 Canada is redirecting its Palestinian aid away from a United Nations agency and toward specific projects. The shift in Canadian policy was announced this week by Vic Toews, president of Canada’s Treasury Board, who wrapped up a five-day trip to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank. Canada is not reducing the amount of money it gives to the Palestinian Authority, “but it is now being redirected in accordance with Canadian values,” Toews said. The move “will ensure accountability and foster democracy in the PA.” In the past, Canadian aid earmarked for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, went into a general operating fund in the PA’s treasury.
The U.N. agency runs 59 Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In a meeting in Ramallah, Toews refused a request by the PA’s minister of planning and administrative development, Ali al-Jarbawi, for aid to be given “directly” to the PA treasury, the Jerusalem Post reported. Among the projects receiving the redirected aid are those training prosecutors, judges and police, and shoring up the Palestinian judicial sector by building courthouses. “If we train people properly, we will have the emergence of proper institutions necessary for a state,” the Post quoted Toews as saying. “It is obviously more difficult to monitor the use of money sent into general funds than specific projects.” A statement from Toews’ office said Canada is “on track” to deliver on its pledge of $300 million over five years to the PA. Toews said Ottawa needed “to ensure that [the Palestinian Authority] has less wide discretion.” B’nai Brith Canada praised the shift away from funding UNRWA, which reportedly has been infiltrated by Hamas. With thanks to www.vladtepesblog.com
 In a Dec.7, 2009 article, the Daily Telegraph looks at the plight of Palestinian refugees living in squalid conditions in Lebanon and perhaps hits the nail on the head: "How could it be possible that for the past 61 years Palestinians are trapped in these camps," complained Mahmoud al-Jomaa, who chairs an organisation that provides health programmes for children. What hurts the most for the refugees is the feeling that they have been forgotten by the world - and particularly by other Arabs. "Seven million Jews worry about the fate of Gilad Shalit, while 300 million Arabs couldn't care less what happens to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians," said Walid Taha, who lives in the Shatila camp in Beirut. In fact, the bulk of UNRWA's funding comes from western donors with only a small proportion from the Arab states: According to an Oct. 2009 feature in The Independent: UNRWA's grant of refugee status to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees according to the principle of patrilineal descent, with no limit on the generations that can obtain refugee status, has made it easy for host countries to flout their obligations under international law.
According to Article 34 of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, "The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees," and must "make every effort to expedite naturalisation proceedings" – the opposite of what happened to the Palestinians in every Arab country in which they settled, save Jordan. Indeed, the article states: In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions.
Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. In addition, the Palestinian Authority has not been at the forefront in helping relocate the residents of refugee camps into permanent housing facilities. Arabs have to share responsibility for the refugee issues since they rejected the 1947 partition plan and and launched a war of destruction. Had they, like Israel, accepted the partition, there would have been no war and no refugees. We congratulate the Daily Telegraph and Independent for going beyond the standard reporting on Palestinian refugees. Perhaps it is time for Karen AbuZayd to take a more sophisticated examination (including some self-examination) regarding the Palestinian refugee problem. Simply blaming Israel and "occupation" is simplistic and does little to resolve the issue. More at HonestReporting
By Jamie Glazov Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East analyst and Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Forum. FP: Asaf Romirowsky, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Romirowsky: Thanks for having me. FP: Tell us about the new UNRWA accountability bill. Romirowsky: After much pressure from Congressman like Mark Kirk (R – IL) and Steve Rothman (D – NJ) and others we are now seeing a new bill entitled UNRWA accountability. It demands transparency and responsibility from UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). The bill seeks to ensure that the monies funneled to UNRWA from the United States do not fund acts of terrorism in any way (bringing the funding into compliance with the US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961). Read more ...Source: FPMUNRWA
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 Hamas slammed the United Nations Sunday, saying the organization planned to teach Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip about the Holocaust, but the UN agency which runs schools in the enclave would not confirm any change, Reuters reported. Calling the Nazi genocide of the Jews "a lie invented by the Zionists," Hamas wrote in an open letter to a senior UN official that he should withdraw plans for a new history book in the UN schools. A spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which educates some 200,000 refugee children in Gaza, said the Holocaust was not on its current curriculum. He would not comment on Hamas's statement that it was about to change, Reuters said. Hamas said it believed UNRWA was about to start using a text for 13-year-olds that included a chapter on the Holocaust. In an open letter to local UNRWA chief John Ging, the movement's Popular Committees for Refugees said: "We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists." UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said: "There is no mention of the Holocaust in the current syllabus." Asked if UNRWA planned to change that, he declined to comment. Hamas's official spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said he did not want to discuss the history of the Holocaust but said: "Regardless of the controversy, we oppose forcing the issue of the so-called Holocaust onto the syllabus, because it aims to reinforce acceptance of the occupation of Palestinian land." Source: JPost 
By YAAKOV KATZ AND HERB KEINON Increasingly concerned that Hamas will steal money donated for Gaza's rehabilitation, the Defense Ministry distributed a document this week revealing that unions affiliated with the terrorist group have set up joint committees with UN agencies that dispense humanitarian aid.  The aftermath of an IAF strike in Gaza.
The document was distributed to the Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry and the Israeli intelligence community, and was also sent to the United States to warn it that the $900 million it has pledged to help rebuild the Gaza Strip could fall into Hamas hands.
"All humanitarian aid sent into the Gaza Strip today needs to receive Hamas clearance," a senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. "Hamas uses violence against international organizations, including UNRWA, if they do not cooperate." Hamas recently published an ad in a Palestinian newspaper warning that "whoever does not follow its orders will be forced to leave Gaza." The internal Defense Ministry document revealed that on July 12, a meeting was held between UNRWA, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Hamas officials who are in charge of the contractors and engineer unions in the Gaza Strip. The objective was to establish a mechanism which will be responsible for distributing the billions of dollars pledged for the rehabilitation of the Strip by the US and European and Arab countries. So far, Hamas has taken control of millions of dollars transferred monthly by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad to the UNDP and designated for Gazans whose homes were destroyed during Operation Cast Lead last winter. At the meeting, Hamas officials told the UN representatives they wanted to be able to draw up the list of people who would receive the money, according to the Defense Ministry document. The sides decided to set up joint committees and to continue to meet in the future. "This is an indication to us that there is no effective mechanism that can be established that will bypass Hamas and ensure the money goes straight to the Palestinian people," the senior defense official said. Israeli government sources said it was "no secret" that UN officials in Gaza were having talks on a technical level with Hamas regarding the distribution of humanitarian aid there. According to the officials, UNRWA and UNDP had "no choice" but to have some contact with Hamas officials in order for the assistance to be transferred. They added that Israel could live with that situation as long as the talks remained only at the technical level and did not become political in nature. One official said efforts to develop a mechanism through which money for the rehabilitation of Gaza could be channeled into the region, without in any way strengthening or helping Hamas, is continuing. This effort has been going on since the end of Operation Cast Lead in January, and hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid that has been contributed for rebuilding the Gaza Strip is not being allowed in until such a mechanism is created. In response to the report, UNRWA Spokesman Chris Gunness released a statement saying: "UNRWA distributes its aid on basis of need. Humanitarian need dictates the way we distribute aid and nothing else." JP
 By Joseph Puder In this difficult economic climate, as American citizens are seeking ways to cut costs, the U.S. government must consider ways to eliminate waste. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is not only a wasteful expenditure but, unbeknownst to most U.S. taxpayers, this U.S.-funded agency serves as an incubator for Arab-Palestinian terrorists. In the 60 years of its existence, UNRWA has done little to rehabilitate and settle the Palestinian-Arab refugees and much to foster incitement, hate, and terror against Israel. The dominant position held by the 57 members of Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in the United Nations has enabled the Palestinian-Arabs “refugees” to receive special treatment that no other group of refugees was ever granted. Other refugees from throughout the world, numbering in the millions, have been resettled and others are currently served by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) with that intention. However, the UNRWA was specifically designated to deal with the Palestinian Arab issue and has, in the intervening years served to accommodate the political designs of the Arab League and unelected Palestinian leaders. Read more ...Source: FrontPage MagazineUNRWA
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By Anav Silverman In recent years, billions of dollars have poured into Gaza from hundreds of countries and international organizations. How much of that money has actually reached Palestinian civilians, effectively improving their quality of life and economy, has yet to be completely determined thanks to vague audits and on-line information. Only recently, with a relatively silent international press, have there been questions from top political leaders, primarily from US, about the way in which the donor money will be transferred into Gaza. At an Egyptian donor’s conference organized by Norway and Egypt in early March, more than 75 international donors and organizations met to announce their financial support of the reconstruction in Gaza. Over $5.2 billion were pledged at the conference, surprising the Palestinian Authority who originally called for $2.8 billion needed to build-up Gaza. Read more ...Source: FrontPage MagazineUNRWA
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If you chose "No," please consider providing your solution to Gaza crisis in the comments.
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SYDNEY, Australia
A Jewish Australian lawmaker slammed a United Nations agency that administers aid for Palestinian refugees as "notoriously corrupt."
Michael Danby, a longstanding pro-Israel Labor legislator, in a blistering speech Wednesday in federal parliament in Canberra, said Australia's $30 million in funding for Palestinians since 2007, largely through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, was being "diverted to arms purchases, terrorist operations and anti-Israel incitement, as well as into the pockets of the Palestinian Authority leadership."
"It is a betrayal of that generosity [by Australians] for this money to be wasted, stolen or misspent on rockets, guns, terrorism or incitement to hatred," Danby said.
Stressing that he was not opposed to humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians, "who have suffered over the past decade from the chronic corruption and mismanagement of the P.A.," Danby said UNRWA had "been maintained by the anti-Israel majority at the U.N. for purely political reasons."
"Most Western donor countries have been reluctant, for obvious political reasons, to call the P.A. or the U.N. to account for the theft and waste of their taxpayers' money in the morass of corruption and political extremism that is Palestinian politics," Danby said.
"The British government, however, has recently indicated that it is unwilling to tolerate this any longer. Other governments should take a similar stand." Source: JTA H/T: Gig
 Fawzi BarhoumBy Aaron Klein TEL AVIV, Israel – Hamas is "very happy" with a pledge this week from the Obama administration to provide $900 million in aid for rebuilding the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a spokesman from the Islamist organization told WND. "We are very happy with this decision," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, speaking by cell phone from Gaza. "In the first place, this money will go toward reconstructing efforts." Barhoum said he expects the money to be tightly controlled. He said the funds are likely to be delineated to the Palestinian Authority and to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, or UNWRA, which administers aid to millions of Palestinian "refugees" in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Hamas has a close relationship with UNWRA; the agency openly employs a large number of Hamas members, including some of the group's most senior terrorists. The U.S. aid has not yet been officially approved by Congress. The package is expected to be formally announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she attends an international Gaza donors conference in Egypt next week. A U.S. official reported the money will not reach Hamas but will go instead to nongovernmental organizations, most notably UNWRA. Still, the terrorist organization controls the Gaza Strip. Any reconstruction efforts in the territory are likely to bolster Hamas. Read more ...Source: WND
 By Joseph Klein
In a rare admission of Hamas’ wrong-doing, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (“UNRWA”) promptly condemned Hamas in a sternly worded press release for seizing its humanitarian supplies by force on February 3, 2009. For once, UNRWA did not deem it necessary, in the name of moral equivalency, to attack Israel at the same time.
The UN Secretary General’s deputy spokesperson Marie Okabe reinforced UNRWA’s condemnation of Hamas by essentially paraphrasing its press release at a briefing held on February 4th at UN headquarters that I attended. I looked around at other peoples’ faces in the briefing room and some appeared as surprised as I was that, for the first time, we were witnessing UNRWA and the Secretary General’s office actually criticizing Hamas alone in such strong terms. However, the matter-of-factness with which the Secretary General’s deputy spokesperson read her statement – as opposed to the anger we always hear from UN spokespersons whenever Israel is criticized – conveyed a rather nonchalant attitude toward the whole thing as if it were an unfortunate but isolated event. Of course it is anything but. Source: FrontPage Magazine
 Lech Mintowt-Czyz | February 07
THE UN has halted humanitarian supplies into Gaza after Hamas forces seized an aid convoy.
Members of the Islamist group which controls the territory took control of 10 trucks in the second such confiscation within two days.
The aid had been intended for the victims of the Israeli offensive which killed 1300 Palestinians, left 5000 wounded and thousands homeless.
Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which supports much of Gaza’s 1.5 million population, said: “The Hamas government must return all of the aid that’s been confiscated... and we have to be given by the Hamas government credible assurances that this will not happen again.
“If it doesn’t happen, then we will continue with the suspension of our imports.”
The UN decision comes after an similar incident on Wednesday when Hamas took 3,500 blankets and 4,000 food parcels, which had been earmarked for 500 families in need, from an UNRWA storeroom in Gaza.
Hamas denied its officials had been involved in the storeroom theft.
The United Nations has refused to hand aid over directly to the welfare ministry run by Hamas, labelled by the West as a terrorist organisation but which won Palestinian elections three years ago.
Ahmed al-Kurd, welfare minister in Gaza’s Hamas government, said the supplies were taken by mistake.
“It was a misunderstanding between drivers,” Mr al-Kurd said. “We have told UNRWA they can come and take the goods. For some reason, they did not come.”
The aid row came as Hamas said it will reject a long-term truce with Israel being mediated by Egypt unless the deal includes lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip.
The group's leader Khaled Meshaal, addressing a rally in Damascus, said Hamas has only received “vague” proposals from Egypt without an Israeli commitment to lift the siege.
He said: "We will not accept a truce unless it was in return for lifting the siege, opening the border crossings and acceleration of the reconstruction of Gaza." Source: The Australian
 Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem | February 06
THE UN has retracted claims over one of the biggest controversies in the Gaza war, admitting that an Israeli mortar attack that killed 43 people did not hit a school run by a UN agency.
The January 6 incident, described at the time as the "school massacre", figured prominently in accusations that Israel committed war crimes in the deaths of hundreds of civilians during the war.
A statement issued yesterday by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Human Affairs acknowledged that it had wrongly blamed the deaths at the time on the "shelling of the UNRWA (Relief and Works Agency) school".
"The humanitarian co-ordinator would like to clarify that the shelling, and all of the fatalities, took place outside rather than inside the school," the statement said.
The clarification came several days after a journalist for Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, Patrick Martin, interviewed Palestinians living near the school and a teacher, who told him that none of the casualties were in the school but on the street outside.
In a television interview the day of the incident at a Gaza hospital where casualties were brought, the UNRWA operations director in Gaza, John Ging, an Irish national, did not explicitly say the shells had hit the school but he left that impression.
"Those in the school were all families seeking refuge," he said. "There's nowhere safe in Gaza."
Neither Mr Ging nor other UN officials attempted subsequently to dispel the widespread suspicions of Israeli culpability, although they knew otherwise, until the newspaper report.
Israeli army spokesmen during the war said Israeli troops had fired three mortar shells in response to mortar fire from the area near the school, not from the school itself.
They said the dead included two identifiable Palestinian militants believed to have been involved in the mortar firing.
That denial, however, did not convince critics around the world, who continued to accuse Israel of deliberately targeting schools harbouring civilians seeking shelter, a belief buttressed by the UN statement.
Military analyst Anthony Cordesman, in a study of the Gaza conflict released this week, concluded that the Israeli Defence Forces did not violate the rules of war during the three-week campaign. He said Hamas was not bound by international conventions but was able to "manipulate humanitarian considerations" for propaganda leverage.
"The end result is a situation where one side can potentially be limited by international law where the other is not, and that effectively makes international law a potential weapon for the side that rejects and exploits it," writes Professor Cordesman, of Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
"It is a situation that empowers and incentivises extremists to use civilians as the equivalent of human shields by embedding their forces in civilian populations and using sensitive buildings like mosques and schools. There is nothing new about such tactics."
An Israeli watchdog organisation, NGO Monitor, released a report this week accusing international human rights organisations of ignoring the use by Hamas of human shields while "publishing unverified eyewitness evidence and unaccountable casualty figures throughout the conflict, which have since been refuted. These claims helped create an assumption of Israeli guilt and were amplified by the media, influencing the conflict itself."
Meanwhile, a UN spokesman, in a rare public clash with Hamas, accused Hamas police of breaking into a Gaza warehouse full of UN humanitarian supplies and seizing thousands of blankets and food packages.
"They were armed, they seized this, they took it by force," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness, who described the incident "absolutely unacceptable". Source: The Australian
When last we saw the “heroic resistance fighters” of Hamas, they had temporarily stopped shelling Israeli cities in the wake of an Israeli incursion aimed at neutering their ability to terrorize. Since then, it has been reported that Hamas summarily executed dozens of people it suspected of supporting either the Israelis or the secular Fatah movement. Rocket fire resumed this week, hitting the town of Ashqelon. Now comes word that Hamas officers stole emergency relief aid that the United Nations sent to needy refugees. The "3,500 blankets and more than 400 food parcels [were] meant to help hundreds of families in the Gaza City Beach Camp.” "They were armed and we were not," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness. In Wednesday’s New York Daily News, Matt Levitt warns that $20 million in emergency U.S. aid for Gaza could meet the same fate unless some safeguards are created. Levitt wrote the book on Hamas financing and is frequently tapped as an expert witness by federal prosecutors in terror finance cases. The U.S. Agency for International Development previously sent money to Gaza charities publicly tied to Hamas, Levitt writes, including the Hamas-controlled Islamic University of Gaza. Read more ...Source: IPT Blog
By Matthew Levitt In the wake of the Gaza war, few tasks are more critical than providing much-needed humanitarian support to the residents of Gaza without inadvertently empowering Hamas. Unfortunately, one of the primary vehicles the U.S. government intends to use to provide newly pledged aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is resisting efforts to implement a program to ensure that U.S. funds do not inadvertently support terrorism. On Friday, the U.S. government announced that President Obama has authorized the use of $20.3 million to address critical post-conflict humanitarian needs in Gaza. Under the system as it exists today, some or all of those funds could end up in Hamas coffers. Read more ...Source: New York Daily News
Hamas police in Gaza have seized thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents, UN spokesman Chris Gunness said Wednesday.
Gunness said Hamas police raided a UN warehouse in Gaza City, snatching 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels - supplied meant for 500 Palestinian families. He said the incident took place on Tuesday evening, and that it marked the first time Hamas had seized UN aid.
In a statement released Wednesday, UNRWA condemned the theft "in the strongest terms," and demanded that it be "returned immediately." The statement added that the organization "has a strict system of monitoring aid delivery and ensuring that its assistance reaches only the intended beneficiaries," and that officials were present "taking all possible steps to avoid its diversion."
The aid is especially vital now because Gazans are facing hardship after Israel's three-week military offensive against Hamas.
Israeli officials have charged that the group routinely confiscates supplies meant for needy Gazans.
A Hamas government spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Earlier in the week, meanwhile, former UN and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees chief attorney James Lindsay alleged that the organization does little to check whether its staff or clients are terrorists.
Allegations linking terrorists to UNRWA are not new. Israel has said many times its troops were fired on by gunmen using UNRWA facilities, that UNRWA vehicles transported weapons and that some of its staff members were terrorists.
UNRWA has denied those charges and Israel has often retracted them or found them hard to prove.
The issue, Lindsay wrote in a 67-page critique of the organization, is not intention but oversight.
"UNRWA has taken very few steps to detect and eliminate terrorists from the ranks of its staff or its beneficiaries, and no steps at all to prevent members of terrorist organizations such as Hamas from joining its staff," he wrote.
UNRWA said in response that its staff were prohibited from any political involvement.
UNRWA was created in 1949 by General Assembly Resolution 302 and began operation in May 1950 to service what at the time was 957,000 refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, many of whom been rendered homeless or jobless by the 1948-49 war with Israel, according to Lindsay. Source: Jerusalem Post
 Stop funding a Palestinian youth bulge, and the fighting will stop too.
By Gunnar Heinsohn
As the world decries Israel's attempt to defend itself from the rocket attacks coming from Gaza, consider this: When Hamas routed Fatah in Gaza in 2007, it cost nearly 350 lives and 1,000 wounded. Fatah's surrender brought only a temporary stop to the type of violence and bloodshed that are commonly seen in lands where at least 30% of the male population is in the 15-to-29 age bracket.
In such "youth bulge" countries, young men tend to eliminate each other or get killed in aggressive wars until a balance is reached between their ambitions and the number of acceptable positions available in their society. In Arab nations such as Lebanon (150,000 dead in the civil war between 1975 and 1990) or Algeria (200,000 dead in the Islamists' war against their own people between 1999 and 2006), the slaughter abated only when the fertility rates in these countries fell from seven children per woman to fewer than two. The warring stopped because no more warriors were being born.
In Gaza, however, there has been no demographic disarmament. The average woman still bears six babies. For every 1,000 men aged 40-44, there are 4,300 boys aged 0-4 years. In the U.S. the latter figure is 1,000, and in the U.K. it's only 670.
And so the killing continues. In 2005, when Israel was still an occupying force, Gaza lost more young men to gang fights and crime than in its war against the "Zionist enemy." Despite the media's obsession with the Mideast conflict, it has cost many fewer lives than the youth bulges in West Africa, Lebanon or Algeria. In the six decades since Israel's founding, "only" some 62,000 people (40,000 Arabs, 22,000 Jews) have been killed in all the Israeli-Arab wars and Palestinian terror attacks. During that same time, some 11 million Muslims have been killed in wars and terror attacks -- mostly at the hands of other Muslims.
What accounts for the Mideast conflict's relatively low body count? Hamas and their ilk certainly aim to kill as many Israelis as possible. To their indignation, the Israelis are quite good at protecting themselves. On the other hand, Israel, despite all the talk about its "disproportionate" use of force, is doing its utmost to spare civilian deaths. Even Hamas acknowledges that most of the Palestinians killed by Israeli air raids are from their own ranks.
But about 10%-15% of Gaza's casualties are women and minors -- a tragedy impossible to prevent in a densely settled area in which nearly half the people are under 15 and the terrorists hide among them.
The reason for Gaza's endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world's refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendents as well.
UNRWA is benevolently funded by the U.S. (31%) and the European Union (nearly 50%) -- only 7% of the funds come from Muslim sources. Thanks to the West's largesse, nearly the entire population of Gaza lives in a kind of lowly but regularly paid dependence.
One result of this unlimited welfare is an endless population boom. Between 1950 and 2008, Gaza's population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million. The West basically created a new Near Eastern people in Gaza that at current trends will reach three million in 2040. Within that period, Gazans may alter the justifications and directions of their aggression but are unlikely to stop the aggression itself.
The Hamas-Fatah truce of June 2007 allowed the Islamists again to direct all their energy on attacking Israel. The West pays for food, schools, medicine and housing, while Muslim nations help out with the military hardware. Unrestrained by such necessities as having to earn a living, the young have plenty of time on their hands for digging tunnels, smuggling, assembling missiles and firing 4,500 of them at Israel since 2006. While this gruesome activity has slowed the Palestinian internecine slaughter, it forced some 250,000 Israelis into bomb shelters.
The current situation can only get worse. Israel is being pushed into a corner.
Gazan teenagers have no future other than war. One rocket master killed is immediately replaced by three young men for whom a martyr's death is no less honorable than victory. Some 230,000 Gazan males, aged 15 to 29, who are available for the battlefield now, will be succeeded by 360,000 boys under 15 (45% of all Gazan males) who could be taking up arms within the coming 15 years.
As long as we continue to subsidize Gaza's extreme demographic armament, young Palestinians will likely continue killing their brothers or neighbors. And yet, despite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year.
By generously supporting UNRWA's budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in their own countries. Much is being said about Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza's untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war by proxy against the Jews of Israel.
If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.
If we make this urgently needed reform, then by at least 2025 many boys in Gaza -- like in Algeria -- would enter puberty as only sons. They would be able to look forward to a more secure future in a less violent society.
If the West prefers calm around Gaza even before 2025, it may consider offering immigration to those young Palestinians only born because of the West's well-meant but cruelly misguided aid. In the decades to come, North America and Europe will have to take in tens of millions of immigrants anyway to slow the aging of their populations. If, say, 200,000 of them are taken from the 360,000 boys coming of age in Gaza in the next 15 years, that would be a negligible move for the big democracies but a quantum leap for peace in the Near East.
Many of Gaza's young -- like in much of the Muslim world -- dream of leaving anyway. Who would not want to get out of that strip of land but the international NGOs and social workers whose careers depend on perpetuating Gaza's misery?
Mr. Heinsohn heads the Raphael Lemkin Institute at the University of Bremen, Europe's first institute devoted to comparative genocide research. Source: Wall Street Journal
By Claudia Rosett Once upon a time, terrorists had to hide from the forces of the free world and filch their living on the sly. That's changing, thanks to long-running efforts by the United Nations, bankrolled most prominently by the U.S. In the current violence of Gaza, we are seeing the fruition of one of the most bizarre creations of modern diplomacy: a UN-supported welfare enclave for terrorists. Behind this lies a straightforward equation. Gaza, with its 1.5 million people, runs almost entirely on international handouts. The UN ranks it among the top per-capita aid recipients on the planet. And following the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas began consolidating power in Gaza--first via elections in 2006, then via a bloody battle in June 2007, in which Hamas drove out the rival Palestinian group Fatah and seized all power in the enclave. Read more ...Source: Forbes
 By Debbie Schlussel The Hoping foundation is a virulently anti-Israel charity, which funds programs throughout Gaza and Palestinian refugee camps, including Ein Al-Hilweh, Burj Al-Barajneh, and Nahr Al-Bared, which are hotbeds of Al-Qaeda and HAMAS activity. The Chair of its Board of Trustees is Karma Nabulsi, PLO representative from 1977-90 to the UN, Beirut, Tunis, and the UK, who wrote a column defending PFLP terrorist chief George Habash's hijackings as "an inspiration to secular democracy." The Hoping Foundation camouflages the programs as "art" and "creative writing," claiming they spread peace. But, in fact, the programs are administered by members of HAMAS. The Hoping Foundation joins UNRWA (the UN Refugee agency for Palestinians) in using HAMAS officials and supporters to help spread the hate. The Hoping Foundation website's description of who the Palestinians are is filled with anti-Israel disinformation and propaganda. The Foundation's site does not disclose the identities of its trustees, but they include Hugh Grant's girlfriend, Ms. Khan. In the Hoping Foundation's "Who Are the Palestinians?" we are told that: Palestinians . . . were forced to leave their homes in 1948 when Israel was created, and again in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Actually, none of them "were forced to leave." They chose to leave at the behest of neighboring Arab nations, who--during both wars--assured them that they would defeat Israel and the Palestinians could then return. The Palestinians made the wrong bet. And they lost. Tough. After decades, you'd think they'd want to better themselves--as did the million Jews who were kicked out of their homes and expelled from Arab lands. But, then, that would take away a political issue from all the Muslim and Arab nations who hate the Jews (and hate the Palestinians, too). Read more ...Source: Debbie SchlusselGwyneth Paltrow
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 "Reclaim their property" should be construed as "reclaim their property or its monetary value"
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Canada is redirecting its Palestinian aid away from a United Nations agency and toward specific projects. 
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