photo #9431213

The Prison With High-End Shopping Malls, Restaurants and Hotels Chapter 4 of “Everything You Know About Gaza Is Wrong” The world loves to give money to Palestinians. In recent decades, Palestinians have received, by far, more aid per capita than any other territory. Between 2000 and 2017, Palestinians received approximately $2,650 in international aid for every man, woman and child. Lebanon, the second-largest recipient per capita, received about $900. Syria, which spent much of that period suffering a devastating civil war, received less than $700. In 2009, Palestinians received six times as much aid per person as the next-highest recipient. In 2012, the OECD reported $390 per Palestinian compared with $124 for second-place Liberia. Even in 2019, after the Trump administration had cut American funding to both the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, Palestinians still received nearly twice as much aid per capita as the next-largest recipient and four times as much as the third. The countries below Palestine on those lists included Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan and Afghanistan, countries suffering from far more severe poverty, hunger and insecurity. Yet the international community consistently prioritized Palestinians over populations whose humanitarian needs were far greater. When Benjamin Netanyahu told AIPAC in March 2020 that Palestinians were “the pampered children of the international community,” commentators condemned the remark as insulting. But as I pointed out at the time, the international aid numbers supported his description. The Gaza war only widened this disparity. According to ALNAP’s State of the Humanitarian System report, 2025 was the worst year on record for UN humanitarian appeals. Only 35 percent of requested funding was received, leaving a shortfall of $30.5 billion. Eighteen of the twenty largest recipient countries experienced funding declines. The two exceptions were Myanmar and, of course, Palestine. The Palestinian appeal received 66 percent of its $4.1 billion request. Sudan, where more than twenty-five million people faced acute hunger, received only 40 percent. The Democratic Republic of the Congo received 27 percent. Mozambique’s drought appeal received just $7.30 per targeted person against a requirement of $98. Palestine’s $2.7 billion represented several hundred dollars per targeted person. Even more remarkably, Palestine alone accounted for 19 percent of all country-allocated humanitarian funding worldwide in 2025, more than Syria, Ukraine or Sudan. It was the largest share received by any single country during the decade covered by the report. Palestine was also the best-funded humanitarian crisis in the world. This disparity was not accidental. The Palestinians have something no one else has: an entire United Nations refugee agency devoted exclusively to them. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is responsible for refugees throughout the world, except Palestinians covered by UNRWA. UNHCR’s mandate emphasizes finding durable solutions: repatriation when possible, integration into host countries or resettlement elsewhere. UNRWA, established in 1949 specifically for Palestinian refugees, has evolved into something quite different. In Gaza alone, it operated 183 schools educating approximately 300,000 children, twenty-two health centers, food distribution serving more than a million people and a workforce of roughly thirteen thousand, nearly all of them Gazans. It was Gaza’s largest employer after Hamas. The distinction goes beyond the services provided. UNRWA registers the descendants of Palestinian refugees, generation after generation, without any fixed endpoint. The approximately 750,000 Arabs who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war have become roughly six million registered Palestinian refugees, including about 1.6 million in Gaza. Almost none of them would be recognized as a refugee under the actual definition of refugee in the Refugee Convention. For example, since Gaza and the West Bank are considered “occupied Palestinian territory,” no one who lives there would be considered a refugee from Palestine. Palestinian refugee status has become something that can be inherited indefinitely, even by people born and raised in a territory governed by Palestinians. For reasons that are not clear, the world funds the housing, education and medical care for many of these “Palestine refugees,” services that are hardly automatic for any other group. And much of that UNRWA money comes from Western taxpayers. For decades, Arab governments provided substantial funding to the Palestinian national movement. Over the decades, their enthusiasm for funding Palestinians has almost disappeared. Arab budget support to the Palestinian Authority dropped from approximately $265 million in 2019 to less than $40 million in 2020, while Saudi Arabia’s contribution, previously around $200 million annually, fell to zero. Gulf governments had become increasingly frustrated with Palestinian leadership, particularly its rejection of peace initiatives and its denunciation of the Abraham Accords. The governments that had spent decades financing the Palestinian cause were becoming much less interested in writing further checks. Western governments, however, continued funding UNRWA and other Palestinian institutions. This occurs because of a very effective political and public relations campaign that positions Gazans as uniquely oppressed, while the hundreds of millions suffering elsewhere in the world take a back seat. The result was an extraordinary situation: the population receiving more international assistance per capita than virtually anyone else was simultaneously, and falsely, portrayed as among the world’s most severely deprived. Yes, many people in the UNRWA camps were poor and relied on UNRWA to provide basic services. But the real question is, why are there any “refugee” camps in Gaza or the West Bank to begin with? Why, after 78 years, are the “refugees” not living in regular housing with normal utilities and services? The contradiction became even more striking when one examines conditions in Gaza itself before the October 7 war. https://elderofziyon.substack.com/p/the-prison-w