Real refugee problems

While I agree with most of what Zalman Shoval says in “If not for UNRWA, there would be no Palestinian refugee problem” (October 15), he makes one major mistake. When discussing the situation re: Jordan and the contention of Khalil Jahshan in his article in Foreign Policy that defunding UNRWA would destabilize Jordan, Shazar fails to point out that Jordan, alone among the Arab nations that received Palestinian refugees, actually gave them Jordanian citizenship.

Accordingly, they are not and never have been eligible for UNRWA support, since they ceased to be refugees when they accepted Jordanian citizenship. Therefore Jordan has been receiving UNRWA funding under false pretenses for all these years. The real question is why has not anyone bothered to defund Jordan long before now. The State of Jordan should be grateful that it has been getting these funds for many years illegally. Maybe they should be asked to pay them back. JACK COHEN Beersheba

The Jerusalem Post has on various occasions published articles saying that there were as many as 700,000 “original” Palestinian refugees. This unqualified statement needs much more analysis both as to its source and accuracy.

According to historical reports, there were roughly 600,000 Jews and 600,000 Arabs living in the Mandate just prior to the War of Independence. If 700,000 fled then one could not account for an Arab population of 1.8 million currently in the pre-67 cease-fire lines of Israel. My understanding is that 200,000 were displaced by war, 200,000 were told to leave by the surrounding Arab states and 200,000 remained.

Surely this should be a matter of recorded historical fact and research and not a canard given credence by Israeli newspapers? BEN FRIEDMAN Ra’anana