Thomas R. Nides, the Deputy Secretary of State, took a position against the amendment, calling the number of refugees a “Final Status Issue” that can only be resolved when Israel and the PLO militias complete their negotiations, at some unknown date. Diplomats have developed a bad habit of insisting on a dysfunctional status quo tilted toward the Muslim side, until the messiah of final status finally comes. There can be no Jewish housing in Jerusalem, because it’s a final status issue, we can’t count the refugees because it’s a final status issue, and we can’t question the final status, because that too is a final status issue.
After twenty years of negotiations, that have led to nothing except a rump terrorist state that is one big Baqa’a inside Israel, it’s ridiculously clear that there will never be any final status negotiations, if only because the PLO militias don’t actually want the job of taking care of their own people. Even if they did, in less than a decade, the PLO thugs in suits, subsidized, armed and trained by the West, will be consumed by Hamas. And Hamas, despite whimsical statements from Peter Beinart to the contrary, has no intention of entering into final status negotiations.
Final status, for all intents and purposes, means forever. It’s an excuse for maintaining Baqa’a and the United Nations budget, and nothing else. But suppose that we might one day look forward to final status negotiations, there is no reason why an objective quality like, what makes one a refugee, cannot be addressed by the nation funding the refugees. Final status agreements cannot defer the dictionary or common sense. And unless we are expected to keep on funding Baqa’a on its 100 year anniversary or its 200 year anniversary, sooner or later the numbers have to be added up, and people whose only claim to the bottomless aid bucket is that their great-grandfather was on the losing side of a war of conquest, started by their side, will have to get a job.
According to Senator Leahy, raising such issues is not in America’s national interest, but apparently it is in America’s national interest to keep on funding the UNRWA, which employs terrorists and acts as a welfare state for some of the most Anti-American people in the world. But Palestiniasm as patriotism is not an original formulation. When times get tough and policies get senseless, backing the terrorist militias is described as a national interest for the United States. But is it really?
What conceivable national interest has there ever been in picking up Soviet leftovers like the PLO, and pouring billions of dollars into a sewer, which only spits up more terrorism, hate and chaos? When Senators and Deputy Secretaries talk about national interests, what they really mean is the interest of Muslim monarchies in the Gulf, who bring up Israel and the plight of its terrorists every time an American diplomat or general drops by Riyadh, Doha or Kuwait City.
The UNRWA, Baqa’a and the PLO aren’t an American interest– they’re a Muslim interest. What Leahy and Nider really mean is that it’s in America’s national interest to cater to Muslim interests. Nider comes closest to saying that, when he writes that cutting UNRWA aid would place a heavy burden on our allies in the region, who despite their billions in oil wealth and their passionate feelings on the subject, somehow can’t be bothered to cover the cost of feeding, teaching and caring for Baqa’a.
The King of Jordan found 1.5 billion dollars to build the Red Sea Astrarium, a local version of Disneyland, but the Hashemite monarchy, like the House of Saud, the Al-Thanis, the House of Sabah, and every other bunch of burnoosed tyrants with palaces and investments across the world, can’t be asked to care for their own people in their 50 year old refugee camps, who are kept that way because it’s an easy way to sock the gullible West for another few billion dollars to fund their terrorist training bases.
Even if there were a valid reason for the United States to champion Muslim interests by carving up Israel in order to create yet another Sunni Muslim state, it would not be a national interest, it would be appeasement. Palestine is as much in America’s national interest, as the Sudetenland was in Britain’s national interest. A foreign policy of feeding other people to the beast, in the hopes that he won’t feed on us, is not a national interest– it’s craven cowardice that has no hope of succeeding.