Bonnie Glick:
Rich, if I may add to that, because the border is a really critical area that there isn’t enough focus on. That is largely due to American foreign policy decision making. What do I mean by that? It’s an international border. There is an international airport that’s located about 50 kilometers from Rafah inside Egypt, an international airport that could whisk refugees away to a third country, as you mentioned, Qatar, but there are countries that are willing to take Gazan civilians and have them resettled there. The point of a refugee–
Cliff May:
Which countries would those be?
Bonnie Glick:
Those are Scotland, Canada, Chechnya, Turkey, Qatar. These are all country… Egypt doesn’t want them resettling in Egypt. But Egypt–
Cliff May:
Even taking temporary refuge for the duration of the war, which seems to be–
RIch Goldberg:
Of course amazing, Bonnie and Cliff, no security council resolution demanding Egypt open that border once since October 7th.
Bonnie Glick:
Correct.
RIch Goldberg:
No condemnation of keeping people in Gaza when they could be moving into completely isolated empty desert land that doesn’t threaten Egypt at all. I mean, that–
Bonnie Glick:
Part of that, Rich, is because America insists that no Gazan leave Gaza. There’s no other war zone in the world where refugees are not allowed to leave. You’ve had a million people leave Ukraine. You’ve had millions of people leave Venezuela. You’ve had a million Rohingya refugees leave Burma for Bangladesh. Third countries are willing to accept refugees, and that’s the point of refugee resettlement. Giving people the opportunity for a new life. 850,000 Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews left their Arab and Muslim countries in 1948 and came to Israel as refugees. The Jewish homeland and Israel helped them make lives there. That’s the point of refugee resettlement, and it is the key piece that UNRWA refuses to do. UNRWA requires that Palestinians remain in these what they call, so-called occupied areas in the hope of return to a future Palestine. Well, it’s not happening anytime soon. Wouldn’t it be nice to help the people who are in such dire circumstances to get to a safe haven and eventually to be resettled?
Cliff May:
If we understand that, then when we talk about a two-state solution, how does it solve anything to say we are going to recognize a Palestinian state and who’s going to lead that Palestinian state? Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority that doesn’t condemn Hamas?
Rich Goldberg:
Listen, this is ultimately why you have a crash ahead of you, if you keep trying to barrel trains down towards this idea of a two-state solution. It’s going to be a devastating train crash in foreign policy terms if this is where the United States keeps pushing the trains, because not only do you have Hamas with what you just described as its ideology, but you fundamentally have a narrative indoctrinated for all Palestinians institutionalized by the United Nations and UNRWA, as Bonnie laid out, that is all about the vision of genocide of Jews. It’s inherent in the narrative that if you are waiting for your moment, your October 7th moment to invade and throw all the Jews into the sea and reclaim what’s really yours, and until then you are refugees, until then you cannot achieve the true two state vision. Who are you dealing with from the Israeli side? Who are you dealing with in Washington? This is outrageous. This is like the campus protests from the river to the sea, but actually operationalized to perform the act from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. That is to say to genocide the Jews.
Cliff May:
Yeah, I doubt the Israelis are going to be held back. I think it’s too imperative that they do so. Going back to Lyndon Johnson trying to discourage the Israelis from understanding that that war was going to be fought by Egypt and Syria and Jordan and others in ’67, and they knew what they had to do, or taking out the nuclear reactor at Osirak and Iraq, or the Syrian nuclear reactor. I think the Israelis sometimes know they have to do what they have to do and they’ll ask forgiveness rather than permission at the end of the day.
One who I give the credit for this, David Satterfield, did say that the White House had decided to stop funding for UNRWA and he said it’s not a suspension, it’s a prohibition on providing further funding. That strikes me as a good move. I saw that two congressmen, representative Andy Ogles and Mary Miller, both Republicans, introduced a resolution to designate UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization, that’s going even further. What do you think of those, Bonnie?
Bonnie Glick:
So it’s super interesting, and I think Senator Cruz also has something in the works where he wants to designate UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization, remove the 501C3 benefit for UNRWA where Americans can get a tax benefit for giving to a 501C3 organization associated with UNRWA, and taking it a step further and saying donations to UNRWA are material support for terrorism.
So there are these good moves to cut not just US government, but also good-willed, well-meaning Americans who have been duped by little kids on Halloween going around with trick or treat for UNICEF boxes. Foreign terrorism organization designation of UNRWA likely won’t happen. I think what’s much more likely is that UNRWA will simply be shut down, tail between its legs and it’ll retreat into the darkness, and the leadership of UNRWA will take up new leadership roles in other equally as perverse UN agencies like UN Women, the International Committee for the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, the World Health Organization, all of which have been complicit since October 7th in either the coverup.
So your first question on UNRWA and the FTO designation, it’s a clever move, but I don’t think it will advance. I do think UNRWA ultimately will have so little funding left that it will be forced to shut down. In addition to that, the UN will make an effort to take care of Palestinians possibly by the only logical means available, and that is to roll them into UNHCR, the UN High Commission for Refugees. That of course will take away all of the permanent refugee status for Palestinians.