Rendering Bin Laden’s Tape Useless
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Osama Bin Laden is rousing the Arab world over America’s support of Israel. Yasser Arafat is, at least temporarily, out. Prime Minister Sharon’s current position proves the merits of positive unilateral moves. After the elections, no matter which candidate wins, there will be renewed vigor in and focus on America’s foreign policy.
The stars are aligned to end one of the most insane policies of the last century that dooms millions of Arabs to an existence as permanent refugees – a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.
After 9/11, everyone highlighted the madrassas. America and others were rightly urged to lean on Saudi Arabia to end its financial backing for Wahabi religious schools known as terrorism’s farm teams. At the same time another terrorist hotbed, financed by the United Nations with millions of American dollars, is praised for its humanitarian efforts.
Camps across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza have kept millions of Arabs for the last 40 years in inhumane conditions. Mr. bin Laden, in his latest videotape, joined the tradition of his nemeses in Arab governments who cynically have used the misery in those camps as a rally cry.
Mr. Arafat’s career was built around the camps and disagreements over ending residents’ refugee status was his pretext for breaking the 2000 Camp David negotiations and launching a terrorist war instead.
In 1948, one such camp was set up by the Red Cross in the dusty southeastern Jordanian town of Zarqa to cater for 8,000 Arabs who fled the war across the border. It is one of 59 camps still operated in the region by a specialized U.N. agency that was set up soon after. Today, Zarqa is home to 18,000 people who, five generations later, are still registered as refugees.
In the late 1940s, an era of huge global population shifts, Arab governments convinced the U.N. that those who fled the war in mandatory Palestine (they were not called Palestinians yet) deserve different status than all other refugees. When the Relief and Works Agency for Palestine was created, in 1950, it registered 90,000 people as refugees. Half a century later, it cares for 4 million.
Hatred for Jews and their supporters is being nurtured and manipulated under the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s nose the way Islam is in the Madrassas. No Nobel Prize winners come out of camps like the one in Zarqa, but Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, so named after his hometown, is internationally famous nevertheless as America’s most wanted terrorist in Iraq. This is no longer Israel’s problem alone.
Last week, Mr. Sharon passed an extraordinary measure in the Knesset. Just as earlier this year he proved wrong the perceived wisdom that terrorism cannot be ended by force, he now tackled another cliche, which said Israel has to negotiate its every move.
With the backing of the Bush administration, Mr. Sharon showed that big steps taken unilaterally can change old equations and might set in motion a positive solution for both sides, as even his fiercest detractors in Europe and the U.N. admit now. His “separation plan,” however, did not address Unrwa’s camps. Israel has a love-hate relationship with the agency. In the 1970s, after taking charge of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel tried to resettle camp residents in permanent housing. The outcry at the U.N. was so loud that it gave up. Unable to care for the camp residents itself, Jerusalem resigned to grudgingly praising Unrwa’s humanitarian work.
It is a big mistake. The agency should fold its tents, and the next American president should move unilaterally towards a saner resettlement program.
America pays almost a third of Unrwa’s budget, which last year stood at over $438 million in pledged funds. America’s slice,$134 million, could be used to build permanent housing and for creating work and education programs. Most importantly, Washington should initiate a unilateral move (it will never fly in a U.N. vote) for ending the refugee status.
President Bush is famous for doing what is right regardless of international reaction. Senator Kerry’s top foreign policy advisor, Richard Holbrooke, had a reputation for arm-twisting tactics in his stint as U.N. ambassador. Both, arguably, have the right stuff.
Even if it entails some kicking and screaming at the U.N., closing Unrwa’s camps is a worthy battle in the war to render future Bin Laden tapes useless. Which presidential candidate is more likely to engage in such battle should be one consideration in tomorrow’s vote.
Mr. Avni covers the United Nations for The New York Sun.