MAY 24, 2024

The Nuremberg Trials set the stage for new international conventions to prosecute war criminals and those committing crimes against humanity. The foundation of these legal precedents was the principle of "never again" — a commitment to preventing genocides like the Shoah. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in 2002 on these principles.

However, this week, ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan shattered the court's credibility with a single action. By seeking arrest warrants for democratically elected officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant, alongside three of the world's top terrorists (Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif), Khan has drawn a false moral equivalence between these parties. 

Unlike Israel, Hamas is recognized globally as a terrorist organization. Founded on Islamic fundamentalism originating from the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas violently ousted its sister organization, the more secular Palestinian Authority, after its 2005 election. Since then, it has evolved into a tyrannical regime with a mission statement calling for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people. 

Israel, like most democracies, is not without flaws. However, it holds democratic elections, boasts a robust judiciary that has withstood government scrutiny, and upholds principles shared by other free nations, such as free speech, freedom of the press, and rights for women and LGBTQ individuals — rights that are rare in the Middle East. 

The ICC lacks authority over Israel, not only because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which created the court, but also because of its strong judiciary, which has previously prosecuted Israeli presidents and prime ministers. Even Canada, with its own controversies, has never imprisoned its prime ministers. Israel's judicial independence is evident in the cases of former prime minister Ehud Olmert and former President Moshe Katzav, both of whom spent time in prison.

Khan and his team correctly identified that Hamas leaders and operatives have committed international crimes since October 7, 2023, including extermination, murder, hostage-taking, rape, sexual violence, torture, and other inhumane acts. This week, families of five Israeli female IDF officers released a harrowing video showing their loved ones being beaten, tortured, and abducted to Gaza. The footage and audio suggest possible sexual assault. 

Despite these horrors, Khan has charged Israel in the shadow of Hamas's documented atrocities, reminiscent of the Nazis. By attempting to equate Israel with terrorists, Khan joins others who create false equivalencies between Israel and Hamas. This dissonance permits the unacceptable justification of terrorism and hatred against Israel, as seen with the recent International Court of Justice charges introduced by South Africa. 

Khan's accusations against Israel are entirely unfounded. Israel is not responsible for Gaza's humanitarian situation and has gone to great lengths to provide for its civilians. Conversely, Hamas has stolen food from aid trucks, attacked border crossings, and used civilians as human shields and pawns in its propaganda. 

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are the most humane military force, having lost nearly 300 soldiers in a cautious ground incursion aimed at minimizing civilian casualties. Their efforts to warn civilians through text messages and leaflets are unprecedented. Nevertheless, casualties occur, though the United Nations recently halved the reported numbers of ca. 

Khan's baseless charges against Netanyahu and Gallant should not result in arrest warrants. However, like historical libels and conspiracy theories against Jews, these accusations may leave a lasting stain on Israel and the Jewish people. To press his false narrative against Israel, Khan immediately took his case to the media, appearing on CNN with Christiane Amanpour. 

These actions will incite further antisemitism among radical left-wing activists on university campuses, in politics, and in the media. Worse, they will embolden Hamas and Hezbollah to continue holding Israeli hostages and attacking Israel. 

Khan's warrants against a legitimate government defending itself undermine the global order. They set a dangerous precedent that nations cannot effectively respond to terrorist attacks or protect their citizens. Or perhaps, this precedent applies only because Jews are finally defending themselves? 

National Post

Avi Abraham Benlolo is the Founder and CEO of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-international-criminal-court-cant-have-jews-defending-themselves

While anti-Israel protest encampments amass on American campuses, particularly at Columbia University where demonstrators chant, "Hamas we love you," the United Nations tried to slip a report about the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) between the cracks. Its objective was to downplay UNRWA’s failure to remain neutral in Gaza by supposedly allowing its infrastructure there to be used by the terror group Hamas.

Released April 22, the report was the product of a weeks-long investigation by a UN-appointed review group into the neutrality of UNRWA. They began their work after Israel levelled accusations that a dozen UNRWA staff members were directly involved in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and that many others supported Hamas. 

The final report doesn't address the involvement of UNRWA employees in the attack, but it does make recommendations to improve the neutrality of the aid organization.The timing of the report's release, which the media quickly used to vindicate UNRWA after some of its staff were accused of terrorism by Israel, should have raised a red flag. 

Just as Israeli Jews were sitting down at their Seder tables to celebrate Passover, they were hit over the head by a frontal media assault. Headlines blared using only portions of the report to reprimand Israel for not providing evidence of UNRWA staff participating in the Oct. 7 massacre. Israel rarely cooperates with the often-biased UN committees sent to castigate the Jewish state.As is often the case these days, journalists pick out the content that most validates their prevailing opinion. Had they read the report thoroughly, they would have picked up on the report’s emphasis that“neutrality-related issues persist.” 

In other words, UNRWA is not neutral, though it's supposed to be. There have been “instances of staff publicly expressing political views" and "host countries with problematic content being used in some UNRWA schools.”UNRWA itself, says the report, admits to finding in a review of textbooks “issues of concern to UN values, guidance, or position on the conflict.” To its credit, the report concludes that “even if marginal, these issues constitute a grave violation of neutrality.”

The investigative committee found that “among the various issues, recurrent ones were the use of historical maps in a non-historical context, e.g., without labelling Israel; naming Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine; naming cities in Israel as Palestinian cities; the use of the word Zionist (e.g., 'Zionist occupation' referring to Israel)." If we are to believe that only 3.85 per cent of Palestinian textbooks contain “issues,” that would still imply that thousands of Palestinians have been indoctrinated to hate Israel.The investigative committee’s report about UNRWA should make any donor country, including Canada, rethink its funding."

The presence of even a small fraction of problematic content in textbooks, supplemental material, and teaching content remains a serious issue," it reads. "More work needs to be undertaken between UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority to pursue the replacement of problematic content and to avoid the promotion of discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence and the spreading of antisemitic views that contradict UN values and UNESCO standards.

"In Gaza, Israel discovered what had long been suspected: Hamas was using UNRWA facilities including its headquarters and its schools as bases of operations and military storage centres. UNRWA staff deny any knowledge of these findings, insisting they were unaware that tunnels were dug below their facilities, electric cables were run from their building underground, and rockets were stored inside and in the ground below school classrooms. No one at UNRWA seems to have learned that their headquarters sheltered a massive Hamas data centre in the ground below, either.

The UN investigative report politely addresses this complicity with terror."Neutrality of installations UNRWA’s facilities have sometimes been misused for political or military gains, undermining its neutrality," it reads. "If the prevention of and response to the political misuse of UNRWA installations has been efficient, the agency has had more difficulty appropriately addressing the use of its installations for military purposes. Preventive measures, enhanced monitoring, and transparent reporting are necessary to address this issue effectively."

In fact, the UN agency requires so much maintenance that the advisory committee believes oversight and "stronger governance structures" are critical for it to meet neutrality protocols, as is support from the international community.Even while the international media ignored these important facts in the report, governments like Canada that have resumed funding to the agency must reconsider their decision based on these findings. Funding UNRWA is the problem in the Middle East crisis, not the solution.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-unrwa-fails-the-neutrality-test-in-un-investigation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AGPI Statement on UN Report Exposing Sexual Violence by Hamas

Toronto, March 5, 2024: The Abraham Global Peace Initiative (AGPI) welcomes the recent report released by the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, shedding light on the heinous sexual crimes committed by Hamas against Israeli women on October 7th and as hostages in Gaza.

UN Special Representative Pramila Patten disclosed that her team's investigation revealed instances of rape and gang rape at three locations on October 7th: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, road 232, and Kibbutz Re'im. In a disturbing pattern, victims were subjected to rape before being tragically killed.

The Nova music festival site, according to Patten, witnessed severe violations, including brutal mass murders, with several hundred bodies recovered and numerous abductions reported.

Of great concern is the identified pattern of organized, systematic, and premeditated sexual violence across multiple locations. Patten highlighted that victims were found either fully or partially undressed, bound, and shot. The report detailed evidence of sexualized torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

"While the UN's report marks a crucial first step in rectifying the international record after the October 7th events, it is disheartening that the UN General Assembly has not yet condemned the attack and the atrocities committed by Hamas on that day," expressed AGPI's Founder and CEO, Avi Abraham Benlolo.

Benlolo further expressed disappointment that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has not commented or issued a statement regarding these damning findings regarding the sexual violence on Israeli women by Hamas.

Following the October 7th massacre by Hamas, AGPI took swift action, documenting the atrocities in a documentary titled "The End of the Innocence." Additionally, the organization published a column condemning the silence of women's groups in the face of such horrific events. AGPI remains committed to raising awareness about these crimes and advocating for justice for the victims.

AGPI further monitors and responds to the activity of the United Nations.  Please visit its UN updates at Eye on the UN. For Arabic speakers, visit AGPI Arabic. 

POUR DIFFUSION IMMÉDIATE

Déclaration de l'AGPI sur le Rapport de l'ONU Révélant les Violences Sexuelles par le Hamas

Toronto, le 5 mars 2024 : L'Initiative Mondiale pour la Paix d'Abraham (AGPI) prend acte du récent rapport publié par le Représentant Spécial de l'ONU sur les Violences Sexuelles en Temps de Conflit, mettant en lumière les crimes sexuels odieux commis par le Hamas contre des femmes israéliennes le 7 octobre et en tant qu'otages à Gaza.

La Représentante Spéciale de l'ONU, Pramila Patten, a révélé que l'enquête de son équipe a mis en lumière des cas de viol et de viol en groupe à trois endroits le 7 octobre : le site du festival de musique Nova et ses environs, la route 232 et le kibboutz Re'im. Dans un schéma troublant, les victimes ont été soumises au viol avant d'être tragiquement tuées.

Selon Patten, le site du festival de musique Nova a été le théâtre de graves violations, dont des meurtres de masse brutaux, avec plusieurs centaines de corps retrouvés et de nombreux enlèvements signalés.

Ce qui préoccupe particulièrement est le schéma identifié de violences sexuelles organisées, systématiques et préméditées à plusieurs endroits. Patten a souligné que les victimes ont été retrouvées entièrement ou partiellement dévêtues, attachées et abattues. Le rapport détaillait des preuves de torture sexualisée et de traitement cruel, inhumain et dégradant.

"Alors que le rapport de l'ONU marque une première étape cruciale pour rectifier le dossier international après les événements du 7 octobre, il est décourageant que l'Assemblée Générale de l'ONU n'ait pas encore condamné l'attaque et les atrocités commises par le Hamas ce jour-là", a déclaré le Fondateur et PDG de l'AGPI, Avi Abraham Benlolo.

Benlolo a également exprimé sa déception quant au fait que le Secrétaire Général de l'ONU, Antonio Guterres, n'a pas commenté ni émis de déclaration concernant ces conclusions accablantes sur le Hamas.

Suite au massacre du 7 octobre par le Hamas, l'AGPI a agi rapidement, documentant les atrocités dans un documentaire intitulé "La Fin de l'Innocence". De plus, l'organisation a publié une tribune condamnant le silence des groupes de femmes face à de tels événements horribles. L'AGPI reste engagée à sensibiliser sur ces crimes et à plaider en faveur de la justice pour les victimes.

L'AGPI surveille également et réagit à l'activité des Nations Unies. Veuillez consulter ses mises à jour de l'ONU sur Eye on the UN. Pour les personnes parlant arabe, veuillez visiter AGPI Arabic.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 11, 2024

The Abraham Global Peace Initiative (AGPI) rejected UNRWA Chief, Philippe Lazzarini's contention that "UNRWA did not know what was under its headquarters in Gaza". 

In a statement, AGPI said: "given the sophistication of the tunnel under UNRWA headquarters in Gaza and the sophisticated Hamas data center, it is impossible your organization "did not know".  Israel estimates it took 5 years to construct the bunker under UNRWA headquarters. 

AGPI is calling for the resignation of UNRWA Chief Philippe Lazzarini.  

The Abraham Global Peace Initiative (AGPI) extends its appreciation to the European Union for its decisive action in suspending funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). This suspension follows serious allegations implicating UNRWA staff in the October 7th, 2023, massacre of Israelis.

In a recent statement, the European Union emphasized its role as one of the largest donors of humanitarian and development aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The EU declared that no additional funding to UNRWA is anticipated until the end of February.

AGPI particularly commends the EU's commitment to an impartial investigation, distinct from one conducted by the UN agency.  AGPI expects UNRWA to cooperate in conducting an audit led by EU-appointed independent external experts. This audit will focus on the pillar assessment, specifically examining control systems to prevent potential involvement of UNRWA staff in terrorist activities. 

AGPI also calls for the reinforcement of UNRWA's Department of Internal Investigations (DIOS), recognizing its pivotal role in this context. Additionally, a comprehensive review of all UNRWA staff is urged promptly to verify their non-participation in the attacks.

AGPI continues to call for the overall dismantling of UNRWA, replacing it with independent aid organizations that will work to absorb Palestinians refugees and provide appropriate education non-aligned with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.  

In response to these developments, AGPI has launched a new web portal titled "Eye on the UN," featuring reports and assessments related to the United Nations.

Beyond the European Union, 16 nations have also taken the commendable step of suspending UNRWA funding. These countries include Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Finland, Netherlands, Italy, Iceland, Japan, and Estonia.

AGPI is a prominent Canadian NGO that remains committed to promoting peace and justice, advocating for transparency, and supporting initiatives that uphold the principles of humanitarian aid and human rights.

For media, contact us at media@agpi.ca

December 1, 2023 in the National Post

The lies, denials and innuendos about Israel distributed by United Nations and its affiliated agencies have long been outrageous. But this week, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reached a new low that illustrates its veracious appetite to take advantage of the war by spreading lies to raise money.

Yesterday, I received an email from Marta Malaspina, a member of UNRWA’s so-called Digital Fundraising Team. I could not believe that she wrote that the “ongoing war in Gaza comes after 75 years of continuous displacement and dispossession.” Nice wordsmithing, if only it were honest.

In reaction, I sent her the following note: “Hi Marta, I am baffled how someone seemingly educated like you can spread lies to raise a few dollars. I just received your email saying that 'the ongoing war in Gaza comes after 75 years of continuous displacement and dispossession.' No, Ms. Malaspina, it comes after the Hamas attack of October 7th in which Palestinians murdered 1,200 Jews in cold blood. Why can’t you be honest?"

Obviously, I continued, “We will expose these lies and encourage our own government in Canada to stop funding UNRWA because it’s not truthful. Your note again proves it in writing. So, your fundraising email, because it shows the true colours of UNRWA, will bring about the defunding of UNRWA.”

This is already happening. This week, after spending nearly $1 billion on UNRWA over the last five years, Germany announced it is freezing all funding.

“UNRWA is not making a contribution to a peaceful solution,” Max Lucks of Germany's Greens said. “Not a single cent from Germany should reach teachers who glorify the terror of Hamas.”

Similarly, the European Union has moved to withhold 39 million euros (C$58 million) from Palestinian groups, including from UNRWA.  These NGOs are often accused of inciting hatred against Israel. The EU and other funders have demanded UNRWA and other agencies enforce contracts that require their schools and programs to be monitored. However, none of this has proven effective.

“The problem is that Israel actually needs UNRWA,” one highly-placed official in the organization told me in confidence WHEN WAS THIS?. UNRWA seems to believe serving Israel and the Palestinians themselves. They have our government convinced to the tune of $100 million in funding plus some additional emergency money.

I told the official that several years ago that my organization, the Abraham Global Peace Initiative, did try to reach out to UNRWA in the hope of finding a way to work together. But since that time, I expressed, “I can see now that UNRWA unfortunately, is holding the Palestinians themselves hostage.”

I explained to the UNRWA official that the organization itself, and its staff, unfortunately is spreading lies, and that this week’s fundraising letter is yet another example. UNRWA “is the only refugee organization in the world for one specific group (the Palestinians). Unlike other societies that promote co-existence and assimilation of refugees, UNRWA has not promoted integration into the societies in which Palestinians have moved." For some examples, see Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

That means, I explained to the official, that UNRWA is the problem to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Therefore, there needs to be a completely new system that is organized to aid the Palestinians and provide humanitarian relief, but with an objective of developing a sustainable society.

A new internationally funded entity needs to push for growing cooperation instead of isolation and absorption of refugees into their current places of residence. Holding Palestinians prisoners in this false narrative that one day they might “return” is counterproductive. It builds anger and frustration and limits the vision for a bright future.

Additionally, UNRWA schools have been teaching anti-Israel and antisemitic materials while turning a blind eye when their schools become rocket bunkers for Hamas. The result is a vicious society that committed heinous crimes against innocent Israelis on Oct. 7. We need to hold UNRWA and its funders accountable for the crimes committed against the innocent Jews and foreigners who were murdered and kidnapped on that day.

Malaspina and her fundraising team at UNRWA had the audacity of disregarding the barbarism that took place on that black day. She called for “solidarity” with the Palestinians but not with the Jewish women who were raped and the Jewish children who were mutilated by the very people her agency supports.

This level of denial and distortion needs to be called out. Given these blatant facts, UNRWA must be removed from Gaza alongside Hamas. A new non-permanent humanitarian relief program must be created to build a new society that can co-exist peacefully with Israel. Anything else will be detrimental to both Palestinians and Israelis living in the region.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-like-hamas-unrwa-must-be-removed-from-gaza

Oct 27, 2023

In 1996, Daniel Goldhagen published a seminal book that changed the Holocaust narrative. In “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” Goldhagen showed that the vast majority of the German public supported Hitler’s determined effort to commit genocide against the Jewish people because they were motivated by a unique and virulent form of “eliminationist antisemitism” that had been ingrained in German identity for centuries.

Antisemitism, in other words, empowered ordinary people to believe that Jews deserved to be eliminated from the face of the earth.

The view that 1,400 Israelis deserved to be murdered by Hamas is not dissimilar. Having been indoctrinated with large doses of antisemitism since childhood, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered Jewish men and women, babies and children, the infirm and the elderly. Their barbarism mirrored the heinous genocidal crimes committed by the Nazis.

Despite these crimes, the Jewish people have been re-victimized by those who have attempted to justify this mass murder. In ancient times, pogroms and crusades against Jews blamed the Jews themselves. After all, we were supposedly responsible for things like deicide, the black plague and a global conspiracy to control the world. We deserved all the pain and suffering that befell us. That’s antisemitism.

In light of this history, it was disturbing to hear United Nations Secretary General António Guterres tell the world in front of the Security Council this week that Jews were essentially responsible for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” he declared.

Caught red-handed, the following day, Guterres refused to apologize, instead saying, “I am shocked by misrepresentations by some of my statement yesterday in the Security Council — as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas.” Yet that is exactly what he appeared to be doing, given that, in the same breath, he said that, “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”

This is equivalent to telling the Rwandan Tutsis that they were responsible for their own murders. It’s like telling the girls that Boko Haram kidnapped and raped that it was their fault. It’s akin to telling Ukrainians that they invited the Russian slaughter.

Guterres is not antisemitic. He has denounced antisemitism vigorously in the past. Yet somehow, perhaps because of the prevailing bias against Israel at the UN, he adopted the rhetoric espoused by Hamas apologists, blaming Israel for the massacre inflicted on its citizens.

His comments seemed out of character to me, given his past support for the Jewish people, but it demonstrates how easy it is to succumb to the concerted PR campaign Hamas supporters launched even before the bodies of the dead Israelis had grown cold.

Guterres would have appeared like a statesman had he used the opportunity to scold the Palestinians for not accepting the UN’s 1947 partition plan and for consistently scuttling opportunities for peace. He could have held the Palestinians accountable for creating and supporting Hamas. He could have castigated them for decades of incessant terrorist attacks against Israelis and relentless incitement against Jews.

Guterres could have used the moment to critique the UN for maintaining the status quo by ensuring Palestinians remain as perpetual refugees. He could have criticized the antisemitic indoctrination of Palestinian students in UN-run schools.

After being blamed by the United Nations for the murder of innocents, Israel has rightly stopped issuing visas to UN officials and called for Guterres’s resignation. Like the instantaneous false blame Israel received over the bombing of the hospital in Gaza, it’s too late to walk this back. This kind of sentiment seeps into the public consciousness immediately and invites antisemitism and more incitement against Israel.

Words are weapons and they are used today, as they were used by the Nazis and those who came before them, to invite hate against the Jewish people. This must stop.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/antonio-guterres-blames-the-victims-of-hamass-massacre

The UN appears to insist on keeping Israel’s very existence in question and disrupting peace-building efforts by ensuring Palestinians remain as refugees

Published Feb 10, 2023  

The United Nations “special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories,” Francesca Albanese, told an English-language Middle East news site that the European Union erred by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

Apparently, she wants UN leaders to be able to scrutinize Israel without any guidance about when such criticism veers into hate. “No one should be above scrutiny,” she said. Good, because on the heels of my expose last week on how the West is aiding and abetting Palestinian terrorism, the UN should not be above scrutiny, either.

Despite the work being done to promote peaceful solutions in the Middle East through the Abraham Accords, the UN appears to insist on keeping Israel’s very existence in question and disrupting peace-building efforts by ensuring Palestinians remain as permanent refugees.

The UN’s planners must have been absent from school the day the teacher repeated the old adage that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Instead, the UN established the only permanent refugee organization in the world, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Millions of refugees poured out of Syria following President Bashar Assad’s gassing and murder of nearly 500,000 civilians, but no dedicated UN agency was founded for them. Instead, they were quickly assimilated into countries like Germany and Canada. There are no international campaigns or significant Syrian refugee movements on university campuses calling for their return, because most have acclimatized to their new homes — as refugees generally do.

A number of permanent exhibits line the wall near the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Of all the refugees past and present, the Palestinians are the only ones who have their own permanent exhibit, under the heading, “The Question of Palestine and the United Nations.”

The exhibit states, “The question of Palestine has been on the United Nations agenda since the organization’s earliest days.” The Arabs rejected the establishment of the Jewish state following the UN’s positive vote on the “partition plan,” which called for two states living side-by-side in peace.

In 1948, the Arab world went to war against the newly founded State of Israel. Many Arab-Palestinians either fought Israel or fled to neighbouring countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Syria), hoping to return when the Jews were pushed into the sea. That did not happen.

Instead of absorbing the refugees into their host countries, UNRWA deliberately kept them in so-called refugee camps. They were (and still are) used as pawns by both their host countries and the UN itself to leverage a “final status agreement” with Israel.

From a human rights point of view, that is completely unfair to the millions of children who have had their futures stolen from them by the UN. Their host countries continue to refuse to allow them citizenship or to integrate them into civil society.

For its part, instead of down-scaling operations, UNRWA has grown into a bureaucratic behemoth that employs 30,000 people and has an annual budget of around US$1.5 billion (C$2 billion). By keeping Palestinians trapped and needy as refugees, the agency reinforces their false hope that they may one day return to a country that never existed in the first place.

Everyone deserves to be free in their own land. But the truth should always be the truth. Before 1948, the area was ruled by the British for a short time and by the Ottomans for 400 years before that. There was never a state of Palestine. This generation of Palestinians wants to lay claim to Jerusalem, but the holy city was never Palestinian. Still, Israel has recognized the right to Palestinian self-determination since its inception — but despite the fact that Jews are indigenous to the land, Palestinians refuse to share, even at their own peril.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, countless peace overtures have been made. The Palestinian leadership rejected them all — carrying forward the false narrative that one day, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Now, it appears as though peace and a two-state solution are more elusive than ever. Both sides have entrenched their positions. More violence is inevitable. The way back to peace is for the UN and its agencies like UNRWA to stop deceiving the Palestinian people by suggesting that Israel is a temporary political entity. It’s not going anywhere.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-by-maintaining-palestinians-permanent-refugee-status-the-un-has-perpetuated-violence