"A carefully researched and thorough study that sheds valuable light on the internal operations of UNWRA as well as on its interaction over time with the host governments."—Ann M. Lesch, Villanova University
"Schiff's scholarship is sound. He has very effectively utilized the very rich lode of information from the archives and records of UNRWA."—Benjamin Rivlin, Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations, CUNY
"This is one of the most comprehensive surveys of U.N. activities on behalf of the Palestine Arab refugees, covering the period from I 950 to the early 1990s. . . . Schiff covers aspects of the refugee problem not generally published elsewhere with objectivity and informed insight."—Don Peretz, professor emeritus, SUNY Binghamton
Description
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was originally established in 1950 as a temporary, nonpolitical response to the Palestinian refugee crisis. The forty-four-year-old agency has become a fixture in the drama of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Designed to solve refugee problems through massive Jordan Valley water development
projects, today UNRWA runs schools, health clinics for millions, and relief programs for the poorest refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
As Benjamin Schiff shows, the agency is trapped in a political cauldron. Clients suspect it of being an agent of Western imperialism. Host states seek to control it. In the Israeli occupied territories it is squeezed between authorities striving to quell riotous refugees and Palestinians seeking shelter from the occupation’s brutalities. Pro-Palestinian critics charge that the agency helps lull refugees into quiescence, while pro-Israeli critics assail it for perpetuating refugee intransigence.
The fascinating evolution of this agency amidst the regional tumult is Schiff’s story in Refugees unto the Third Generation. His book reflects upon lessons applicable to many other international organizations caught up in similar circumstances, as well as on the role of the UN in such situations.
Table of Contents
1. The Agency and Its Environment
2. No Quick Fix, 1950-1957
3. A Decade of Routine, Two of Upheaval
4. Limits of Independence
5. Money Troubles
6. Residual Colonialism
7. Relations with Israel to 1988
8. Intifada
9. Lessons
10. Postscript: July 1994
Appendixes
A. UNRWA Organization, 1950
B. UNRW A Headquarters Organization, l 990
C. UNRWA Jordan Field Organization, 1990
D. UNRWA Directors and Commissioners-General and Their Deputies
E. Comay-Michelmore Agreement
F. Mukhtars' Petition from Gaza, January l 7, l 968
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Benjamin Schiff is professor of politics at Oberlin College and the author of International Nuclear Technology Transfer and A Desperate Society: The Afrikaners after Apartheid (with June Goodwin). He interviewed more than one hundred present and past agency officials worldwide, and was the first person to be given access to UNRWA's main archives at their headquarters in Vienna.
Related Interest
April 1995