pictured above during his second-grade trip to Cairo, Egypt.
Below is more from the Kid, who grew up in a Gaza refugee camp. He writes in the voice of a veteran Palestinian journalist. It is a voice of determined certitude. It is never shrill, just a calm statement of what he knows lies ahead for the Palestinian people.
He writes of Israeli soldiers who use their occupation power against children.
The Israelis also terrorized us with their constant raids on UNRWA schools. Thousands of children and youth were killed and wounded that way, most notably during the First Palestinian Intifada of 1987. Our protests often started at UNRWA schools and it was in these same schools we also met to console one another over the wounding and martyrdom of fellow classmates.
If you are new to this discussion, welcome, and be aware that UNRWA is short for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, the UN body which has provided food, medical care, education and international recognition for Palestinians since 1948.
Susan Akram provides clarity to the history behind “Palestinian refugees”. She writes in Mondoweiss:
It is important to note that the legal definition of Palestinian refugee relates to the status of Palestinians as former nationals of Palestine, a nationality which was recognized in 1924-25 as a matter of the Treaty of Lausanne that terminated World War I and dismantled the Ottoman Empire. The British passed Palestine citizenship legislation that conformed to the Treaty during the British mandate.
All Palestinians who had Palestinian nationality/citizenship under treaty and mandate law, and their descendants through today, are defined as Palestinian refugees if they were forced to flee during the conflicts of 1947 onwards, and remain as such until their rights embodied in Res. 194 are realized.
In this way, Palestinian refugees’ rights have an even more robust basis than other refugees because their rights are recognized both in general international law as well as in the body of law confirmed in decades of UN resolutions specifically passed for their protection. Today, Palestinians who would be defined by this Palestinian nationality law number approximately 11 million persons.
Ramzy Baroud continues his personal analysis as one of those refugees:
No, the Israeli war didn’t target UNRWA as a UN body, but as an organisation that allowed us to maintain our identity as refugees with inalienable rights, demanding justice and repatriation to our homes. UNRWA fed in us the hope that one day we will shed what was meant to be a temporary identity in favour of our true identity, going back to being us again, a Palestinian people, an ancient nation that predates Israel by centuries.
It is largely because of these experiences that UNRWA is an essential part of my identity as a Palestinian refugee. This intrinsic relationship is not predicated on the services that UNRWA provides or fails to provide, but rather on the political and legal principles its existence is based on.
His statement defines what UNRWA means to the Palestinian people.
The Trump-run U.S., acting under orders handed it by Israel, has targeted UNRWA because it is UNRWA, a United Nations body, which, Baroud writes, is the “organization that allowed us to maintain our identity as refugees with inalienable rights, demanding justice and repatriation to our homes.”
The U. S. also does its heavy-handed bit by cutting off its share of UNRWA funding ($360 million, a major share of UNRWA’s annual budget) and transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Closing the Washington PLO office was petty, mean-spirited and pointless. It is also just the latest evil step by the Trump administration to join with Israel to destroy the Palestinian peoples’ essential humanity. It won’t work.
It won’t work, because journalist Ramzy Baroud, who grew up under Israeli occupation in a Gaza refugee camp, will not let it work.
Nor will it work because activists like James Zogby bring to our attention books like Preventing Palestine. In a review on LobeLog, Zogby wrote:
Seth Anziska’s Preventing Palestine: A Political History From Camp David to Oslo is a deeply insightful and profoundly disturbing book that traces the tortuous path of Middle East peace-making during the past four decades. It was quite painful to read.
Having been a close observer and sometimes participant in many of the developments that have unfolded since the end of the 1973 War, Anziska opened old wounds while shedding new light on the painful events and acts of betrayal that have shaped recent Palestinian history.
Through all of the twists and turns of this period, the brutal wars and the diplomatic initiatives, the one constant that emerges is the Israeli determined refusal to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination and statehood and the self-serving acquiescence to their intransigence by successive American administrations and key Arab leaders.
Zogby cites one of “the twists and turns of this period”:
[President] Carter, for example, began his term [1977] with a pledge to realize a “homeland” for the Palestinians. In line with his administration’s commitment to human rights, Carter was moved to end their suffering in exile and under occupation.
The vehicle he envisioned to initiate the path toward this goal was an international all-party conference to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Carter’s efforts were ultimately upended by a combination of: Israel’s refusal to participate in any forum that would question their claim of sovereignty over the Palestinian territories; Sadat’s resolve to achieve a separate Israeli-Egyptian peace without the Palestinians, despite his public pronouncements to the contrary; and the pressure from the American Jewish community. . . .
Of course, we must continue to obsess on what the Trump-Israeli-controlled U.S. Congress and White House are doing to the Palestinian people.
But there are rays of light in that darkness. We find them when we read Ramzy Baroud, Jim Zogby, and Seth Anziska.
Determined Palestinians will not give in to the collective idiocies of the current leaders of the U.S., and Israeli governments.
The picture above of second-grade student Ramzy Baroud appeared in Al Jazeera though the courtesy of the Baroud family.
Wallwritings 
Jim, Good to get the correct information about the initial recognition of the state of Palestine back in 1924! We need this reminder of history from Susan Akram in Mondoweiss. You can’t erase the Palestinians so easily, despite the President’s efforts.
What to do about the US idiot government, is the question, in order for integrity to prevail concerning issues of this nature.
Israel blundered in making the Palestinians refugees. They are scattered all over the world. Despite all the odds as well as the monumental effort to silence them, their voices can still be heard. Gradually, people everywhere started to realize what the Zionists are and that their own salvation hinges on defeat of Zionism in Palestine.
Is the American news reporting today that Trump was laughed out of the U.N?
His bullying of UNRWA in the funding cuts have made the US a laughing stock on the int’l stage.
Given Trump’s ahistorical approach to all global agreements, it is hard to identify any interpretation of his reckless acts as anything other than an endorsement of apartheid.
Thanks for the filling-in of 1924! One additional name you should add to your list of glimmerings of light. It is “Jim Wall.”
Yes, Ramsy Baroud is another very important voice of the Palestinian people. You also might want to know that he has recently published a new book called: The Last Earth, A Palestinian Story. It is a compilation of many unheard voices who he spent in researching over the last few years. Thank you for all that you do.