But millions of Palestinian descendants still clamor for a right of return. If they cannot forget, Mr Netanyahu prefers that the world forget them.
As bloody wars grip the Middle East, the best way to achieve that aim is to submerge the Palestinians among the world's 65 million other refugees. Why worry about the Palestinian case when there are millions of Syrians newly displaced by war?
But UNRWA poses a challenge, because it is so deeply entrenched in the region and insists on a just solution for Palestinian refugees.
UNRWA's huge staff includes 32,000 Palestinian administrators, teachers and doctors, many living in camps in the West Bank -- Palestinian territory Mr Netanyahu and Mr Danon hunger for. The UN's presence there is an impediment to annexation.
On Monday Mr Netanyahu announced his determination to block Europe from funding Israeli human rights organizations, the main watchdogs in the West Bank and a key data source for UN agencies. He now refuses to meet any world leader who talks to these rights groups.
With Mr Trump in the White House, a crisis-plagued Europe ever-more toothless and the Arab world in disarray, Mr Netanyahu wants to seize this chance to clear the UN out of the way too.
Global institutions such as the UN and the international law it upholds were created after the Second World War to protect the weakest and prevent a recurrence of the Holocaust's horrors.
Today, Mr Netanyahu is prepared to risk it all, tearing down the post-war international order, if this act of colossal vandalism will finally rid him of the Palestinians.
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