Tens of Thousands of Palestinian-Americans Now Live in Gaza and Judea and Samaria

There has been a recent rise in the numbers of Palestinian-Americans now arriving to live in the West Bank and Gaza, a result of the new rules that allow them to fly directly into Israel’s Ben Gurion airport rather than having to land at the airport in Jordan and then make a time-consuming trek overland from Amman to the West Bank and Gaza. More on the Palestinian-Americans — about one in five — who are choosing to live in Gaza and the West Bank, can be found here: “12,000 Palestinian-Americans Entered Israel From West Bank in U.S. Visa Waiver Pilot Program,” by Yaniv Kubovich and Amir Tibon, Haaretz, August 21, 2023:

More than 12,000 Palestinians with American citizenship residing in the West Bank have entered Israel in the past few weeks, since Israel was forced to ease travel restrictions for them in order to be accepted into the United States visa waiver program.

The estimate was provided by Israeli defense sources who believe that the number of Palestinians in the West Bank with American citizenship is in the tens of thousands.

About this, Elder of Ziyon remarks:

The article goes on to say that there are also hundreds of American citizens living in Gaza.

This is far more US citizens living in the territories than I was aware of. With that number, it seems like many of them are living as regular Palestinian citizens with American passports, meaning that they receive the benefits of Palestinian citizenship – for example, medical benefits and public schools.

It is also a surprisingly high percentage of Palestinian Americans – perhaps as many as one in five Palestinian Americans live in the territories and not in the US.

We are endlessly told by Palestinian propagandists that because of the wicked Zionists, life is hell for the Palestinians. Yet here we have a mass migration — some “tens of thousands,” with 12,000 arriving in just the last few weeks — of Palestinian-Americans who have voted with their feet, choosing to live life as supposedly “oppressed” people in Judea and Samaria and Gaza rather than in the United States, surely one of the most desirable destinations for would-be immigrants all over the world. Could it be that life for Palestinians in the West Bank, and even, to a lesser extent, in Gaza, is not nearly as unpleasant as they want the world to think?

Elder of Ziyon adds:

But how many of them are considered “registered UNRWA refugees” and are receiving UNRWA benefits? How many live in UNRWA camps in the West Bank and Gaza? How many go to UNRWA schools and receive UNRWA medical benefits? How many are provided with housing in UNRWA camps, should they choose to accept it?…

Why would these Palestinian-Americans not try to obtain every benefit they can from UNRWA — free schooling for their children in UNRWA schools, free medical treatment from UNRWA doctors, free housing? Though UNRWA will no doubt take them on as “refugees,” in their case that designation is particularly maddening. At least others in the region, deemed to be deserving of “Palestinian refugee” status, are in fact stateless; all the Palestinian “refugees” in the Middle East, in Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, and Yemen, are prevented from becoming citizens of those countries. Other legal disabilities also apply. For example, in Lebanon the Palestinians are barred from employment in at least 39 professions, “including law, medicine, and engineering.” The reasoning is simple: the Arab states want to preserve the Palestinians’ claim to a “right of return,” and integrating them into their host countries, by giving them citizenship, or allowing them to practice any of the professions, is thought to weaken their claim to an eventual “right of return.”

But these Palestinian-Americans are not stateless; they are American citizens. There is a slight case to be made for UNRWA taking care of “stateless” Palestinians in Arab countries, even though the millions of people on UNRWA’s rolls are not the real refugees who left Palestine/Israel between late 1947 and 1949 but are “refugees by descent.” They are the only refugees in the world who are permitted by the UN to pass on their refugee status to their descendants as if it were an inheritable trait.There is no case to be made for Palestinian-Americans being treated as “stateless.” They are full citizens of the U.S. They hold American passports. Whenever they decide to retire, for example, they will receive social security benefits from the American government.

So here they are, tens of thousands of them now living in the West Bank, with several hundred in Gaza. By their choice of where to live they undermine the claim that the Israelis make Palestinian lives miserable — if they were so miserable, they would not have resettled in Judea and Samaria, but instead would have remained in Dearborn, Jersey City, Gallup, and Detroit.

And if UNRWA’s expansive definition of Palestinian refugees, which includes the millions of descendants of the first, and only legitimate, generation of refugees, that now numbers fewer than 25,000, is a bizarre scam tolerated, or even encouraged, by the “international community,” the Palestinian-American claim to UNRWA’s largesse may be considered a scam within that scam. They are not stateless or homeless; in no sense can these American citizens be considered “refugees.” But at least all those who left America to live in the West Bank (and to a much lesser extent, in Gaza) by their choice make clear that conditions for the Palestinians in those areas are not nearly as grim as the Palestinian propagandists would have us believe. In fact, for tens of thousands of Palestinian-Americans, moving to the West Bank is apparently preferable to remaining in America.