Hacker News Reader

Comment by Protostome | Hacker News Reader

The refugee status of Gazan and other palestinian has been strategically kept this way for generations.

Many peoples have suffered wars throughout history, were displaced and relocated in other countries. Only the palestinians retain their refugee status even after living in surrounding arab countries like Lebanon, Syria for more than 3 generations.

There are more than 2 million arabs that remained in Israel and didn't flee during the 1948 wars, they are all full citizens now, in full contrast.

The only reason for keeping palestinians in a refugee status is to keep the conflict going until the eradication of the state of Israel.

UNRWA is a known cover for laundrying Hamas activities, there are many accounts of Hamas members firing and conducting military activities wearing UNRWA uniforms and traveling in UNRWA vehicles. That's why many countries stopped supporting them financially

View on HN

Most countries restarted funding when Israel did not produce any evidence of UNRWA malfeasance to back up their allegation.

The arabs within Israel do not have equal status to Israeli nationals, and less than any Jew who claims lineage but has no connection to Israel. Refugee status is also maintained by Israeli rulings about refugees from Palestine, in order to delegitimize right of return: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_citizenship_law https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/6/29/israeli-aparthe...

Furthermore, the UN have ruled that the right of return is valid, as opposed to the current nationality rules around Jewish heritage that make no sense - no other countries allow similar things: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/09/1154496

Neighbouring countries accepting refugees could well be considered an endorsement of ethnic cleansing. TBH Gazans should not have to move, the current state of Gaza is entirely down to Israeli destruction which was completely unnecessary - hostage exchange could have happened at any time in the last 15 months, and Netenyahu has blocked that discourse 10+ times before, as it has not been in his interests to seek a resolution to the conflict (witness the complaints by the families of the Israeli hostages).

> Many peoples have suffered wars throughout history, were displaced and relocated in other countries.

This is Israel's weird hasbara logic of "19th century imperialist rules for us, 20 century postwar rules for everyone else". The prohibition of taking land by force is a central rule of the post-WWII world order, yet it seems to apply to all except Israel.

Also, large-scale waves of refugees are always a challenge for the host countries, and I don't know about any situation where the host country didn't want the refugees to go back eventually. (Not even speaking about the refugees themselves, who have to start a new life with basically nothing)

> Many peoples have suffered wars throughout history, were displaced and relocated in other countries.

Yes, at the same time in Europe, millions of people were kicked out of their homes because of redrawing borders and ethnic cleansing of many regions after WW2. Look up the history of Displaced Persons.

Israel gets handouts from many countries including the US and still talks about the holocaust, which pre-dates the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It's quite hypocritical that WWII is "never again" but Nakba is "just get over it".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com