57th Anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba

The story of the Arabs who left the coastal areas of Palestine in the spring of 1948 encapsulates one of the great international frauds of the 20th century. The Arabs are the only declared "refugees" who became refugees by the initiative of their own leaders.

The concoction of the monstrous charge that it was the Jews who had driven out the Arabs of Palestine was a strategic decision made by the leaders of the Arab League months after the Arabs' flight.

The Arab "refugees" were not driven out by anyone. The vast majority left at the order or exhortation of their leaders - always with the same reassurance - that it would help the Arab states in the war they were about to launch to destroy the State of Israel.

The fabrication can most easily be detected by the simple circumstance that at the time the alleged expulsion of the Arabs by Zionists was in progress, nobody noticed it.

Foreign newspapermen abounded in the country, in daily contact with all sides - and they did in fact write about the flight of the Arabs, but even those most hostile to the Jews saw nothing to suggest that the flight was not voluntary.

In the three months that the major part of the flight took place, the London Times, a newspaper most notably hostile to Zionism, published 11 leading articles on the situation in Palestine, in addition to extensive news reports. In none was there even a remote hint that the Zionists were driving Arabs from their homes.

Even more pertinent: No Arab spokesman made such a charge. At the height of the flight, the Palestinian Arabs' chief representative at the United Nations, Jamal Husseini, made a long political statement (on April 27) that was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists; he did not mention refugees. Three weeks later (while the flight was still in progress) the secretary-general of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a fiercely worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a word about refugees.

WHY DID they leave? Monsignor George Hakim, then Greek Catholic bishop of Galilee, the leading Christian personality in Palestine for many years, told a Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub, in the summer of 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."

The initiative for the flight was indeed no secret. One of the famous American newspapermen of the time, Kenneth Bilby, who had covered Palestine for years, explained the Arab leaders' rationale for the flight in his book New Star in the East, published in 1950:

"Let the Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab countries 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."

There is also the piquant report in the files of the British police at Haifa, of how the leaders of the Jewish community pleaded with the leaders of the Arab community not to leave Haifa, and how the Arabs refused. There is too, in the annals of the UN Security Council, a speech by Jamal Husseini heaping praise on the Arabs of Haifa for refusing to stay put and insisting adamantly on leaving their homes. The British police then kindly provided transport and helped the Haifa Arabs across the Lebanese and Transjordanian borders.

When, four months after the invasion, the prospect of the flightlings' returning "in a few weeks" had faded, there were some recriminations. Emil Ghoury, a member of the Palestinian Arabs' national leadership, said in an interview with the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph: "I don't 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."

THE POLICY adopted inside the country was emphasized by the leaders of the invasion. The prime minister of Iraq, Nuri Said, thundered: "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."

One of the Arabs who fled later succinctly summarized the story of the refugees in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Difaa: "The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."

Later, after the fighting began, many Arab villagers who believed the false rumors of a massacre at the village of Deir Yassin "panicked and fled ignominiously before they were threatened by the progress of the war." So wrote the British general Sir John Glubb, who commanded the Transjordanian army. Throughout the war there were two incidents - at Ramle and Lod - in which a number of Arab civilians were driven out of their homes by Israeli soldiers.

The total number of Arabs who evacuated, even according to the British Mandate's statistics, could not have been more than 420,000. This figure conforms roughly also to the figure published from Arab sources, and by the UN.

The central, horribly cruel fact is that the Arab states - who had brought about their plight - denied them residence rights; and the idea was born that they should be left in camps and used as a weapon for Israel's destruction. "The return of the refugees," said president Nasser of Egypt years later, "will mean the end of Israel."

IT WAS in the immediate aftermath of the war that the refugee scam was developed into an international operation. As soon as the UN Disaster Relief Organization started providing food, shelter, clothing and medical attention to the Arabs who had fled Palestine, a mass of needy Arabs descended on the camps from all over the Arab states. The organization had no machinery for identification; so the arrivals simply signed the register as refugees and received the free aid.

Already in December 1948, the director of the Relief Organization, Sir Rafael Cilento, reported he was feeding 750,000 "refugees." By July 1949 the UN reported a round million.

The Red Cross International Committee joined the party. It pressed for the recognition of any destitute Arab in Palestine as a refugee. Thus about 100,000 were added to the list.

To add a touch of mordant humor, the Red Cross authority wrote about the additional people that "it would be senseless to force them to abandon their homes to be able to get food as refugees."

So these people stayed at home, received their free services there, and were added to the rolls of the refugees.

Thus - and by other more expectable means of humanistic falsification we have, in the third generation, a large amorphous mass of Arabs, all of them comfortably lumped together in official UN lists as Arab refugees, described as "victims of Israeli aggression" and demanding the right of "return."

While everybody in Israel has rejected the Arab demand for accepting the return of the "refugees," the government has not rejected the idea that if negotiations for a settlement take place the problem of the refugees will be discussed. Moreover, there has been talk of "compensation" by Israel.

There have even been voices suggesting the return of a "symbolic few" of the refugees.

Israel must, from the outset and forever, unequivocally reject such ideas.

Once and for all Israel must remind whoever has to be reminded that the responsibility for the displaced Arabs lies wholly and absolutely on the shoulders of the Arab states. Their utterly unprovoked invasion of the territory of Israel in May 1948 was a crime.

Its declared intent was a crime. Six thousand Israel citizens were killed in that war, and thousands of others were injured. It was the Arab states that called on the Arab population to evacuate, all in order to facilitate accomplishment of their evil purpose.

It is a hutzpa of historical dimensions and significance to ask Israel to even discuss giving an inch or paying a penny of the price of the refugee problem. And it is dangerous for any Israeli spokesman to even agree to take part in any discussion of the subject - at any forum or in any context whatsoever.

Indeed, the Israeli government should long ago have declared - but even now it is not too late: "We shall not participate in any discussion of the so-called refugee problem. This is a problem the Arab nation must solve for itself in its own spacious territories."

"The Greatest Obstacle to Peace in the Middle East" it turns out is not Jewish "settlements," but the United Nations, and specifically one of its agencies, UNRWA. This was the conclusion of experts at last week's Jerusalem Summit, an annual conference that brings together important thinkers from around the world on issues relating to Israel.

Established shortly after the Israeli-Arab armistice in 1950 to assist Arab refugees exclusively, UNRWA's mandate was specifically designed to perpetuate their status as refugees in order to further the Arab agenda of destroying Israel.

For half a century UNRWA has funneled billions of dollars to perpetuate the status of "Palestinians as refugees." But unlike all other refugees in the world, Palestinian refugees, according to UNRWA's definition include not only those who became refugees, but all of their descendents as well.

UNRWA also includes anyone who applied for relief, regardless of when they arrived or where they came from. Even when they move out of the "camps" (actually neighborhoods and towns) and/or become citizens of another country (as in the case of Jordan), they still retain their status as "Palestinian refugees."

This explains why the number of refugees in other countries and areas of the world eventually dissipates, while for Palestinians, it amplifies.

According to Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, Arab refugees numbered around 700,000 at most in 1948. Over the years that should have diminished to around 200,000. Instead, being a "Palestinian refugee" is passed down from one generation to the next. Today there are an estimated four million (although no one really knows because of UNRWA's faulty records) – and the number is growing.

Terrorism prevents any progress towards peace. The "Palestinian Right of Return" (to Israel) -- a basic, non-negotiable demand – encourages the refusal to accept Israel's existence and fuels Palestinian terrorism. It reinforces Palestinians' belief in their innocence and victimization, promoting a culture of denial and self-pity, sabotaging any hope for change.

A main perpetrator of this policy is UNWRA which not only provides food, educational and medical assistance to generations of "Palestinians," but insists that they not be repatriated into their host countries – like all other refugees around the world. For "Palestinian refugees," their children and their great-grand children, UNWRA insists, their only home is "Israeli-occupied Palestine."

Not that these "refugees" have a choice. Martin Sherman, Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University presented recent polls which indicated that most Palestinians, given the opportunity, would prefer some form of compensation and the opportunity to move to another country and get on with their lives. They can’t. The UN, UNRWA and the Arab countries won't allow it.

No Arab country except Jordan -- where they now constitute more than two-thirds of the population -- accepted them as citizens. Saudi Arabia, for example, recently passed a law allowing all foreigner workers in the country to apply for Saudi citizenship next year – except Palestinians.

In Lebanon, Pipes pointed out, where more than 400,000 "Palestinian refugees" live in UNWRA-supported "camps" residents cannot work or even go to school outside their designated areas. Ditto for Syria.

"UNRWA has outlived its utility and should be dismantled," Pipes suggested. Since more than a third of the funds for UNRWA come from the United States, he urged an immediate end to this policy.

(Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf states contribute about 2% of UNRWA's budget; the EU countries and Canada make up the rest.)

Dore Gold, Israel's former Ambassador to the United Nations and now head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and legal expert and Columbia University Professor Anne Bayefsky, characterized the UN as a total failure. Gold's recently published "Tower of Babble" (Crown, 2004) effectively documents the case.

A major source of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment, the UN has contributed to wholesale massacres and terrorism around the world in places like Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Its refusal to condemn Islamic-based terrorism against Israel has encouraged this scourge.

According to Bayefsky, nearly a third of the resolutions of the Committee on Human Rights condemn Israel; no resolutions are submitted against two-thirds of the rest of the countries in the world (including Sudan and North Korea). Official UN events supporting the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian refugees" are part of the demonization of Israel and encourage a hard-line stance that undermines any progress towards peace. The effect, she said is lethal.

The Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) dominates much of what goes on in the General Assembly, Bayefsky said, and prevents even a definition of terrorism. The 56 members of the OIC are also part of the 115-member Non-Aligned Movement which constitutes an automatic majority in the 191-member U.N.

Dr. Avi Beker, professor at Tel Aviv University's School of Government, called for UNRWA's elimination and the creation of a new mechanism to resettle and rehabilitate the refugees. This, he emphasized, is a prerequisite to any peace process.

Of the 4 million "Palestinian refugees," listed by UNRWA for Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and Gaza in 2002, about 1,250,000 reside in the areas controlled by UNRWA. The rest live comfortably -- sometimes luxuriously -- outside, often in nearby villages and towns. In addition to the free assistance and services they receive, as "refugees" they pay no taxes.

In Jordan, Syria and the West Bank only about 18% live in UNRWA administered areas; in Lebanon and Gaza that figure rises to more than half. The most violent and volatile areas are those with the highest number living under UNRWA.

Nearly all teachers in UNRWA schools belong to unions affiliated with terrorist organizations, like Hamas. Schools, textbooks, religious institutions and Palestinian media teach hatred of Jews and Israelis and glorify homicide bombing ("martyrdom"). This has been documented by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), and Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace.

Recent revelations have shown that UNRWA receives funding from terrorist organizations (including al Qaida connected) and that "refugee camps" for which UNRWA is responsible are major centers of terrorism. Nearly all the missile attacks from Gaza into Israel originate from UNRWA-administered territory. In Jenin, the UNRWA-run camp is called "the terrorist capitol of the world." Except by UNRWA.

This does not seem to have alerted world attention to the problem. Rather than confront the issue honestly and openly, UN and UNRWA officials deny and obfuscate. UNRWA is not part of the solution, experts concluded; it is at the core of the problem.

This year's Summit gathering focused on shifting attention from political to humanitarian solutions, exposing the oppression of Moslem women in Moslem countries, and using the Koran to teach tolerance rather than bigotry and hatred as ways of encouraging positive change.

Author David Pryce-Jones ("The Closed Circle"), senior editor of the National Review suggested that conflicts might be viewed as between closed and open societies, those which have democratic and humanitarian values and those which do not. In that context, he wondered whether political and territorial compromises would have any beneficial effect.

The Summit is promoting a Council of Civilizations (twelve are designated) which would offer an alternative to the UN. Their full program can be accessed at: info [at] jerusalemsummit.org.

The author is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem. moshedan [at] netvision.net.il