Eternal Pawns: How the United Nations Creates and Weaponizes Palestinian Refugees | Karys Rhea

UNRWA. An impossible to pronounce acronym, one of the many United Nations’ agencies, is not the worst place to start gaining some understanding of the current situation in Gaza, Israel and beyond.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was founded in 1949 as a temporary organization to provide emergency relief to Palestine refugees who had fled their homes in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

But almost 80 years later, it’s still around. How did this happen and why?

Today, UNRWA is the largest UN Agency by staff size: it employs about 30,000 people, almost all of whom are locally recruited Palestinian refugees themselves. The majority of them work in Gaza and many others live and work in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank.

Palestinian Arabs are the only group in the world with a dedicated UN agency. An initial roughly 700,000 Palestinian refugees in 1949 turned into almost 6 million refugees today since the refugee status is passed on from father to child. Who profits from this - not just in terms of money but in terms of political power?

In the interview, Karys Rhea, a fellow of the Middle East Forum, talks to me about the history and purpose of UNRWA and discusses the historical background of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the establishment of Israel, and the roots of Arab opposition to Jewish sovereignty.

CHAPTER TITLES
03:50 Why UNRWA Was Created: The 1948 Refugee Crisis
07:18 Partition History, British Mandate, and Early Conflict
11:11 Jewish Migration: Russian Pogroms and Ottoman Era
12:16 UN Partition, Arab Opposition, and the Independence War
14:58 Israel’s Survival Against the Odds
15:53 Jewish Presence, Arab Reaction, and Sovereignty
17:34 Holocaust Impact and Pan-Arabism
23:46 Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hitler, and Early Massacres
26:39 War Aftermath, Armistice, and Territorial Shifts
28:20 Jewish and Arab Populations: Parallel Refugee Crises
30:39 Arab States: Refugees as Political Pawns
34:06 Citizenship and Refugee Treatment in Arab States
38:42 Propaganda, Radicalization, and Generational Issues
39:21 UNRWA’s Role in Perpetuating the Conflict
40:17 Inheritance of Refugee Status
42:08 UNRWA Staffing, Budget, Scope
43:35 When Does Refugee Status End? Right of Return Debates
48:29 Refugee Numbers: Demographics and Registration
51:17 How Definitions and Populations Changed Over Time
53:16 Citizenship and Second-Class Status
56:40 Israeli Arabs: Rights, Integration, and Social Mobility
1:00:53 UNRWA’s Funding, Donors, and Accountability
1:03:11 Refugee Camps Today: Living Conditions
1:06:44 UNRWA Services and Lack of Oversight
1:10:13 Employment, Corruption, and Organizational Interests
1:13:03 Daily Life: Wealth, Poverty, and Lack of Rights
1:15:07 Identity Formation and Psychological Impact
1:17:34 Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Identity, and Nationalism
1:24:57 Education, Hate, and Indoctrination in Schools
1:27:52 Personal Contact, Worker Permits, and The Green Prince
1:29:29 Indoctrination: Martyrdom and the UNRWA Curriculum

RESOURCES
Total Palestinian Refugees (1950-Present):
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-palestinian-refugees-1950-present#1

Population of Israel (1948-Present):
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/population-of-israel-1948-present

Flashlights Substack:
https://flashlightsproductions.substack.com/p/pawns-in-a-game-how-the-un-creates?utm_source=youtube