If the refugees have no opportunity or path towards citizenship, then they will be perpetually and forever a refugee. I don't think it's that scandalous of a policy for the UNWRA to adopt this policy of granting refugee to a refugee's child. Are they not still refugees?
In the US, we have Birthright Citizenship - any baby born in US territory is automatically a US citizen.
If Israel granted birthright citizenship to the children of state-less refugees, then organizations like UNWRA wouldn't have to designate them as refugees. Furthermore, if Israel saw to the humanitarian needs of all citizens on its lands, there would be no need for organizations like UNWRA. Problem solved.
The refugee status issue - yet again - seems largely a problem of Israel's own making by not accepting and granting citizenship to these people.
On the other hand, if Israel is not willing to extend citizenship rights to people on the land it controls, then perhaps an alternate solution would be to give Gaza and the West Bank back to Egypt and Jordan.
Many Israelis call for Egypt to take in Gaza refugees or to re-locate them to Egypt. There's an even easier solution: Just give Gaza back to Egypt if Israel has no desire to grant the people there Israeli citizenship. Let it be their problem. This seems to be a popular sentiment in Israel anyways.
It seems like for these refugees (especially the children), they didn't cross a border, but rather, a border crossed them. If Israel doesn't want to re-patriot people on the land it seizes or annexes as Israeli citizens, then why bother taking, capturing, seizing, annexing or holding the land?
It kind of seems to me (and many others) that Zionism wants to have its cake, but eat it to. It wants to hold onto these territories as its own and occupy them (and build settlements on them). But, it is not eager or willing to grant the people that were there when Israel took control the full rights of Israeli citizenship.
This is a large reason why a lot of people can't help but think of Israeli policies as being apartheid: discriminatory and racist - perhaps even fueled by supremacy. Israel appears to want the land for itself, and for Jewish people, but is not willing to grant citizenship or rights to those it refuses to grant citizenship to.
I still can't help but think that in some fundamental way, Israel's national identity is largely dependent on denying others theirs. If more non-Jewish Arabs were granted citizenship, then the national identity of Israel as a predominately 'Jewish' state would be threatened. I think this is what actually drives these policies - under the guise of 'security', and is a fundamental, inherent problem.
In other words, the goals of equality, coexistence and democracy seem fundamentally at odds with the mandate to preserve Israel as a predominately Jewish country.
Contrast that with other democracies that are defined by values and identities largely derived from identifying characteristics not dependent on religion. The racial, ethnic, and religious demographics of the US, Canada, and the UK have shifted greatly over time. This can certainly result in some hand-wringing and griping from those with racist tendencies who lament that the US or the UK is 'less white' than before, but on the whole, these countries haven't hobbled themselves by locking their modern 'national identities' to one specific religion or culture. Many Muslims reside in the UK now, but it is still the UK. Many Catholics of Mexican and South American heritage live in the US now, but it is still the US, united by an American identity of common democratic values - not 1 specific religion.
I do not see how the ideology of Zionism would be capable of this flexibility as it is pegged solely to 1 specific religion as an identity and definition of its sovereignty. This rigidity and inflexibility of tolerating diversity is what contributes to a lot of conflict I think. Sure, Arabs are welcome to coexist and participate in society - but only as long as they don't threaten the cultural supremacy of 1 dominant religion. They can hold 10 Knesset seats - but never 100. They can live and travel within Israel - as long as they aren't from Gaza. The discrimination is inherent in a theocratic state founded to uphold 1 and only 1 religious identity.
And of course yes, the same is true of rigid Islamic and Christian ideologies that call for the forming of countries defined solely on religion. This is one reason why Islamic theocracies are so intolerant and cruel towards those who threaten to 'dilute' the Islamic identity of their religious state.
And yes, I'm sure the defense of these policies is something along the lines of how how all of these people are terrorists or would engage in it - but that itself is a racist, discriminatory mindset used to justify collective punishment - something the Nazis did to the Jews by packing them into Ghettos and denying them the full rights of German citizenship.
It it ironic that the Israeli state is adopting the same attitudes and policies, while dismissing it all away as 'complex' or 'security'. It's things like this that cause people to draw parallels between oppressive, discriminatory regimes and the policies and actions of the state of Israel.
