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Tremors Continue to Reverberate following Ambassador Haley’s Refugee Comments

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley sent shock waves through the Palestinian world when she attacked the redline issue of the so-called “right of return” and the categorization of Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian narrative designates as refugees anyone who left or was driven from homes during the 1948 war and continues demographically to include limitless generations of descendants. The concept of applying an alternative system of designation and counting has been credited to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner whose criteria, if applied, would remove refugee designation from as many as 90 per cent of the some 5.3 million presently counted as part of the Palestinian population plus diaspora. Haley said that the U.S. could start funding UNRWA, the United Nations agency that provides services for Palestinian refugees, if there were changes made according to the new numerical methodology. Haley was quoted as saying that, “we will be a donor if UNRWA reforms what it does, if they actually change the number of refugees to an accurate account, we will look back at partnering them.”