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We must begin having citizenship granted to the so-called "Palestinian refugees" who have been living stateless in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan for decades, thereby ending their hereditary refugee status. These three countries are in desperate need of assistance and recognition from the United States and the West in general, and they must be prevailed upon to contribute their share by doing what every other country in the world has done over the years—grant citizenship to the Palestinian refugees who already live within their borders. Needless to say, this is a population that is culturally and religiously close to these states: a Muslim, Arabic-speaking population with almost identical cultural characteristics.
Background on the origins of the Palestinian refugee issue:
Since 2007, Gaza has effectively been a Palestinian state—an Islamist emirate—ruled by the Hamas terrorist organization, with a recognized international border with Israel as well as a border and border crossings with Egypt, which controlled Gaza until the Six-Day War in 1967. After Hamas's invasion and genocide on October 7, it became clear that this model of a ground incursion—slaughter, rape, and the murder of Israeli civilians by Islamist terrorists—could be replicated in many places in the West as well against the majority Christian population, using Islamist enclaves as safe havens for raiders.
In Gaza, as in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, Palestinians still defined as refugees are now in their fifth generation—77 years after the establishment of the State of Israel. The only Arab state that has partially naturalized Palestinians is Jordan. Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, holds Jordanian citizenship and owns a luxury home there, yet still calls himself a refugee from Safed, in northern Israel. Palestinians as a whole rely on U.N. and donor-country aid to preserve their refugee status, while Arab states and other actors who wish to perpetuate the conflict with Israel treat them as a political bargaining chip against the only Jewish state. It is worth noting that Arabs who remained in Israel when seven Arab states launched their attack at the very moment of its reestablishment in 1948 live today as full citizens in democratic Israel. Arab Israelis, who make up 21 percent of the population, enjoy equal rights and citizenship and experience a level of prosperity unmatched by Arabs elsewhere in the Middle East.
At the same time, when the State of Israel was founded, Jews were expelled from Arab countries where they had lived for hundreds of years, stripped of their citizenship and property, and subjected to pogroms. In effect, since Israel's establishment there was an exchange of populations: most Jews from Arab countries fled and came to help build the newly founded State of Israel, while many Arabs (not yet called "Palestinians" at the time) fleeing the war left for Arab countries.
The Real Refugees Are Actually the Jews
 From left to right: Anat Berko's great-great-grandfather Sala Al-Eini, great-grandmother Tova Al-Eini and grandfather Kaduri. Photo credit: Anat Berko |
Until 1948, about 900,000 Jews lived in Arab and Muslim countries—Morocco, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran and more. They suffered persecution, threats to their lives, antisemitic harassment, confiscation of property, laws restricting movement and speech, anti-Jewish legislation, and even the stripping of citizenship. Since Israel's founding, the Islamic world has effectively become Judenrein, and its ancient Jewish communities destroyed. These Jews were never recognized by the U.N. or anyone else as refugees. My family shed the mantle of refugeehood, built full lives in Israel, raised six children, and educated us to work hard and be productive citizens of the young state. Life was hard—many lived in tent camps under harsh conditions—but they kept their heads down, learned Hebrew, found work, and raised their children on the right path.
 Anat Berko's mother Claire (left). Anat Berko's mother with her brother Shlomo in front of their house in Al-Alawiya, Bahdad, Iraq 1940's (right) Photo credit: Anat Berko |
By contrast, Palestinian refugees are "eternal" refugees with a special privilege, passing their status on by inheritance. There has been no resettlement and no giving up the refugee label. This is the only refugee population for which the U.N. created a special agency—UNRWA—in 1949 as a "temporary" measure, which became permanent and a source of disincentive to resettle and shed their refugee status. Other refugees worldwide do not receive such privileges—they are handled by UNHCR, under a very narrow definition of refugee status that is not hereditary.
Only among Palestinians is refugeehood passed down from generation to generation, their numbers continuing to grow, even if they obtain citizenship elsewhere. This means that even an American citizen can be counted as a Palestinian refugee. A case in point: U.S. Muslim millionaire Mohamed Hadid, father of five—including famous fashion models—is classified under UNRWA as a Palestinian refugee. Hadid was born in Nazareth in November 1948, months after Israel's founding, during the War of Independence. His family moved to Lebanon, then to Syria, and finally settled in the U.S. This is an example of the absurdity in the definition of Palestinian refugeehood.
If we truly want to change the status quo, we must start with the total dismantling of UNRWA, which has become a platform for the death industry in the service of Hamas—a murderous terrorist group in the Muslim Brotherhood tradition. In some cases Hamas even infiltrated terrorists into UNRWA's workforce. UNRWA's schools have included antisemitic materials that poison young Palestinian minds, and its facilities are used for terrorism. President Trump understood this during his first term. Unfortunately, Israeli leadership was shortsighted, viewing UNRWA as a convenient arrangement that "took care of the Palestinians," without realizing that this had freed Palestinian terrorist groups to invest vast resources in their diversified terror industry since the founding of the PLO.
By way of reminder, here is just a partial list of the "contributions" Palestinian terrorism has made to the world: airline hijackings, suicide bombings, beheadings, raping, human trafficking and kidnappings, car-ramming attacks, stabbings, and the slaughter of civilians with knives, among others. The U.N. as a whole has not only lost its relevancy, but has become an organization that serves the interest of terrorist groups.—an issue that deserves its own separate discussion.
As Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism has pointed out numerous times, the U.N. has actually become an agent of terrorism. "The hideous role of UNRWA officials in carrying out rape, murder and kidnappings in the Hamas organized attacks on Israel on October 7 is unprecedented. But hopefully we might see a jury in the U.S. finally apportion long awaited blame on UNWRA and its U.S. based partner in crime, UNWRA USA. A new superseding lawsuit is about to be filed by Richard Heidemann and various co-counsel that spells out in horrific detail the atrocities carried out by UNWRA on October 7—atrocities made possible by the blood money of the U.N. and various charitable entities such as UNWRA USA."
President Trump, who does not shy away from his responsibilities or leadership, has proven himself able to act for the benefit of America and the entire free world. He demonstrated this by joining Israel's fight against Iran and leading U.S. strikes on the Shiite theocracy's nuclear facilities, which threaten the whole world.
Therefore, to reduce the existential conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to manageable proportions, we must remove the "zero-sum equation" in which Palestinians say they want their own state but also demand "return"—meaning settling their people inside Israel, a country smaller than New Jersey. In other words, Palestinians do not want a state next to Israel, but instead of Israel, aiming to eliminate the world's only Jewish, Hebrew-speaking state.
As I mentioned, breaking the so-called "eternal refugee" paradigm requires insisting that Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan grant citizenship to all Palestinians who have long been living within their borders. This will begin the process to end the cycle of eternal refugeehood and the demographic destruction that Palestinians teach their children to aspire to.
When Israel was founded, it absorbed Holocaust survivors—real refugees—from Europe and Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Now it is the turn of chaotic Arab states, which have bred death and terrorism within their borders, to naturalize their fellow Muslim, culturally similar Palestinians who live among them. This would be the first step toward a realistic, genuine solution to the Palestinian problem—not the synthetic, meaningless format promoted by weak European leaders intimidated by Islamist immigrants with voting rights who threaten Europe's democratic character.
By perpetuating the "right of return," Palestinians shift from the murderous barbarity seen in the October 7, 2023, genocide of Israelis, to a posture of eternal victimhood—perpetuating misery and refugeehood. Palestinians must also take their fate into their own hands. The terrorism they carry out is no different from that of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, or Tahrir al-Sham. One day the world will not be able to ignore it, because terrorism eats away at the living flesh everywhere, led by Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood and Shiite Iran. The Gulf states and Egypt have long understood this, outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood and banning Al Jazeera, the Qatari Islamist propaganda channel, from broadcasting on their soil.
The time has come for change, and President Trump—with his confident leadership and grip on reality—is the person who can make it happen.
Dr. Lt. Col. (Ret.) Anat Berko is a world-renowned expert on terrorism and policy maker. Berko is a former member of the Israeli Knesset and Lieutenant Colonel (ret.), Israel Defense Forces. She has lectured on counterterrorism for NATO and before the U.S. Congress, State Dept., FBI, and armed forces, as well as at many universities throughout the U.S. and abroad. A sought-after commentator, Anat appears frequently in the international media to provide professional insight about terrorist attacks throughout the world.
She is the author of two books, "The Path to Paradise," and "The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers" (Rowman & Littlefield), and numerous articles on terrorism and government policy in confronting terror.
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