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Voiding the Palestinians -- An Allegory
What is the significance of a single Palestinian teenage girl killed and raped by Zionists? The question can be answered by a similar question "what is the significance of a single Jewish girl (Anne Frank) killed by Nazis?"
An Allegory
Voiding the Palestinians
By M. SHAHID ALAM
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French."
Gandhi [1]
"Palestine will be as Jewish as England is English."
Chaim Weizman [2]
On October 29, 2003, a leading Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, reported a rape-murder that occurred more than fifty years ago at Nirim, an Israeli military outpost in the Negev. The victim was a Palestinian girl, in her early or mid-teens, or younger; the perpetrators of this crime were members of the Israeli Defense Force.[3] Six days later, The Guardian also reported this crime, but US papers did not think this was news that is fit for print.[4] In the United States, the media prefers to shield Israel from adverse notice.
What is the significance of a single rape-murder in the long and tortuous history of the dispossession of one people by another? No dispossession ever makes a pretty picture. Moreover, the dispossession of Palestinians is no ordinary dispossession. It is not ordinary because it involved the complete voiding of one people by another: Palestine had to be emptied of its ancient Palestinian population to make room for Jews. It is not ordinary because much of this emptying was telescoped within a few short months (in 1948) rather than over centuries or decades. It was not ordinary because the people doing the voiding had themselves been voided from their spaces in Europe, a people with brilliant accomplishments, voided from the spaces they had helped to enrich. It is not ordinary because the voiding, the violence it demanded, had been carefully planned, orchestrated, justified, explained, excused, and, after it's success, celebrated and glorified in Israeli and Western media.
What is the significance of a single rape-murder--I ask again--in the midst of the voiding of Palestine implemented through the deceit of declarations and the farce of international laws; through repeated wars and grinding repressions; through the backing of great powers and support of the world's organized Jewry; through ethnic cleansings, orchestrated massacres and obliterated villages; through bombings of cinder block apartments, hospitals, schools and workshops; through armed settlements built on hilltops; through house demolitions, curfews, sieges, trenches, and bypass roads dividing communities; through a million daily humiliations at a thousand checkpoints; and now through a gargantuan wall, coiling, advancing, ominous, that dreams of squeezing the last drop of blood from beleaguered Palestinian communities in the West Bank?
Perhaps this single rape-murder is significant. The voiding of a people necessarily involves suffering on a monumental scale. The Zionists built their Jewish state by destroying the lives of millions of Palestinians over three generations. The scale of this suffering has been documented in reports, in statistics of villages destroyed, houses demolished, and men, women and children evicted from their homes, robbed, incarcerated, bombed, shot at, tortured, killed. However, statistics do not tell stories; they will not grip the reader with the pain of the victims. As the Holocaust reveals its hellish intent in images and artifacts, so the narrative of Palestinian voiding must be conveyed in images, metaphors and allegories, each of which contains in miniature, in essence, the great pain that the Palestinians have endured for more than eighty years.
We must read the Ha'aretz disclosure of the rape-murder in the Negev as an allegory of the fate decreed by the god-like Zionists for an inferior Arab population. Read with understanding, the report reveals the darkness at the heart of the Zionist project, its racism, its moral obtuseness, its blindness to the irony of the grave injustice the Zionists intended to do to the Palestinians. The rape-murder of a nameless Palestinian girl--most likely a minor--by IDF soldiers graphically conveys the unequal contest between the Zionists and Palestinians, as the Zionists sought to void the Palestinians so that they could resurrect a Jewish state that had been dead for some eighteen hundred years.
The only written record of the rape-murder, before the Ha'aretz report, is to be found in the diary of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. He made a terse but telling entry about this episode. "It was decided and carried out: they washed her, cut her hair, raped her and killed her."[5] Ben-Gurion could be describing a military operation, efficiently completed, according to plan, without hesitation, and without any loss of time. His verbs are active verbs: they speak of strong men, determined men, confident of their power to decide, to execute, to wash, to cut, rape and kill. The decisiveness, the finality of their actions is awe-inspiring.
On the morning of August 12, 1949, the Platoon Commander at the Nirim outpost in the Negev, Second Lieutenant Moshe, organized a patrol with six soldiers. During their patrol, they shot and killed a Palestinian after he threw down his rifle and was running away. Later, they captured two unarmed Arab men with a girl. The men were driven away with shots fired over their heads, but the girl was taken back to the outpost at Nirim. The patrol had decided that she was "fuckable." On their way back to the outpost, the patrol shot and killed six camels, leaving them to rot.
At the outpost, while Moshe was away on another patrol, the Platoon Sergeant, Michael prepared the girl for rape. He removed her traditional garments, forced her to stand under a water pipe, and washed her with his own hands, while everyone watched. The washing done, he dressed her in a jersey and shorts, and took her back to a hut where he raped her. When the girl complained to Moshe about the rape, he ordered his men to wash her--again--"so that she would be clean for fucking." The soldiers cut the girl's hair, washed her head with kerosene, placed her under the water pipe, and sent her back to the hut in jersey and shorts. She was now clean.
Later the same day, the soldiers at the Nirim outpost gathered in a large tent for the festivities of Sabbath eve. The Platoon Commander, Moshe, inaugurated the Sabbath by blessing the wine, a soldier read from the Bible, after which there was singing, eating, drinking, jokes and fun. Before the party ended, Moshe asked his men to decide the Palestinian captive's fate with a vote. They had two options: the captive could work in the kitchen; or they could have her. The girl's fate was decided democratically. The soldiers chanted, "We want a fuck." Commander Moshe carried out the will of the majority. He and his sergeant went in first, leaving the girl unconscious.
The next morning, when the Palestinian girl protested, the Platoon Commander threatened to kill her. And, indeed, later, he ordered Sergeant Michael to execute the girl. They stripped her before execution; a soldier wanted his shorts back. The Sergeant, accompanied by a medic and two soldiers, took the girl out in the desert and shot her in the head as she ran. Overcome by pity, just in case she was alive and in pain, a soldier pumped a few more bullets into the girl's body. Washed clean, her hair cut, raped repeatedly, the Palestinian captive now lay dead in a shallow grave.
Second Lieutenant Moshe drove down to Be'er Sheva later that same evening to watch a movie. At the theatre, he met his Battalion Commander, Major Yehuda Drexler, who had ordered that the Palestinian captive be taken back to where she had been found. When the Major asked his subordinate if he had done so, Moshe replied: "They killed her, it was a shame to waste the gas." A Palestinian's life is not worth a gallon or half of gas.
When Captain Uri, the Company Commander, asked Second Lieutenant Moshe to explain what had happened to the Palestinian girl, this is what he wrote in his report:
"In my patrol on 12.8.49 I encountered Arabs in the territory under my command, one of them armed. I killed the armed Arab on the spot and took his weapon. I took the Arab female captive. On the first night the soldiers abused her and the next day I saw fit to remove her from the world (emphasis added)."
That was all. It was dismissive in its terseness, as if to say it would be a waste of our time discussing the rape-murder of a Palestinian. However, if you insist on a report, here it is: We found an Arab girl, raped her, and "I saw fit to remove her from the world."
It is that last phrase that is so haunting, imperial, Biblical, even divine. It sums up the ethos of a whole age, an imperial age that took pride in its superior race and its civilizing mission. An age in which various Europeans nations "saw fit" to conquer, colonize, enslave, exterminate, displace, 'liberate' or 'educate' the rest of humanity, anyone different from them in color or religion. No matter what injury the Europeans inflicted on the natives, it had to be good for them. Nothing but goodness could flow from such superior beings. Zionism and its fruit, Israel, are but late flowerings of that Imperial age.
At the trial for this rape-murder, which was held in secret the same year, Second Lieutenant Moshe denied raping the girl. "Morally speaking," he argued, "it was impossible to sleep with such a dirty girl." Most likely, he knew that this was an argument that would carry weight. It is a basic premise of the civilizing mission. "The native is always dirty, his clothes filthy, his manners crude." There is an added twist here. "It isn't raping an Arab girl that would have been immoral, but that she was dirty." The Court acquitted Moshe of rape, though he received a sentence of 15 years for murder.
Moshe offered a second defense. He told the Court repeatedly that Captain Uri, one of the Company Commanders in the battalion, had told him in private that when it came to the Arabs, he should engage in "killing, slaughter." The Court rejected this charge with its own psychoanalysis. The Judges wrote: "The court believes that the words "killing, slaughter" originate in a psychosis that seems to have taken root in the officer's blood, to the effect that Arabs were to be massacred indiscriminately." The Court chose not to cross-examine Captain Uri on this point.
Sergeant Michael pleaded that he was merely following orders when he executed the girl. The judges rejected his plea, but passed a "very light" sentence of five years in prison because of extenuating circumstances. "At the time there was a general feeling of contempt for the life of Arabs in general and infiltrators in particular, and sometimes wanton events occurred in this sphere. All this helped to create an atmosphere of 'anything goes.' We are convinced that this atmosphere existed at the Nirim outpost too (emphases added)." The judges at the Nuremberg trial too could have urged the same extenuating circumstance when passing sentences on Nazi criminals. After all, the Nazis too operated in a general climate of deep hatred against Jews, a hatred that had been bred for close to two thousand years. Thankfully, the judges at Nuremberg did not use this argument.
In addition, when Moshe accused Captain Uri of urging "killing, slaughter" against Arabs, the judges dismissed this is as the invention of a psychotic mind. Yet, in arguing for a reduced sentence, they use the argument that there existed at the time "a general feeling of contempt for the life of Arabs in general." Were the judges at the murder-rape trial of the Palestinian girl schizophrenic? Or, were they only protecting their own kind?
Those who are familiar with the tragedy of Palestinian dispossession will have read--as I have--in the events of August 12 and 13, 1949, at the Nirim military outpost in the Negev, an allegory of that dispossession. In two days, this nameless girl, a minor, was made to suffer the degradation, shame, abuse, rape and, eventually, death, which has been the fate--figuratively, and, in many cases, concretely--of the Palestinians and their homeland for more than eighty years. We observe several striking parallels between the two gory narratives. We see it in the girl's capture by a platoon of soldiers; in the Commander's decision to decide her fate by a vote; in the question about the girl's fate that is put to vote (use her as a slave worker or sex slave); in stripping the girl of her traditional garments, washing her, cutting her hair; raping her, the officers going in first; in the order for her execution when she protests; in the secret trial held; in the officer's language ("I saw fit "); in the acquittal from rape charges; in the light sentences; and in the judges' use of extenuating circumstances.
And now the parallels are being pushed towards a final convergence--in the final obliteration of the national existence of Palestinians--with the building of the strangulating wall; with levels of unemployment among Palestinians reaching 70 percent; with malnutrition among Palestinian children reaching famine levels; with the acceleration in the pace of ethnic cleansing; the unashamed American backing for the war-criminal, Ariel Sharon's extreme right-wing policies; and growing demands for a final round of ethnic cleansing to rid historical Palestine of all Palestinians. At least, that is the intent of the Neoconservatives, Christian Zionists and Israel's right-wing Likudniks. It is an intent that all right-thinking people--including right-thinking Americans and Israelis -- must oppose before the American-Israeli warmongers, with their fingers on nuclear buttons, push the world over the precipice.
Notes:
1. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Harijan, 74, November 20, 1938: 239-242.
2. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (Greenwood: 1921/1972).
3. Aviv Lavie and Moshe Gorali, "I saw fit to remove her from the world," Ha'aretz, October 29, 2003:
4. Chris McGreal, "Israel learns of a hidden shame in its early years," The Guardian, November 4, 2003:
5. Lavie and Gorali, "I saw fit to remove her from the world."
M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book: The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He may be reached at m.alam [at] neu.edu. Visit his webpage at http://msalam.net.
Voiding the Palestinians
By M. SHAHID ALAM
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French."
Gandhi [1]
"Palestine will be as Jewish as England is English."
Chaim Weizman [2]
On October 29, 2003, a leading Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, reported a rape-murder that occurred more than fifty years ago at Nirim, an Israeli military outpost in the Negev. The victim was a Palestinian girl, in her early or mid-teens, or younger; the perpetrators of this crime were members of the Israeli Defense Force.[3] Six days later, The Guardian also reported this crime, but US papers did not think this was news that is fit for print.[4] In the United States, the media prefers to shield Israel from adverse notice.
What is the significance of a single rape-murder in the long and tortuous history of the dispossession of one people by another? No dispossession ever makes a pretty picture. Moreover, the dispossession of Palestinians is no ordinary dispossession. It is not ordinary because it involved the complete voiding of one people by another: Palestine had to be emptied of its ancient Palestinian population to make room for Jews. It is not ordinary because much of this emptying was telescoped within a few short months (in 1948) rather than over centuries or decades. It was not ordinary because the people doing the voiding had themselves been voided from their spaces in Europe, a people with brilliant accomplishments, voided from the spaces they had helped to enrich. It is not ordinary because the voiding, the violence it demanded, had been carefully planned, orchestrated, justified, explained, excused, and, after it's success, celebrated and glorified in Israeli and Western media.
What is the significance of a single rape-murder--I ask again--in the midst of the voiding of Palestine implemented through the deceit of declarations and the farce of international laws; through repeated wars and grinding repressions; through the backing of great powers and support of the world's organized Jewry; through ethnic cleansings, orchestrated massacres and obliterated villages; through bombings of cinder block apartments, hospitals, schools and workshops; through armed settlements built on hilltops; through house demolitions, curfews, sieges, trenches, and bypass roads dividing communities; through a million daily humiliations at a thousand checkpoints; and now through a gargantuan wall, coiling, advancing, ominous, that dreams of squeezing the last drop of blood from beleaguered Palestinian communities in the West Bank?
Perhaps this single rape-murder is significant. The voiding of a people necessarily involves suffering on a monumental scale. The Zionists built their Jewish state by destroying the lives of millions of Palestinians over three generations. The scale of this suffering has been documented in reports, in statistics of villages destroyed, houses demolished, and men, women and children evicted from their homes, robbed, incarcerated, bombed, shot at, tortured, killed. However, statistics do not tell stories; they will not grip the reader with the pain of the victims. As the Holocaust reveals its hellish intent in images and artifacts, so the narrative of Palestinian voiding must be conveyed in images, metaphors and allegories, each of which contains in miniature, in essence, the great pain that the Palestinians have endured for more than eighty years.
We must read the Ha'aretz disclosure of the rape-murder in the Negev as an allegory of the fate decreed by the god-like Zionists for an inferior Arab population. Read with understanding, the report reveals the darkness at the heart of the Zionist project, its racism, its moral obtuseness, its blindness to the irony of the grave injustice the Zionists intended to do to the Palestinians. The rape-murder of a nameless Palestinian girl--most likely a minor--by IDF soldiers graphically conveys the unequal contest between the Zionists and Palestinians, as the Zionists sought to void the Palestinians so that they could resurrect a Jewish state that had been dead for some eighteen hundred years.
The only written record of the rape-murder, before the Ha'aretz report, is to be found in the diary of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. He made a terse but telling entry about this episode. "It was decided and carried out: they washed her, cut her hair, raped her and killed her."[5] Ben-Gurion could be describing a military operation, efficiently completed, according to plan, without hesitation, and without any loss of time. His verbs are active verbs: they speak of strong men, determined men, confident of their power to decide, to execute, to wash, to cut, rape and kill. The decisiveness, the finality of their actions is awe-inspiring.
On the morning of August 12, 1949, the Platoon Commander at the Nirim outpost in the Negev, Second Lieutenant Moshe, organized a patrol with six soldiers. During their patrol, they shot and killed a Palestinian after he threw down his rifle and was running away. Later, they captured two unarmed Arab men with a girl. The men were driven away with shots fired over their heads, but the girl was taken back to the outpost at Nirim. The patrol had decided that she was "fuckable." On their way back to the outpost, the patrol shot and killed six camels, leaving them to rot.
At the outpost, while Moshe was away on another patrol, the Platoon Sergeant, Michael prepared the girl for rape. He removed her traditional garments, forced her to stand under a water pipe, and washed her with his own hands, while everyone watched. The washing done, he dressed her in a jersey and shorts, and took her back to a hut where he raped her. When the girl complained to Moshe about the rape, he ordered his men to wash her--again--"so that she would be clean for fucking." The soldiers cut the girl's hair, washed her head with kerosene, placed her under the water pipe, and sent her back to the hut in jersey and shorts. She was now clean.
Later the same day, the soldiers at the Nirim outpost gathered in a large tent for the festivities of Sabbath eve. The Platoon Commander, Moshe, inaugurated the Sabbath by blessing the wine, a soldier read from the Bible, after which there was singing, eating, drinking, jokes and fun. Before the party ended, Moshe asked his men to decide the Palestinian captive's fate with a vote. They had two options: the captive could work in the kitchen; or they could have her. The girl's fate was decided democratically. The soldiers chanted, "We want a fuck." Commander Moshe carried out the will of the majority. He and his sergeant went in first, leaving the girl unconscious.
The next morning, when the Palestinian girl protested, the Platoon Commander threatened to kill her. And, indeed, later, he ordered Sergeant Michael to execute the girl. They stripped her before execution; a soldier wanted his shorts back. The Sergeant, accompanied by a medic and two soldiers, took the girl out in the desert and shot her in the head as she ran. Overcome by pity, just in case she was alive and in pain, a soldier pumped a few more bullets into the girl's body. Washed clean, her hair cut, raped repeatedly, the Palestinian captive now lay dead in a shallow grave.
Second Lieutenant Moshe drove down to Be'er Sheva later that same evening to watch a movie. At the theatre, he met his Battalion Commander, Major Yehuda Drexler, who had ordered that the Palestinian captive be taken back to where she had been found. When the Major asked his subordinate if he had done so, Moshe replied: "They killed her, it was a shame to waste the gas." A Palestinian's life is not worth a gallon or half of gas.
When Captain Uri, the Company Commander, asked Second Lieutenant Moshe to explain what had happened to the Palestinian girl, this is what he wrote in his report:
"In my patrol on 12.8.49 I encountered Arabs in the territory under my command, one of them armed. I killed the armed Arab on the spot and took his weapon. I took the Arab female captive. On the first night the soldiers abused her and the next day I saw fit to remove her from the world (emphasis added)."
That was all. It was dismissive in its terseness, as if to say it would be a waste of our time discussing the rape-murder of a Palestinian. However, if you insist on a report, here it is: We found an Arab girl, raped her, and "I saw fit to remove her from the world."
It is that last phrase that is so haunting, imperial, Biblical, even divine. It sums up the ethos of a whole age, an imperial age that took pride in its superior race and its civilizing mission. An age in which various Europeans nations "saw fit" to conquer, colonize, enslave, exterminate, displace, 'liberate' or 'educate' the rest of humanity, anyone different from them in color or religion. No matter what injury the Europeans inflicted on the natives, it had to be good for them. Nothing but goodness could flow from such superior beings. Zionism and its fruit, Israel, are but late flowerings of that Imperial age.
At the trial for this rape-murder, which was held in secret the same year, Second Lieutenant Moshe denied raping the girl. "Morally speaking," he argued, "it was impossible to sleep with such a dirty girl." Most likely, he knew that this was an argument that would carry weight. It is a basic premise of the civilizing mission. "The native is always dirty, his clothes filthy, his manners crude." There is an added twist here. "It isn't raping an Arab girl that would have been immoral, but that she was dirty." The Court acquitted Moshe of rape, though he received a sentence of 15 years for murder.
Moshe offered a second defense. He told the Court repeatedly that Captain Uri, one of the Company Commanders in the battalion, had told him in private that when it came to the Arabs, he should engage in "killing, slaughter." The Court rejected this charge with its own psychoanalysis. The Judges wrote: "The court believes that the words "killing, slaughter" originate in a psychosis that seems to have taken root in the officer's blood, to the effect that Arabs were to be massacred indiscriminately." The Court chose not to cross-examine Captain Uri on this point.
Sergeant Michael pleaded that he was merely following orders when he executed the girl. The judges rejected his plea, but passed a "very light" sentence of five years in prison because of extenuating circumstances. "At the time there was a general feeling of contempt for the life of Arabs in general and infiltrators in particular, and sometimes wanton events occurred in this sphere. All this helped to create an atmosphere of 'anything goes.' We are convinced that this atmosphere existed at the Nirim outpost too (emphases added)." The judges at the Nuremberg trial too could have urged the same extenuating circumstance when passing sentences on Nazi criminals. After all, the Nazis too operated in a general climate of deep hatred against Jews, a hatred that had been bred for close to two thousand years. Thankfully, the judges at Nuremberg did not use this argument.
In addition, when Moshe accused Captain Uri of urging "killing, slaughter" against Arabs, the judges dismissed this is as the invention of a psychotic mind. Yet, in arguing for a reduced sentence, they use the argument that there existed at the time "a general feeling of contempt for the life of Arabs in general." Were the judges at the murder-rape trial of the Palestinian girl schizophrenic? Or, were they only protecting their own kind?
Those who are familiar with the tragedy of Palestinian dispossession will have read--as I have--in the events of August 12 and 13, 1949, at the Nirim military outpost in the Negev, an allegory of that dispossession. In two days, this nameless girl, a minor, was made to suffer the degradation, shame, abuse, rape and, eventually, death, which has been the fate--figuratively, and, in many cases, concretely--of the Palestinians and their homeland for more than eighty years. We observe several striking parallels between the two gory narratives. We see it in the girl's capture by a platoon of soldiers; in the Commander's decision to decide her fate by a vote; in the question about the girl's fate that is put to vote (use her as a slave worker or sex slave); in stripping the girl of her traditional garments, washing her, cutting her hair; raping her, the officers going in first; in the order for her execution when she protests; in the secret trial held; in the officer's language ("I saw fit "); in the acquittal from rape charges; in the light sentences; and in the judges' use of extenuating circumstances.
And now the parallels are being pushed towards a final convergence--in the final obliteration of the national existence of Palestinians--with the building of the strangulating wall; with levels of unemployment among Palestinians reaching 70 percent; with malnutrition among Palestinian children reaching famine levels; with the acceleration in the pace of ethnic cleansing; the unashamed American backing for the war-criminal, Ariel Sharon's extreme right-wing policies; and growing demands for a final round of ethnic cleansing to rid historical Palestine of all Palestinians. At least, that is the intent of the Neoconservatives, Christian Zionists and Israel's right-wing Likudniks. It is an intent that all right-thinking people--including right-thinking Americans and Israelis -- must oppose before the American-Israeli warmongers, with their fingers on nuclear buttons, push the world over the precipice.
Notes:
1. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Harijan, 74, November 20, 1938: 239-242.
2. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (Greenwood: 1921/1972).
3. Aviv Lavie and Moshe Gorali, "I saw fit to remove her from the world," Ha'aretz, October 29, 2003:
4. Chris McGreal, "Israel learns of a hidden shame in its early years," The Guardian, November 4, 2003:
5. Lavie and Gorali, "I saw fit to remove her from the world."
M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book: The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He may be reached at m.alam [at] neu.edu. Visit his webpage at http://msalam.net.
For more information:
http://www.counterpunch.org/alam11142003.html
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Mideast facts
There were more Jewish refugees then Arab refugees in 48.
Were these two refugee crises a simple 'exchange' of population and therefore 'equal'?
Without Equal.
The exchange of Arab and Jewish populations in and around Israel's War of Independence cannot be equated, as the circumstances perpetuating the refugee movements prove vastly different. The record shows the bulk of Palestinian refugees left their homes on their own accord and at the strong insistence of Arab leadership at the time. None were forcibly deprived of their wealth, and most expected to return to their homes after invading Arab armies crushed the nascent Jewish state.
In contrast, the Jewish residents of Arab countries were, almost without exception, forcefully expelled from their homelands and robbed of their wealth and livelihoods by government-planned, anti-Semitic campaigns meant to eliminate from their midst the "pariah" Jewish presence. Using tactics of terror, Arab/Islamic leaders effected a plan to expel their Jewish citizenry, indifferent that its execution would mean the death of thousands, gleeful of the untold wealth it would transfer into their coffers.
The Arab leaders never wanted peace. They used the refugee issue to encourage continuing belligerency. It became an excuse for not making peace - for not accepting the reality that the ancient land of Israel-Palestine could be populated by two peoples and divided into two nations. It should be recalled that between 1948 and 1967, Israel posed no barrier to the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. There was no Palestinian state because the Arab leaders did not want a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Their collective goal was the total destruction of the Jewish state. The Palestinian refugees would better serve that goal if they were kept in camps as a homeless people than if they were allowed to move out of the camps and establish their own state.
Among many who have made this observation is Col. Richard Henry Meinertzhagen, a British Middle East expert. He asked an Arab official at the home of a British diplomat, "Why do not you Arabs, with all your resources from oil, do something for those wretched refugees from Palestine?" The Lebanese replied, "Good God, do you really think we are going to destroy the finest propaganda we possess? It's a gold mine!" When Meinertzhagen observed that this view was unkind and immoral, the Lebanese replied, "They are just human rubbish, but a political gold mine!" In slightly different language referring to the same attitude about the usefulness of Palestinian refugee camps, Meinertzhagen notes in his book, "I received identical views from other Arabs."
What happened during the war of 1948 that caused the Palestinian refugee problem? Did the Jews expel the Arabs?
The British had wrestled Palestine away from the Ottoman Turks in 1917, and they occupied Palestine until 1947, and shortly thereafter, the United Nations voted to divide western Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab areas. The Jews accepted this plan, and the Arabs rejected it. Not only did they reject the UN partition plan, but 7 Arab nations decided to attack the fledgeling Jewish microstate with public proclamations of Jewish extermination. It was surrounding these events that the Palestinian Arab refugee problem was born:
"According to official records of the League of Nations and Arab census figure 539,000 Arabs left Israel at the urging of 7 converging Arab armies so that they would not be in the way of their attack. They promised the fleeing Arabs they would return and move into the Jews' houses after the anticipated successful annihilation of the Jews.
"We know that 800,000 Jews were ejected from the Arab countries where they had lived for hundreds of years. This included successful people whose property and assets, including community assets were immediately confiscated. 800,000 penniless Jews from Arab countries fled to Israel.
"This was a virtual exchange of population. The Jewish refugees were immediately accepted by the new State of Israel. They were provided with shelter (albeit temporary tents) food and clothing.
"The Arab refugees who had migrated to various Arab nations were not similarly well received. They were regarded not as Arab brothers but as unwelcome migrants who were not to be trusted. Squalid refugee camps were set up as showpieces to induce the West's sympathy and kept that way. The UN through UNRWA (UN Relief Agency) provided assistance to the camps when the host country could not or would not. These camps became a training ground for terrorist youth to be targeted at Israel. The host country, like Syria, would provide training, weapons and explosives, but refused to absorb the Arab refugees as equal citizens. Keeping them in misery made them valuable and irreplaceable as angry front line terrorists attacking Israel as proxies for the Arab armies who lost to the Jews on the field of battle in declared wars. The Twin Pillars supporting Arab Muslim society are "Pride and Shame". Losing to the Jews on the battlefield time and again in 6 wars shattered the self perception of the Macho Man.
THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE:
"Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.
"We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East."
- David Ben-Gurion, in Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on May 14, 1948, moments before the 6 surrounding Arab armies, trained and armed by the British, invaded the day-old Jewish microstate, with the stated goal of extermination.
On March 1 1944, the Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin Al Husseini who was in Cahoots with Hitler. Husseini said in a broadcast from Berlin: "Arabs Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor."
After the 5 Arab Armies attacked Israel in 48, the Arab League Secretary General, Azzam Pasha said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the massacres of the Crusades". Hajj Amin Al Husseini stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!" The armies of lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded the tiny new country with the declared intent of destroying it.
"The 15th May, 1948, arrived ... On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead."
– The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, Oct. 12, 1963.
"For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy."
– The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun, April 9, 1953.
"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones.
The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable".
- by Abu Mazen, from the article titled: "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do", published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976.
"The first group of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle."
- Ash Shalab (Jaffa newspaper), January 30, 1948
"The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."
- London Times, May 5, 1948
"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948
"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
- The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."
- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949
"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."
- Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183
"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city...By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.".
- Time, May 3, 1948, p. 25
The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea.
- Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31
I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem, [Daily Telegraph, September 6, 19481
- Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948
The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.
- Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949
We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah ("The Secret Behind the Disaster") by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952
The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.
- Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha's successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951
Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations.... It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands . . . and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise.
- Arab Higher Committee, in a memorandum to the Arab League, Cairo, 1952, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963
"The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."
- from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954
"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war."
- General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948
"The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews"
- Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953
"[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe. [However] ...A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military . . . left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. . . . Evacuation by sea goes on steadily. ...[Two days later, the Jews were] still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns... [as for the Arabs,] another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbor are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place an one of the boats leaving Haifa.""
- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz
"The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did."
- Jamal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, told to the United Nations Security Council, quoted in the UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23, 1948, p. 14
"the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision"
- The Arab National Committee of Haifa, told to the Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963
"...our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents ... Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families."
The Haifa Workers' Council bulletin, 28 April 1948
"...the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but the most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country."
The TIMES of London, reporting events of 22.4.48
" The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States' opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously, and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs.
...The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families."
- Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948
Khaled al-`Azm, who served as Prime Minister of Syria in 1948 and 1949, wrote in his memoirs (published in Beirut, 1973), that among the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948 was"the call by the Arab Governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and to leave for the bordering Arab countries. Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave...We were the ones who pleaded with them to leave (Part 1, pp. 386-387
"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of refugees... while it is we who made them to leave... We brought disaster upon... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave... We have rendered them dispossessed... We have accustomed them to begging... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children - all this in service of political purposes..."
- Khaled al Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war [note: same person as above]
According to a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled and "68%" left without seeing an Israeli soldier.
"As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property."
- bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957
One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC's threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go.
Commentary Magazine -- January 2000, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/0001/letters.html
How many Palestinian Arabs left their homes, how many are still listed as refugees now?
Estimates of the number of Arabs who fled the newly-created State of Israel in 1948 (i.e. from the area inside Israel's pre-1967 borders) vary from 430,000 to 957,000, depending on who you ask. The most reliable figure appears to be 539,000.
In the 1967 Six Day War, between 125,000 (Israeli estimate) and 250,000 (UNRWA estimate) Arabs fled from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which came under Israeli administration. Of these, say some researchers, close on two-thirds were first-time refugees, the others were refugees from 1948 who fled once again.
According to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), in 1996 the number of refugees stood at 3.3 million, located as follows:
Jordan: In 10 camps - 242,922. Not in camps - 1.1 million
West Bank: In 20 camps - 147,302. Not in camps - 385,136
Gaza: In five camps - 378,279. Not in camps - 338,651
Lebanon: In 12 camps - 182,731. Not in camps - 169,937
Syria: In 10 camps - 89,472. Not in camps - 257, 919
TOTAL: In 57 camps - 1.04 million. Not in camps - 2.26 million.
- Middle East Digest - October 1998
The refugee problem was created in 1947-48, when the Palestinians and their Arab allies rejected United Nations Resolution 181 and tried to prevent by force implementation of the partition plan that called for the creation of a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in Palestine. During the fighting, 600,000 to 700,000 Arabs fled or were driven out of areas that eventually became the state of Israel. (There were also about 17,000 Jewish refugees who fled or were driven out of areas that came under Arab, i.e., Jordanian, control.) Israel's record in this chain of developments was far from spotless. But the major reason for the displacement of people was the war itself, which the Arabs imposed on Israel in an attempt to abort its birth.
The Palestinian refugees were but one example among many of the large-scale involuntary population displacements that took place during and after the First World War. Most of the other refugee problems, involving tens of millions of Karelian Finns, Sudeten Germans, and Muslims and Hindus in the Indian subcontinent, faded away as displaced populations were absorbed in countries of similar religious and/or national character. The one glaring exception was the Palestinian refugees, who found shelter but few civic or political rights in neighbouring Arab countries (Jordan being the main exception).
The refugee status of the Palestinians was perpetuated by the host countries and the Palestinian leadership, and by the international community, through the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the only UN body dedicated to a specific refugee group (all other refugees in the world are the responsibility of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees). As a result, refugee status was passed down from father to son to grandson over 50 years, so that, today, they number three million to four million. That is why the Palestinians now account for about one-fourth of the world's refugees -- an impressive figure until one imagines how many refugees there would be if all the Finns and Germans and Indian Hindus and Muslims and European Jews who were made refugees after the Second World War (not to speak of the Greeks and Turks and Armenians who were made refugees during and after the First World War) were still considered refugees in the year 2000.
- Mark Heller, co-author of No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
With regard to the Palestinian refugees today, according to the "Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - 1 July 1997 - 30 June 1998" there were 3,521,130 refugees as of June 30, 1998 (Table 1). However, the report (available at http://www.unrwa.org) also states that:
UNRWA registration figures are based on information voluntarily supplied by refugees primarily for the purpose of obtaining access to Agency services, and hence cannot be considered statistically valid demographic data; the number of registered refugees present in the Agency's area of operations is almost certainly less that the population recorded.
Moreover, not only does the UN admit the figures are of doubtful accuracy, there being obvious reason for families to claim more members and thereby receive more aid, the UN also admits that the total includes 1,463,064 Jordanian citizens, who cannot by any stretch be considered refugees.
- Alexander Safian, PhD, CAMERA (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America)
Who qualifies for Palestinian refugee status?
Any Arab who entered Israel up to two years prior to the rebirth of the Jewish state could claim to be a Palestinian refugee, even if he and his ancestors had lived elsewhere for generations before and he owned no land or property in Palestine. [Editor's note: the UNRWA collected information from 'refugees' on an 'honor basis' without checking even the above absurdly minimal requirements]
- Middle East Digest - October 1998
Why are there still refugees from 1948, still living in refugee camps generations after the original displacement?
"The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."
- Ralph Galloway, former head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in Amman, Jordan, August 1958
"In general, one can say that Arab governments regarded the destruction of the State of Israel as a more pressing matter than the welfare of the Palestinian refugees. Palestinian bitterness and anger had to be kept alive. It was clear that this could best be done by ensuring that a great many Palestinians Arabs continued to live under sub-normal conditions, the victims of hunger and poverty. No Arab Government preached this as a defined policy; most Arab Governments tacitly put it into practice."
- Terrence Prittie and Bernard Dineen, in "The Double Exodus: A Study of Arab and Jewish Refugees in the Middle East"
The decision to sacrifice them [the Palestinian Arab refugees] to the cause of Israel's destruction was clearly enunciated in the aftermath of 1948-49 (keep them in camps so they can learn hate and seek revenge), and no action by Arab elites has shown evidence of a change of heart.
- David S. Landes & Richard A. Landes, The New Republic, September 8, 1997
The Palestinians are the only refugees who cannot and must not be absorbed elsewhere; their fate is to be played up as the mirror image of the Wandering Jew.
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"
In the 1967 Six Day War, under the threat of being "pushed into the sea" by Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Israel actually liberated the "occupied territory" of Jerusalem and granted free access to Jews, Christians and Moslems to worship at their respective holy sites. Israel also liberated the "West Bank" and Gaza. How easily recent history is forgotten. By comparison, Israel's administration, despite its faults, has been much more humane. The realities of the Jordanian and Egyptian occupation are conveyed in the following quote from HARSH REALITIES:
For 19 years, until 1967, Jordan occupied the renamed "West Bank" with its 20 UNWRA refugee camps.... And when western Palestinians rioted in December '55, April '57, April '63, Nov. '66 and April '67, King Hussein sent in tanks which shelled city streets and machine gunned people at random, killing hundreds of men, women and children.
The Gaza Strip, as it was known for the 19 years of harsh Egyptian occupation, had 8 UNWRA refugee camps in which the Palestinians were forced to live in overcrowded squalor. Egypt refused to absorb any refugees; kept them stateless, denied passports, and forbade them to travel or work in Egypt. [On the other hand, Palestinians were permitted to work in Israel after 1967.]
For 19 years of brutal occupation of their fellow Arabs, Jordan and Egypt kept these areas in a deliberate state of economic stagnation and severe unemployment. Average unemployment in the early Sixties ran between 35-45%, and refugee unemployment hit a high of 83%. Yet during this entire period, the world was silent. Only after Israel's seizure of these territories in a defensive war in 1967, did anyone discover the "legitimate rights and national aspirations" of the Palestinian Arabs.
From a humanitarian viewpoint, their situation improved immeasurably under Israeli administration. Unemployment hovers around a mere 1% (1989) and per capita gross income tripled in less than 20 years; infant mortality rates dropped from the pre-1967 140 per 1,000 to only 30 per 1,000 today - at a time when the rest of the Arab world is still at 80 per 1,000; 7 Arab colleges and universities were established under Israel "occupation," where none existed before 1967. Yet it is Israel that is now being attacked.
Had the Arab countries any true intentions of helping their beleaguered brethren from western Palestine, they would and could have absorbed them easily 4 decades ago, as the Israelites did of an even greater number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. The Palestinian Arabs share the same language, religion and culture, and for 70% of them, the same countries of origin just 3 generations before when their grandfathers emigrated for economic reasons to Palestine from surrounding Arab lands. But the 22 Arab countries, uninterested in aiding in Palestinian brothers, preferred to use them as a political weapon to wield against Israel, and the U.N. supported this heartless human manipulation.
In the mid-1970's Israel attempted to give the Palestinian Arab refugees in Gaza new and better housing. The U.N. General Assembly, at the urging of the Arab states, passed Resolution 32/90 condemning Israel for trying to relocate these refugees and demanded they be returned "to the camps in which they were removed." And yet, a senior U.N. official came to Gaza in January 1988 accompanied by 10 TV crews on a fact-finding visit and laid the entire blame for the situation at Israel's feet. As if the U.N.'s own complicity in the matter didn't exist!
When the six Arab nations invaded Israel at Israel's birth, many claim 600,000 Arabs were displaced in that war. What is not well known is that approximately 800,000 Jews, who were living in those six Arab nations, had to flee for their lives because of Arab hatred. The solution to this refugee problem was simple - a fair exchange.
Israel, at a terrible economic cost, absorbed the 800,000 Jewish refugees But the Arab nations refused to accept these Arab refugees - their Arab brethren. Rather, they placed them in refugee camps, which became dark holes of hate and misery, models for propaganda to turn world opinion against Israel. They succeeded. How well they succeeded....
Refugee Camps
When Israel inherited Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and Gaza in the 1967 War, Israel also inherited the Palestinian refugee camps that were administered by a United Nations agency. Israel wanted to negotiate both the refugee problem and a peace settlement, but the Arabs refused. One cannot help but agonize for the poor refugee pawns in this ploy. The deplorable condition of the Palestinian refugees is especially pitiful because the situation was designed and perpetuated by their own Arab brothers. No wonder the "intifada" erupted. Many claim the Arab nations refused to alleviate the refugee problem both in 1948 and in 1967.
The Palestinians who have taken to the streets, spoiling for trouble, are the new generation-spawned in the refugee camps. From earliest childhood, they have been taught hate.
Who is responsible for their condition, who should absorb them and compensate them?
"Statements have been made on the Arab refugee question, but why should the State of Israel be blamed for the existence of that problem? When seeking to determine responsibility for the existence of the problem of the Arab refugees, we cannot fail to mention the outside forces ... They pursue their own selfish interests ..., which have nothing in common either with the cause of peace and international security or with the interests of the Arab and Jewish peoples, and which only correspond to the aggressive designs of the leading circles of some states."
- Soviet delegation, UN Security Council on 4 March 1949
"Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner. They have not looked into the future. They have no plan or approach. They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, criminal."
- Jordan's King Hussein, Associated Press, Jan 1960
Many castigations of Israel for her alleged responsibility for the suffering of Arab refugees have been terribly one-sided and unfair. Why is so little attention paid to the fact that the original refugees in the situation were Jews fleeing the Nazi terror, people who were barred from other lands and then denied access to the one place that could give them hope? Why do we hear almost nothing of the oppression in Arab countries since 1948 of indigenous Jewish populations or of the thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab lands? Why is it hardly ever pointed out that the original and continuing cause of the Arab refugee problem and its recent aggravation has been Arab intransigence and hostility: the refusal to recognize Israel and the pledge to annihilate the Jews? There would be no refugee problem at all if the Arabs had not defied the United Nations' partition. The Arabs started the war in 1948 that forced the refugees to leave -- not to be banished from -- their homes. Israel tried to convince them to stay. Arab leaders frightened them into fleeing, with dire warnings that the Jews would persecute and destroy them.
We are frequently advised that Israel's recent military victory [the six-day war, 1967] is the reason for the increase in refugees, but we are seldom reminded that the latest Arab campaign to destroy Israel was the sole incitement for that victory. An Arab triumph would have left not Jewish refugees but Jewish corpses. Any help Israel now grants to Arab refugees -- and she is already giving succor and beginning to offer resettlement, despite unabated Arab belligerency -- is largely a matter of either prudence or charity. The moral debt is primarily that of the Arab powers, who have callously manipulated these uprooted people to the end of a devious program to exterminate Jews.
- by A. Roy and Alice Eckardt in "AGAIN, SILENCE IN THE CHURCHES", The Christian Century, August 2, 1967
The Arabs blame Israel for creating the Refugee problem while it was the Arabs who insisted to keep the camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, to use the Palestinians for political exploitation. In 1982: 65,425 Palestinian refu gees put in camps in Syria, 123,442 in Lebanon, 192,392 in Jordan, this was reported by UNRWA, while the Arabic propaganda lied and inflated the number to 4,000,000, and ALL who fled on their own will and without any force. Now, please compare with 850,000 Jews actually expelled from the Arab lands, forced to leave to Israel.
- Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector.
quoted at "Answering Islam"
One of the throw-away lines in Bat Yeor's book, "the Dhimmis" is the observation in passing that the Palestinians are the longest-lived group in history who have been considered "refugees" while living in the land of their countrymen.
Lets expand on that a bit. It is a topic I have written about before. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) was created in 1949. It exists solely for the purpose of "nurturing" Palestinian refugees, to the exclusion of all the other refugees in the world. 25% of its budget comes from American taxpayers (which includes me). There were 750,000 of these guys in 1949, and there are 3.3 MILLION of them now. And here's where it gets even weirder: 1.2 MILLION of the "refugees" LIVE IN YASSER ARAFAT'S PALESTINIAN AUTONOMY, mingled with their fellow Palestinians, where they actually CONSTITUTE HALF THE POPULATION!
Does that strike anyone else as strange? How can you have people living for 50 years among their brothers, 30 miles down the road from where they started, and still consider them refugees? Will it ever end? Can it ever end? Obviously not as long as the UN continues to pay them money.
And what about their Arab brothers? Ask an Arab to tell you about the five pillars of Islam, of which he is so proud, and he will tell you about "charity to your fellow Muslim". And yet the Arabs forbid the "refugees" from integrating into their host countries. That's because they consider them "a disgrace to Islam, who are responsible for the loss of holy Muslim land to the infidel Jews".
I guess this is just one more example of Shimon Peres' "New Middle East".
- Samuel Fistel
It is important to note that the world has seen hundreds of millions of refugees. It's a natural and expected end result of wars. All have resettled, begun new lives and made the best of their situation. Tens of millions of refugees were created in the aftermath of both World Wars. During the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War, 860,000 Jews living in Arab countries were thrown out on their ears! We don't hear about them anymore because they were absorbed by their fellow Jews within Israel. So while the Arabs throughout the Middle East cry crocodile tears for their poor suffering Palestinian brothers and sisters, none of these countries has opened their arms to them. The ones that were allowed in were placed into more refugee camps for the world to see. Ironically, the Arabs who remained in Israel and became citizens have fared far better than those in Arab countries! What makes the Palestinian Arabs stand out among the world's refugees is that they created their own pathetic situation or were misled by their leaders. That is their tough luck! What was offered to them in 1947 cannot be offered once again. The world has far more important things to concern itself with other than their constant belly-aching! As they say, "Get a Life, Already!"
The surrounding Arabs states called for the Arab population to leave Israel and fight in the 1948 war ( Arab secretary general said after the Arabs attacked Israel in 48. This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre"). Those that left were told that they could come back and take all the Jews possesions. Those that stayed were told they would be killed with the Jews. This is not to say that during the war, the Jewish forces did not expel any Arab groups, even villages, who were thought to be involved in the "war of extermination" of the Jews. Many Arabs resisted the call to kill Jews - they and their descendants make up 14% of Israel's population, as full citizens. So if there was an organized effort at "ethnic cleansing", as the antisemites allege, the Jews failed miserably. The "Palestinian refugees" of today are those who expected to return after the Arab victory to find Jewish corpses. The descendants of those Arabs are kept in refugee camps/villages by the United Nations and by other Arab governments as a propaganda tool and as a constant source of soldiers in their long war against Israel. Who should absorb these Arabs, as full citizens, compensate them for their losses, house them, feed them, teach them? Should it be Israel, the intended victim of the massacre? Or should it be their fellow Arabs who, because of their hatred and violence, caused this mess in the first place? Or should this just be a valuable lesson to the world that when you attempt the extermination of another group, be prepared to lose land and property, and expect never to get it back again. Only when such violence is rewarded, by the UN, Jimmy Carter, the USSR, is there a material incentive to try again.
- The Society for Rational Peace
Even if Israel is not the cause of the Arab refugee problem, didn't they do anything to compensate those people?
As a goodwill gesture during the Lausanne negotiations in 1949, Israel offered to take back 100,000 Palestinian refugees prior to any discussion of the refugee question. The Arab states, who had refused even to negotiate face-to-face with the Israelis, turned down the offer because it implicitly recognized Israel's existence.
Despite this, on humanitarian grounds Israel has since the 1950's allowed more than 50,000 refugees to return to Israel under a family reunification program, and between 1967 and 1993 allowed a further 75,000 to return to the West Bank or Gaza. Since the beginning of the Oslo process Israel has allowed another 90,000 Palestinians to gain residence in PA-controlled territory.
Arabs who lost property in Israel are eligible to file for compensation from Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property. As of the end of 1993, a total of 14,692 claims had been filed, claims were settled with respect to more than 200,000 dunums of land, more than 10,000,000 NIS (New Israeli Sheckels) had been paid in compensation, and more than 54,000 dunums of replacement land had been given in compensation. Israel has followed this generous policy despite the fact that not a single penny of compensation has ever been paid to any of the more than 500,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who were forced by the Arab governments to abandon their homes, businesses and savings.
- Alexander Safian,
What has been the longest refugee situation in recorded human history?
The Diaspora, the Jewish Exile, the Golah. 1,900 years - between 80 and 100 generations.
Another refugee situation also resulted from Israel's independence. It was larger in numbers and in property lost than the Palestinian Arabs, yet we never hear about it, why?
"This is hardly the place to describe how the Jews of the Arab States were driven out of the countries in which they lived for hundreds of years, then how they were shamefully deported to Israel after their property had been confiscated or taken over at the lowest possible price.
"It is plain that Israel will air this issue in the course of any serious negotiations that might be undertaken one day in regard to the rights on the Palestinians.
There were more Jewish refugees then Arab refugees in 48.
Were these two refugee crises a simple 'exchange' of population and therefore 'equal'?
Without Equal.
The exchange of Arab and Jewish populations in and around Israel's War of Independence cannot be equated, as the circumstances perpetuating the refugee movements prove vastly different. The record shows the bulk of Palestinian refugees left their homes on their own accord and at the strong insistence of Arab leadership at the time. None were forcibly deprived of their wealth, and most expected to return to their homes after invading Arab armies crushed the nascent Jewish state.
In contrast, the Jewish residents of Arab countries were, almost without exception, forcefully expelled from their homelands and robbed of their wealth and livelihoods by government-planned, anti-Semitic campaigns meant to eliminate from their midst the "pariah" Jewish presence. Using tactics of terror, Arab/Islamic leaders effected a plan to expel their Jewish citizenry, indifferent that its execution would mean the death of thousands, gleeful of the untold wealth it would transfer into their coffers.
The Arab leaders never wanted peace. They used the refugee issue to encourage continuing belligerency. It became an excuse for not making peace - for not accepting the reality that the ancient land of Israel-Palestine could be populated by two peoples and divided into two nations. It should be recalled that between 1948 and 1967, Israel posed no barrier to the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. There was no Palestinian state because the Arab leaders did not want a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Their collective goal was the total destruction of the Jewish state. The Palestinian refugees would better serve that goal if they were kept in camps as a homeless people than if they were allowed to move out of the camps and establish their own state.
Among many who have made this observation is Col. Richard Henry Meinertzhagen, a British Middle East expert. He asked an Arab official at the home of a British diplomat, "Why do not you Arabs, with all your resources from oil, do something for those wretched refugees from Palestine?" The Lebanese replied, "Good God, do you really think we are going to destroy the finest propaganda we possess? It's a gold mine!" When Meinertzhagen observed that this view was unkind and immoral, the Lebanese replied, "They are just human rubbish, but a political gold mine!" In slightly different language referring to the same attitude about the usefulness of Palestinian refugee camps, Meinertzhagen notes in his book, "I received identical views from other Arabs."
What happened during the war of 1948 that caused the Palestinian refugee problem? Did the Jews expel the Arabs?
The British had wrestled Palestine away from the Ottoman Turks in 1917, and they occupied Palestine until 1947, and shortly thereafter, the United Nations voted to divide western Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab areas. The Jews accepted this plan, and the Arabs rejected it. Not only did they reject the UN partition plan, but 7 Arab nations decided to attack the fledgeling Jewish microstate with public proclamations of Jewish extermination. It was surrounding these events that the Palestinian Arab refugee problem was born:
"According to official records of the League of Nations and Arab census figure 539,000 Arabs left Israel at the urging of 7 converging Arab armies so that they would not be in the way of their attack. They promised the fleeing Arabs they would return and move into the Jews' houses after the anticipated successful annihilation of the Jews.
"We know that 800,000 Jews were ejected from the Arab countries where they had lived for hundreds of years. This included successful people whose property and assets, including community assets were immediately confiscated. 800,000 penniless Jews from Arab countries fled to Israel.
"This was a virtual exchange of population. The Jewish refugees were immediately accepted by the new State of Israel. They were provided with shelter (albeit temporary tents) food and clothing.
"The Arab refugees who had migrated to various Arab nations were not similarly well received. They were regarded not as Arab brothers but as unwelcome migrants who were not to be trusted. Squalid refugee camps were set up as showpieces to induce the West's sympathy and kept that way. The UN through UNRWA (UN Relief Agency) provided assistance to the camps when the host country could not or would not. These camps became a training ground for terrorist youth to be targeted at Israel. The host country, like Syria, would provide training, weapons and explosives, but refused to absorb the Arab refugees as equal citizens. Keeping them in misery made them valuable and irreplaceable as angry front line terrorists attacking Israel as proxies for the Arab armies who lost to the Jews on the field of battle in declared wars. The Twin Pillars supporting Arab Muslim society are "Pride and Shame". Losing to the Jews on the battlefield time and again in 6 wars shattered the self perception of the Macho Man.
THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE:
"Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.
"We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East."
- David Ben-Gurion, in Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on May 14, 1948, moments before the 6 surrounding Arab armies, trained and armed by the British, invaded the day-old Jewish microstate, with the stated goal of extermination.
On March 1 1944, the Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin Al Husseini who was in Cahoots with Hitler. Husseini said in a broadcast from Berlin: "Arabs Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor."
After the 5 Arab Armies attacked Israel in 48, the Arab League Secretary General, Azzam Pasha said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the massacres of the Crusades". Hajj Amin Al Husseini stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!" The armies of lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded the tiny new country with the declared intent of destroying it.
"The 15th May, 1948, arrived ... On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead."
– The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, Oct. 12, 1963.
"For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy."
– The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun, April 9, 1953.
"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones.
The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable".
- by Abu Mazen, from the article titled: "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do", published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976.
"The first group of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle."
- Ash Shalab (Jaffa newspaper), January 30, 1948
"The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."
- London Times, May 5, 1948
"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948
"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
- The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."
- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949
"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."
- Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183
"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city...By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.".
- Time, May 3, 1948, p. 25
The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea.
- Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31
I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem, [Daily Telegraph, September 6, 19481
- Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948
The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.
- Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949
We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah ("The Secret Behind the Disaster") by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952
The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.
- Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha's successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951
Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations.... It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands . . . and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise.
- Arab Higher Committee, in a memorandum to the Arab League, Cairo, 1952, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963
"The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."
- from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954
"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war."
- General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948
"The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews"
- Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953
"[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe. [However] ...A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military . . . left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. . . . Evacuation by sea goes on steadily. ...[Two days later, the Jews were] still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns... [as for the Arabs,] another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbor are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place an one of the boats leaving Haifa.""
- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz
"The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did."
- Jamal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, told to the United Nations Security Council, quoted in the UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23, 1948, p. 14
"the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision"
- The Arab National Committee of Haifa, told to the Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963
"...our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents ... Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families."
The Haifa Workers' Council bulletin, 28 April 1948
"...the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but the most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country."
The TIMES of London, reporting events of 22.4.48
" The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States' opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously, and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs.
...The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families."
- Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948
Khaled al-`Azm, who served as Prime Minister of Syria in 1948 and 1949, wrote in his memoirs (published in Beirut, 1973), that among the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948 was"the call by the Arab Governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and to leave for the bordering Arab countries. Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave...We were the ones who pleaded with them to leave (Part 1, pp. 386-387
"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of refugees... while it is we who made them to leave... We brought disaster upon... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave... We have rendered them dispossessed... We have accustomed them to begging... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children - all this in service of political purposes..."
- Khaled al Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war [note: same person as above]
According to a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled and "68%" left without seeing an Israeli soldier.
"As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property."
- bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957
One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC's threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go.
Commentary Magazine -- January 2000, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/0001/letters.html
How many Palestinian Arabs left their homes, how many are still listed as refugees now?
Estimates of the number of Arabs who fled the newly-created State of Israel in 1948 (i.e. from the area inside Israel's pre-1967 borders) vary from 430,000 to 957,000, depending on who you ask. The most reliable figure appears to be 539,000.
In the 1967 Six Day War, between 125,000 (Israeli estimate) and 250,000 (UNRWA estimate) Arabs fled from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which came under Israeli administration. Of these, say some researchers, close on two-thirds were first-time refugees, the others were refugees from 1948 who fled once again.
According to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), in 1996 the number of refugees stood at 3.3 million, located as follows:
Jordan: In 10 camps - 242,922. Not in camps - 1.1 million
West Bank: In 20 camps - 147,302. Not in camps - 385,136
Gaza: In five camps - 378,279. Not in camps - 338,651
Lebanon: In 12 camps - 182,731. Not in camps - 169,937
Syria: In 10 camps - 89,472. Not in camps - 257, 919
TOTAL: In 57 camps - 1.04 million. Not in camps - 2.26 million.
- Middle East Digest - October 1998
The refugee problem was created in 1947-48, when the Palestinians and their Arab allies rejected United Nations Resolution 181 and tried to prevent by force implementation of the partition plan that called for the creation of a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in Palestine. During the fighting, 600,000 to 700,000 Arabs fled or were driven out of areas that eventually became the state of Israel. (There were also about 17,000 Jewish refugees who fled or were driven out of areas that came under Arab, i.e., Jordanian, control.) Israel's record in this chain of developments was far from spotless. But the major reason for the displacement of people was the war itself, which the Arabs imposed on Israel in an attempt to abort its birth.
The Palestinian refugees were but one example among many of the large-scale involuntary population displacements that took place during and after the First World War. Most of the other refugee problems, involving tens of millions of Karelian Finns, Sudeten Germans, and Muslims and Hindus in the Indian subcontinent, faded away as displaced populations were absorbed in countries of similar religious and/or national character. The one glaring exception was the Palestinian refugees, who found shelter but few civic or political rights in neighbouring Arab countries (Jordan being the main exception).
The refugee status of the Palestinians was perpetuated by the host countries and the Palestinian leadership, and by the international community, through the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the only UN body dedicated to a specific refugee group (all other refugees in the world are the responsibility of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees). As a result, refugee status was passed down from father to son to grandson over 50 years, so that, today, they number three million to four million. That is why the Palestinians now account for about one-fourth of the world's refugees -- an impressive figure until one imagines how many refugees there would be if all the Finns and Germans and Indian Hindus and Muslims and European Jews who were made refugees after the Second World War (not to speak of the Greeks and Turks and Armenians who were made refugees during and after the First World War) were still considered refugees in the year 2000.
- Mark Heller, co-author of No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
With regard to the Palestinian refugees today, according to the "Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - 1 July 1997 - 30 June 1998" there were 3,521,130 refugees as of June 30, 1998 (Table 1). However, the report (available at http://www.unrwa.org) also states that:
UNRWA registration figures are based on information voluntarily supplied by refugees primarily for the purpose of obtaining access to Agency services, and hence cannot be considered statistically valid demographic data; the number of registered refugees present in the Agency's area of operations is almost certainly less that the population recorded.
Moreover, not only does the UN admit the figures are of doubtful accuracy, there being obvious reason for families to claim more members and thereby receive more aid, the UN also admits that the total includes 1,463,064 Jordanian citizens, who cannot by any stretch be considered refugees.
- Alexander Safian, PhD, CAMERA (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America)
Who qualifies for Palestinian refugee status?
Any Arab who entered Israel up to two years prior to the rebirth of the Jewish state could claim to be a Palestinian refugee, even if he and his ancestors had lived elsewhere for generations before and he owned no land or property in Palestine. [Editor's note: the UNRWA collected information from 'refugees' on an 'honor basis' without checking even the above absurdly minimal requirements]
- Middle East Digest - October 1998
Why are there still refugees from 1948, still living in refugee camps generations after the original displacement?
"The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."
- Ralph Galloway, former head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in Amman, Jordan, August 1958
"In general, one can say that Arab governments regarded the destruction of the State of Israel as a more pressing matter than the welfare of the Palestinian refugees. Palestinian bitterness and anger had to be kept alive. It was clear that this could best be done by ensuring that a great many Palestinians Arabs continued to live under sub-normal conditions, the victims of hunger and poverty. No Arab Government preached this as a defined policy; most Arab Governments tacitly put it into practice."
- Terrence Prittie and Bernard Dineen, in "The Double Exodus: A Study of Arab and Jewish Refugees in the Middle East"
The decision to sacrifice them [the Palestinian Arab refugees] to the cause of Israel's destruction was clearly enunciated in the aftermath of 1948-49 (keep them in camps so they can learn hate and seek revenge), and no action by Arab elites has shown evidence of a change of heart.
- David S. Landes & Richard A. Landes, The New Republic, September 8, 1997
The Palestinians are the only refugees who cannot and must not be absorbed elsewhere; their fate is to be played up as the mirror image of the Wandering Jew.
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"
In the 1967 Six Day War, under the threat of being "pushed into the sea" by Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Israel actually liberated the "occupied territory" of Jerusalem and granted free access to Jews, Christians and Moslems to worship at their respective holy sites. Israel also liberated the "West Bank" and Gaza. How easily recent history is forgotten. By comparison, Israel's administration, despite its faults, has been much more humane. The realities of the Jordanian and Egyptian occupation are conveyed in the following quote from HARSH REALITIES:
For 19 years, until 1967, Jordan occupied the renamed "West Bank" with its 20 UNWRA refugee camps.... And when western Palestinians rioted in December '55, April '57, April '63, Nov. '66 and April '67, King Hussein sent in tanks which shelled city streets and machine gunned people at random, killing hundreds of men, women and children.
The Gaza Strip, as it was known for the 19 years of harsh Egyptian occupation, had 8 UNWRA refugee camps in which the Palestinians were forced to live in overcrowded squalor. Egypt refused to absorb any refugees; kept them stateless, denied passports, and forbade them to travel or work in Egypt. [On the other hand, Palestinians were permitted to work in Israel after 1967.]
For 19 years of brutal occupation of their fellow Arabs, Jordan and Egypt kept these areas in a deliberate state of economic stagnation and severe unemployment. Average unemployment in the early Sixties ran between 35-45%, and refugee unemployment hit a high of 83%. Yet during this entire period, the world was silent. Only after Israel's seizure of these territories in a defensive war in 1967, did anyone discover the "legitimate rights and national aspirations" of the Palestinian Arabs.
From a humanitarian viewpoint, their situation improved immeasurably under Israeli administration. Unemployment hovers around a mere 1% (1989) and per capita gross income tripled in less than 20 years; infant mortality rates dropped from the pre-1967 140 per 1,000 to only 30 per 1,000 today - at a time when the rest of the Arab world is still at 80 per 1,000; 7 Arab colleges and universities were established under Israel "occupation," where none existed before 1967. Yet it is Israel that is now being attacked.
Had the Arab countries any true intentions of helping their beleaguered brethren from western Palestine, they would and could have absorbed them easily 4 decades ago, as the Israelites did of an even greater number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. The Palestinian Arabs share the same language, religion and culture, and for 70% of them, the same countries of origin just 3 generations before when their grandfathers emigrated for economic reasons to Palestine from surrounding Arab lands. But the 22 Arab countries, uninterested in aiding in Palestinian brothers, preferred to use them as a political weapon to wield against Israel, and the U.N. supported this heartless human manipulation.
In the mid-1970's Israel attempted to give the Palestinian Arab refugees in Gaza new and better housing. The U.N. General Assembly, at the urging of the Arab states, passed Resolution 32/90 condemning Israel for trying to relocate these refugees and demanded they be returned "to the camps in which they were removed." And yet, a senior U.N. official came to Gaza in January 1988 accompanied by 10 TV crews on a fact-finding visit and laid the entire blame for the situation at Israel's feet. As if the U.N.'s own complicity in the matter didn't exist!
When the six Arab nations invaded Israel at Israel's birth, many claim 600,000 Arabs were displaced in that war. What is not well known is that approximately 800,000 Jews, who were living in those six Arab nations, had to flee for their lives because of Arab hatred. The solution to this refugee problem was simple - a fair exchange.
Israel, at a terrible economic cost, absorbed the 800,000 Jewish refugees But the Arab nations refused to accept these Arab refugees - their Arab brethren. Rather, they placed them in refugee camps, which became dark holes of hate and misery, models for propaganda to turn world opinion against Israel. They succeeded. How well they succeeded....
Refugee Camps
When Israel inherited Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and Gaza in the 1967 War, Israel also inherited the Palestinian refugee camps that were administered by a United Nations agency. Israel wanted to negotiate both the refugee problem and a peace settlement, but the Arabs refused. One cannot help but agonize for the poor refugee pawns in this ploy. The deplorable condition of the Palestinian refugees is especially pitiful because the situation was designed and perpetuated by their own Arab brothers. No wonder the "intifada" erupted. Many claim the Arab nations refused to alleviate the refugee problem both in 1948 and in 1967.
The Palestinians who have taken to the streets, spoiling for trouble, are the new generation-spawned in the refugee camps. From earliest childhood, they have been taught hate.
Who is responsible for their condition, who should absorb them and compensate them?
"Statements have been made on the Arab refugee question, but why should the State of Israel be blamed for the existence of that problem? When seeking to determine responsibility for the existence of the problem of the Arab refugees, we cannot fail to mention the outside forces ... They pursue their own selfish interests ..., which have nothing in common either with the cause of peace and international security or with the interests of the Arab and Jewish peoples, and which only correspond to the aggressive designs of the leading circles of some states."
- Soviet delegation, UN Security Council on 4 March 1949
"Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner. They have not looked into the future. They have no plan or approach. They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, criminal."
- Jordan's King Hussein, Associated Press, Jan 1960
Many castigations of Israel for her alleged responsibility for the suffering of Arab refugees have been terribly one-sided and unfair. Why is so little attention paid to the fact that the original refugees in the situation were Jews fleeing the Nazi terror, people who were barred from other lands and then denied access to the one place that could give them hope? Why do we hear almost nothing of the oppression in Arab countries since 1948 of indigenous Jewish populations or of the thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab lands? Why is it hardly ever pointed out that the original and continuing cause of the Arab refugee problem and its recent aggravation has been Arab intransigence and hostility: the refusal to recognize Israel and the pledge to annihilate the Jews? There would be no refugee problem at all if the Arabs had not defied the United Nations' partition. The Arabs started the war in 1948 that forced the refugees to leave -- not to be banished from -- their homes. Israel tried to convince them to stay. Arab leaders frightened them into fleeing, with dire warnings that the Jews would persecute and destroy them.
We are frequently advised that Israel's recent military victory [the six-day war, 1967] is the reason for the increase in refugees, but we are seldom reminded that the latest Arab campaign to destroy Israel was the sole incitement for that victory. An Arab triumph would have left not Jewish refugees but Jewish corpses. Any help Israel now grants to Arab refugees -- and she is already giving succor and beginning to offer resettlement, despite unabated Arab belligerency -- is largely a matter of either prudence or charity. The moral debt is primarily that of the Arab powers, who have callously manipulated these uprooted people to the end of a devious program to exterminate Jews.
- by A. Roy and Alice Eckardt in "AGAIN, SILENCE IN THE CHURCHES", The Christian Century, August 2, 1967
The Arabs blame Israel for creating the Refugee problem while it was the Arabs who insisted to keep the camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, to use the Palestinians for political exploitation. In 1982: 65,425 Palestinian refu gees put in camps in Syria, 123,442 in Lebanon, 192,392 in Jordan, this was reported by UNRWA, while the Arabic propaganda lied and inflated the number to 4,000,000, and ALL who fled on their own will and without any force. Now, please compare with 850,000 Jews actually expelled from the Arab lands, forced to leave to Israel.
- Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector.
quoted at "Answering Islam"
One of the throw-away lines in Bat Yeor's book, "the Dhimmis" is the observation in passing that the Palestinians are the longest-lived group in history who have been considered "refugees" while living in the land of their countrymen.
Lets expand on that a bit. It is a topic I have written about before. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) was created in 1949. It exists solely for the purpose of "nurturing" Palestinian refugees, to the exclusion of all the other refugees in the world. 25% of its budget comes from American taxpayers (which includes me). There were 750,000 of these guys in 1949, and there are 3.3 MILLION of them now. And here's where it gets even weirder: 1.2 MILLION of the "refugees" LIVE IN YASSER ARAFAT'S PALESTINIAN AUTONOMY, mingled with their fellow Palestinians, where they actually CONSTITUTE HALF THE POPULATION!
Does that strike anyone else as strange? How can you have people living for 50 years among their brothers, 30 miles down the road from where they started, and still consider them refugees? Will it ever end? Can it ever end? Obviously not as long as the UN continues to pay them money.
And what about their Arab brothers? Ask an Arab to tell you about the five pillars of Islam, of which he is so proud, and he will tell you about "charity to your fellow Muslim". And yet the Arabs forbid the "refugees" from integrating into their host countries. That's because they consider them "a disgrace to Islam, who are responsible for the loss of holy Muslim land to the infidel Jews".
I guess this is just one more example of Shimon Peres' "New Middle East".
- Samuel Fistel
It is important to note that the world has seen hundreds of millions of refugees. It's a natural and expected end result of wars. All have resettled, begun new lives and made the best of their situation. Tens of millions of refugees were created in the aftermath of both World Wars. During the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War, 860,000 Jews living in Arab countries were thrown out on their ears! We don't hear about them anymore because they were absorbed by their fellow Jews within Israel. So while the Arabs throughout the Middle East cry crocodile tears for their poor suffering Palestinian brothers and sisters, none of these countries has opened their arms to them. The ones that were allowed in were placed into more refugee camps for the world to see. Ironically, the Arabs who remained in Israel and became citizens have fared far better than those in Arab countries! What makes the Palestinian Arabs stand out among the world's refugees is that they created their own pathetic situation or were misled by their leaders. That is their tough luck! What was offered to them in 1947 cannot be offered once again. The world has far more important things to concern itself with other than their constant belly-aching! As they say, "Get a Life, Already!"
The surrounding Arabs states called for the Arab population to leave Israel and fight in the 1948 war ( Arab secretary general said after the Arabs attacked Israel in 48. This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre"). Those that left were told that they could come back and take all the Jews possesions. Those that stayed were told they would be killed with the Jews. This is not to say that during the war, the Jewish forces did not expel any Arab groups, even villages, who were thought to be involved in the "war of extermination" of the Jews. Many Arabs resisted the call to kill Jews - they and their descendants make up 14% of Israel's population, as full citizens. So if there was an organized effort at "ethnic cleansing", as the antisemites allege, the Jews failed miserably. The "Palestinian refugees" of today are those who expected to return after the Arab victory to find Jewish corpses. The descendants of those Arabs are kept in refugee camps/villages by the United Nations and by other Arab governments as a propaganda tool and as a constant source of soldiers in their long war against Israel. Who should absorb these Arabs, as full citizens, compensate them for their losses, house them, feed them, teach them? Should it be Israel, the intended victim of the massacre? Or should it be their fellow Arabs who, because of their hatred and violence, caused this mess in the first place? Or should this just be a valuable lesson to the world that when you attempt the extermination of another group, be prepared to lose land and property, and expect never to get it back again. Only when such violence is rewarded, by the UN, Jimmy Carter, the USSR, is there a material incentive to try again.
- The Society for Rational Peace
Even if Israel is not the cause of the Arab refugee problem, didn't they do anything to compensate those people?
As a goodwill gesture during the Lausanne negotiations in 1949, Israel offered to take back 100,000 Palestinian refugees prior to any discussion of the refugee question. The Arab states, who had refused even to negotiate face-to-face with the Israelis, turned down the offer because it implicitly recognized Israel's existence.
Despite this, on humanitarian grounds Israel has since the 1950's allowed more than 50,000 refugees to return to Israel under a family reunification program, and between 1967 and 1993 allowed a further 75,000 to return to the West Bank or Gaza. Since the beginning of the Oslo process Israel has allowed another 90,000 Palestinians to gain residence in PA-controlled territory.
Arabs who lost property in Israel are eligible to file for compensation from Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property. As of the end of 1993, a total of 14,692 claims had been filed, claims were settled with respect to more than 200,000 dunums of land, more than 10,000,000 NIS (New Israeli Sheckels) had been paid in compensation, and more than 54,000 dunums of replacement land had been given in compensation. Israel has followed this generous policy despite the fact that not a single penny of compensation has ever been paid to any of the more than 500,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who were forced by the Arab governments to abandon their homes, businesses and savings.
- Alexander Safian,
What has been the longest refugee situation in recorded human history?
The Diaspora, the Jewish Exile, the Golah. 1,900 years - between 80 and 100 generations.
Another refugee situation also resulted from Israel's independence. It was larger in numbers and in property lost than the Palestinian Arabs, yet we never hear about it, why?
"This is hardly the place to describe how the Jews of the Arab States were driven out of the countries in which they lived for hundreds of years, then how they were shamefully deported to Israel after their property had been confiscated or taken over at the lowest possible price.
"It is plain that Israel will air this issue in the course of any serious negotiations that might be undertaken one day in regard to the rights on the Palestinians.
Jack Ass the American Jew was a Rich Jew Boy (the bigot harrassed me in highschool). Jack Ass the Jew thought it was his birthright to a Condo in Palestine. Never mind Jack Ass the American Jew had lots of rights and real estate in the USA. Jack Ass the Jew would get his extra-condo in Palestine. Jack Ass the Jew was a typical American Jew, father was a MD, wealthy and Jack Ass got to go to an Ivy League school. Never the less, Jack Ass the American Jew will keep lying to get a piece of real estate in Palestine. Won't forget you massacred them and bull-dozed their homes.
I guess you arent planning on ever going overseas. Since you would then be "Jack Ass the American". or "Jack ass the whatever you are" and all the peopel there would have the right to treat you as you would wish to treat those jews
Would you tolerate an anti Muslim post in the same vein of the sickening racist anti-Semitic one posted by "realsemite" on Nov 19, 2003 at 10:18 PM? I don't think so.
Please remove that disgusting bigoted post.
Please remove that disgusting bigoted post.
So as you can see mistakes were make by both the Israeli's and the Palestinian's, and we still do not have peace so why not do the right thing now so we can have peace in the future???
For there to be Peace and for there to be a reason for the Palestinian People to stop their fight for Freedom:
We need a Palestinian State with Reasonable Border NOW, If the Road Map that is backed by the U.S., U.N., E.U., and Russia is to work...
Send in a Joint, U.S., U.N. Peace keeping Force to the West Bank and Gaza for the sole purpose of trying to avoid conflicts between the Palestinian and the settlers..
Then have the Biased (biased because they will always be on the side of the settlers) Israeli Military retreat to the pre 1967 Israeli Borders, They can then concentrate their effort on guarding this Border..
Example of a possible solution:
SET THE BORDERS BACK TO 1967...
In return the Refugees have no Right of Return inside the 1967 Israeli Borders..
One complaint that Israel has is that the Right of Return will result in two Palestinian States, (The Right of return is almost impossible any way because the land and homes they lost are now built up with Jewish homes businesses etc…)
The Refugees can be helped to settle somewhere in the new Palestinian State..
The Settlements are now part of Palestine...
If the some 300,000 Israeli Settlers living in Palestine do not like living there, they can move to Israel...
If the 1,000,000 or so Palestinians who now live in Israel do not like living in Israel, they can move to Palestine...
If 1,000,000 or so Palestinians can live in Israel, then some 300,000 Israeli Settlers can live in Palestine if they choose to stay..
If you take Israel, West Bank and Gaza, West Bank and Gaza is only 22% of the total area in Question, This small amount is not too much to ask for millions of Palestinians who must have their freedom to have a peaceful life.
If this solution was implemented there is a good chance the so called terrorist (seen as freedom fighters by the oppressed Palestinian People) would stop their fight, if not they would be very foolish because then Israel would have a just cause to fight back and the U.S. would have a just cause to help Israel fight back.
Otherwise we will continue to have:
Israel: We have to confiscate Palestinian land and demolish Palestinian homes because there are suicide bombers???
Palestine: We have to defend ourselves because Israel is slowly confiscating all our land and demolishing our homes. We have no military to defend ourselves and our land. If we do nothing, we will soon have nothing at all???
The era of colonization is past,. We can not expect to oppress millions of Palestinian People and still have peace.
West Bank and Gaza are only 22% of what is TODAY, Israel, West Bank and Gaza.
PLEASE LOOK AT THE MAP IN THE FOLLOWING WEB PAGE:
The Orange areas are Israeli settlements in the already small 22% that is West Bank and Gaza. What kind of carved up mess will the Palestinian State be unless all the settlements are removed (which will probably never happen) or just make the settlements part of the New Palestinian State (which can happen right now)??
CLICK HERE > http://mondediplo.com/maps/IMG/artoff3260.jpg
For there to be Peace and for there to be a reason for the Palestinian People to stop their fight for Freedom:
We need a Palestinian State with Reasonable Border NOW, If the Road Map that is backed by the U.S., U.N., E.U., and Russia is to work...
Send in a Joint, U.S., U.N. Peace keeping Force to the West Bank and Gaza for the sole purpose of trying to avoid conflicts between the Palestinian and the settlers..
Then have the Biased (biased because they will always be on the side of the settlers) Israeli Military retreat to the pre 1967 Israeli Borders, They can then concentrate their effort on guarding this Border..
Example of a possible solution:
SET THE BORDERS BACK TO 1967...
In return the Refugees have no Right of Return inside the 1967 Israeli Borders..
One complaint that Israel has is that the Right of Return will result in two Palestinian States, (The Right of return is almost impossible any way because the land and homes they lost are now built up with Jewish homes businesses etc…)
The Refugees can be helped to settle somewhere in the new Palestinian State..
The Settlements are now part of Palestine...
If the some 300,000 Israeli Settlers living in Palestine do not like living there, they can move to Israel...
If the 1,000,000 or so Palestinians who now live in Israel do not like living in Israel, they can move to Palestine...
If 1,000,000 or so Palestinians can live in Israel, then some 300,000 Israeli Settlers can live in Palestine if they choose to stay..
If you take Israel, West Bank and Gaza, West Bank and Gaza is only 22% of the total area in Question, This small amount is not too much to ask for millions of Palestinians who must have their freedom to have a peaceful life.
If this solution was implemented there is a good chance the so called terrorist (seen as freedom fighters by the oppressed Palestinian People) would stop their fight, if not they would be very foolish because then Israel would have a just cause to fight back and the U.S. would have a just cause to help Israel fight back.
Otherwise we will continue to have:
Israel: We have to confiscate Palestinian land and demolish Palestinian homes because there are suicide bombers???
Palestine: We have to defend ourselves because Israel is slowly confiscating all our land and demolishing our homes. We have no military to defend ourselves and our land. If we do nothing, we will soon have nothing at all???
The era of colonization is past,. We can not expect to oppress millions of Palestinian People and still have peace.
West Bank and Gaza are only 22% of what is TODAY, Israel, West Bank and Gaza.
PLEASE LOOK AT THE MAP IN THE FOLLOWING WEB PAGE:
The Orange areas are Israeli settlements in the already small 22% that is West Bank and Gaza. What kind of carved up mess will the Palestinian State be unless all the settlements are removed (which will probably never happen) or just make the settlements part of the New Palestinian State (which can happen right now)??
CLICK HERE > http://mondediplo.com/maps/IMG/artoff3260.jpg
So as you can see mistakes were made by both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and we still do not have peace so why not do the right thing now so we can have peace and a Palestinian state in the future???
For there to be Peace we need a Palestinian State with Reasonable Borders EVENTUALLY, provided we can find a way to convince the Palestinian Terrorists to stop their Terroristic fight against Israel, so that the Israeli Jews will have a Reason to believe the Palestinians only want a Palestinian State by Israel's side rather than instead of Israel...
NOW, If the Road Map that is backed by the U.S., U.N., E.U., and Russia is to work...
Send in a Joint, U.S., U.N. Peace keeping Force to the West Bank and Gaza for the sole purpose of trying to avoid conflicts between the Palestinian and the settlers..
Suggesting that the Israeli Military retreat to the pre 1967 Israeli Borders is a foolish thing to do, what Country ever got made to retreat from All the Territory it won in a Defensive War 36 years ago? More importantly, a Palestinian State on both the West Bank and Gaza is not feasible for countless Reasons.
In return the Refugees have no Right of Return inside the 1967 Israeli Borders..
The Refugees can be helped to Settle somewhere in the new Palestinian State...
The Settlements are now part of Palestine...
If the some 300,000 Israeli Settlers living in Palestine do not like living there they can move to Israel...
If the 1,000,000 or so Palestinians who now live in Israel do not like living in Israel they can move to Palestine...
If 1,000,000 or so Palestinians can live in Israel, then some 300,000 Israeli Settlers can live in Palestine if they choose to stay...
If you take Israel, West Bank and Gaza, West Bank and Gaza is only 22% of the total area in Question, This small amount is not too much to ask for millions of Palestinians who must have their freedom to have a peaceful life.
If this solution were implemented there would be no chance the Terrorists (seen as freedom fighters by the oppressed Palestinian People) would stop their Fight, because they are rabid lunatics, but at least maybe some nice Palestinian People would speak up against them.
Until the Palestinians quit Terrorism we will continue to have:
Israel: We have to confiscate some Palestinian Land and demolish some Palestinian Homes because there are Suicide Bombers???
Palestine: We have to defend ourselves because we are too Stupid to realize that fighting Israel does not help us. Even Cats and Dogs learn not to do things that hurt them, so why do Palestinians keep committing Terror over and over, when all it achieves is preventing Israel from being able to trust Palestinians with Land Control???
The era of Terror is past, We can not expect to terrorize millions of Jewish People and still have peace.
West Bank and Gaza are only 22% of what is today Israel, West Bank and Gaza.
PLEASE LOOK AT THE MAP IN THE FOLLOWING WEB PAGE:
The Orange areas are Israeli Settlements in the already small 22% that is West Bank and Gaza. What kind of carved up mess is my mind for saying on the one hand that it is okay for the Settles to remain in the prospective Palestinian State, but also asking on the other What kind of carved up mess will the Palestinian State be unless all the settlements are removed (which will probably never happen) or just make the settlements part of the New Palestinian State (which can not happen right now)??
CLICK HERE > http://mondediplo.com/maps/IMG/artoff3260.jpg
For there to be Peace we need a Palestinian State with Reasonable Borders EVENTUALLY, provided we can find a way to convince the Palestinian Terrorists to stop their Terroristic fight against Israel, so that the Israeli Jews will have a Reason to believe the Palestinians only want a Palestinian State by Israel's side rather than instead of Israel...
NOW, If the Road Map that is backed by the U.S., U.N., E.U., and Russia is to work...
Send in a Joint, U.S., U.N. Peace keeping Force to the West Bank and Gaza for the sole purpose of trying to avoid conflicts between the Palestinian and the settlers..
Suggesting that the Israeli Military retreat to the pre 1967 Israeli Borders is a foolish thing to do, what Country ever got made to retreat from All the Territory it won in a Defensive War 36 years ago? More importantly, a Palestinian State on both the West Bank and Gaza is not feasible for countless Reasons.
In return the Refugees have no Right of Return inside the 1967 Israeli Borders..
The Refugees can be helped to Settle somewhere in the new Palestinian State...
The Settlements are now part of Palestine...
If the some 300,000 Israeli Settlers living in Palestine do not like living there they can move to Israel...
If the 1,000,000 or so Palestinians who now live in Israel do not like living in Israel they can move to Palestine...
If 1,000,000 or so Palestinians can live in Israel, then some 300,000 Israeli Settlers can live in Palestine if they choose to stay...
If you take Israel, West Bank and Gaza, West Bank and Gaza is only 22% of the total area in Question, This small amount is not too much to ask for millions of Palestinians who must have their freedom to have a peaceful life.
If this solution were implemented there would be no chance the Terrorists (seen as freedom fighters by the oppressed Palestinian People) would stop their Fight, because they are rabid lunatics, but at least maybe some nice Palestinian People would speak up against them.
Until the Palestinians quit Terrorism we will continue to have:
Israel: We have to confiscate some Palestinian Land and demolish some Palestinian Homes because there are Suicide Bombers???
Palestine: We have to defend ourselves because we are too Stupid to realize that fighting Israel does not help us. Even Cats and Dogs learn not to do things that hurt them, so why do Palestinians keep committing Terror over and over, when all it achieves is preventing Israel from being able to trust Palestinians with Land Control???
The era of Terror is past, We can not expect to terrorize millions of Jewish People and still have peace.
West Bank and Gaza are only 22% of what is today Israel, West Bank and Gaza.
PLEASE LOOK AT THE MAP IN THE FOLLOWING WEB PAGE:
The Orange areas are Israeli Settlements in the already small 22% that is West Bank and Gaza. What kind of carved up mess is my mind for saying on the one hand that it is okay for the Settles to remain in the prospective Palestinian State, but also asking on the other What kind of carved up mess will the Palestinian State be unless all the settlements are removed (which will probably never happen) or just make the settlements part of the New Palestinian State (which can not happen right now)??
CLICK HERE > http://mondediplo.com/maps/IMG/artoff3260.jpg
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