Israel just can’t do enough for UNRWA — and Hamas

Fresnozionism.org
21 June '10

Here’s another illustration that Israeli concessions are never, ever enough.

As a result of the Mavi Marmara incident, in which Israelis were forced to fight for their lives, Israel has agreed to loosen restrictions on materials being transferred to Gaza (I discussed the illogical aspect of this earlier). Now only weapons and “war-supporting material” are prohibited from passing through the crossings; dual-use items such as cement will be allowed in if they are used for Palestinian Authority approved projects under international supervision.

As Barry Rubin has pointed out, although this does not represent a big modification in behavior for Israel, the significance of the internationally mandated change is that Israel gives up

[t]he entire strategy of trying to reduce Gaza’s economy and the rewards that Hamas can give its supporters. In other words, while Hamas’ military capacity is kept as low as possible it can politically consolidate and stay in power for decades.

What this tells us is that the international establishment (the agreement was negotiated by Tony Blair) admits that Hamas is here to stay, not quite legitimate but still immune from Israeli pressure — even peaceful pressure.

But that’s not enough. Along comes Chris Gunness of UNRWA, the ‘temporary’ agency set up in 1949 to help refugees from the 1948 war (theoretically, Jews who were ethnically cleansed from East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria should be included) and which has worked tirelessly to encourage the growth of the ‘refugee’ population — along comes Gunness and tells us that he’s not satisfied:

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