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Arab Attitude toward the
"Palestinian refugees".
Discussions on refugees by the United Nations began in the summer of 1948, before Israel had completed its military victory. At that time Arabs still believed they could win the war and allow the refugees to return triumphant.
The Arab position on the fate of the refugees was expressed by Emile Ghoury, the Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee:
“It is inconceivable that the refugees should be sent back to their homes while they are occupied by the Jews, as the latter would hold them as hostages and maltreat them. The very proposal is an evasion of responsibility by those responsible. It will serve as a first step towards Arab recognition of the State of Israel and partition.”
Arabs demanded that the United Nations allow the Palestinians to return to their homes, and were unwilling to accept anything less until after their defeat had become obvious. The Arabs then incorrectly,
yet convenient to their own needs, reinterpreted Resolution 194 as granting the refugees the absolute right of repatriation. Incredibly, the Arabs have demanded that Israel accept this misinterpretation ever since. The Arabs preferred to maintain this position believing that the refugees could ultimately bring about Israel's destruction, a sentiment expressed by Egyptian Foreign Minister Muhammad Salah al-Din:
“In demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, the Arabs fully intend their return be as masters of the Homeland and all of its Israeli citizens. In the end it is understood by all that have followed the unbiased news reports that the Arab and Palestinian refugees intention is not to live at peace among the people of Israel, but ultimately the liquidation of the State of Israel.” (Al-Misri, October 11, 1949).
After the 1948 war, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and its more than 200,000 inhabitants, but refused to allow the Palestinians into Egypt or permit them to move elsewhere.
Although demographic figures indicated more than ample room for settlement existed in Syria, Damascus refused to consider accepting any refugees, except those who might refuse repatriation. Syria also declined to resettle 85,000 refugees in 1952-54, though it had been offered international funds to pay for the project. Iraq was also expected to accept a large number of refugees, but proved unwilling. Lebanon insisted it had no room for the Palestinians. In 1950, the UN tried to resettle 150,000 refugees from Gaza in Libya, but was rebuffed by Egypt.
Jordan was the only Arab country to welcome the Palestinians and grant them citizenship (to this day Jordan is the only Arab country where Palestinians as a group can become citizens). King Abdullah considered the Palestinian Arabs and Jordanians one people. By 1950, he annexed the West Bank and forbade the use of the term Palestine in official documents.
In 1952, the UNWRA set up a fund of $200 million to provide homes and jobs for the refugees, but it went untouched.
Why?
The plight of the refugees remained unchanged after the Suez War. In fact, even the rhetoric stayed the same. In 1957, the Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria, passed a resolution stating:
“Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem not be based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason.” (Beirut al Massa, July 15, 1957).
The treatment of the refugees in the decade following their displacement was best summed up by a former director of UNRWA, Ralph Garroway, in August 1958:
"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."
Since 1948 Arab governments have frequently offered jobs, housing, land and other benefits to Arabs and non-Arabs, excluding Palestinians. For example, Saudi Arabia chose not to use unemployed Palestinian refugees to alleviate its labor shortage in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Instead, thousands of South Koreans and other Asians were recruited to fill jobs.
The situation grew even worse in the wake of the Gulf War. Kuwait, which employed large numbers of Palestinians but denied them citizenship, expelled more than 300,000 of them. "If people pose a security threat, as a sovereign country we have the right to exclude anyone we don't want," said Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States, Saud Nasir Al-Sabah (Jerusalem Report, June 27, 1991).
While Jewish refugees from Arab countries received no international assistance, Palestinians received millions of dollars through UNRWA. Initially, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel nearly $3 million. The total Arab pledges
(twenty-two nations) amounted to approximately $600,000. For the first 20 years, the United States provided more than two-thirds of the funds, while the Arab states continued to contribute a tiny fraction. Israel donated more funds to UNRWA than most Arab states. The Saudis did not match Israel's contribution until 1973; Kuwait and Libya, not until 1980. As recently as 1994, Israel gave more to UNRWA than all Arab countries except Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco.
In 2003, the United States pledged and gave more than $134 million of UNRWA's $326 million budget (41%). Meanwhile, despite their rhetorical support for the Palestinians, all of the Arab countries combined pledged less than $11 million (3%) and $7.8 million of that was from Saudi Arabia, meaning the rest of the Arab world contributed less than $3 million (1%).57
By the middle of 2003, the number of Palestinian refugees on UNRWA rolls had risen to 4.1 million, several times the number that left Palestine in 1948. In just the past three years, the number grew by 8 percent. Today, 42 percent of the refugees live in the territories; if you add those living in Jordan, 80 percent of the Palestinians currently live in “Palestine.” Though the popular image is of refugees in squalid camps, less than one-third of the Palestinians are in the 59
UNRWA-run camps.
During the years that Israel controlled the Gaza Strip, a consistent effort was made to get the Palestinians into permanent housing. The Palestinians opposed the idea because the frustrated and bitter inhabitants of the camps provided the various terrorist factions with their manpower. Moreover, the Arab states routinely pushed for the adoption of UN resolutions demanding that Israel desist from the removal of Palestinian refugees from camps in Gaza and the West Bank. They preferred to keep the Palestinians as symbols of Israeli "oppression."
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Field
of Operations
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Official
Camps
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Registered Refugees
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Registered Refugees in Camps
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Jordan
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10
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1,718,767
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304,430
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Lebanon
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12
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391,679
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225,125
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Syria
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10
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409,662
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119,766
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West Bank
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19
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654,971
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176,514
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Gaza
Strip
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8
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907,221
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478,854
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Agency
total
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59
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4,082,300
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1,301,689
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Source: UNRWA -
Figures as of 30 June 2003
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After transferring responsibility for virtually the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, Israel no longer controlled any refugee camps and ceased contributing to UNRWA.
Now the camps are in the hands of the Palestinian Authority (PA), but little is being done to improve the living conditions of the Palestinians living in them.
Meanwhile, in addition to receiving annual funding from UNRWA for the refugees, the PA has received billions of dollars in international aid and yet has failed to build a single house to allow even one family to move out of a refugee camp into permanent housing. Given the amount of aid (approximately $5.5 billion since 1993) the
Palestinian Authority has received, it is shocking and outrageous that more than half a million Palestinians are being forced by their own leaders to remain in squalid camps.
Please
allow me to repeat this:
$5,500,000,000.00, (FIVE BILLION FIVE HUNDRED MILLIONS DOLLARS)
received
in international aid funding by the Palestinian Authority,
and not one
house built for the refugees. Why is there no international
outcry over this?
Netty Gross of the Jerusalem Report (July 6, 1998) visited Gaza and asked an official why the camps there hadn't been dismantled. She was told the Palestinian Authority had made a
"political decision" not to do anything for the nearly half a million Palestinians living in the camps until the final-status talks with Israel took place. In fact, between June 2000 and June 2003, the number of Palestinians living in camps in the PA has increased by nearly 50,000 (8 percent) and the overall number of refugees has grown by 11 percent.
Again the people of the refugee camps were being used as
political pawns by the Arab nations.
Out of twenty two surrounding Arab states only Jordan
welcomed and made efforts to resettle the Palestinians.
Jordan was the only Arab country to welcome the Palestinians and grant them citizenship (to this day Jordan is the only Arab country where Palestinians as a group can become citizens). King Abdullah considered the Palestinian Arabs and Jordanians one people. By 1950, he annexed the West Bank and forbade the use of the term Palestine in official documents.
Although demographic figures indicated ample room for settlement existed in Syria, Damascus refused to consider accepting any refugees, except those who might refuse repatriation. Syria also declined to resettle 85,000 refugees in 1952-54, though it had been offered international funds to pay for the project.
Iraq was also expected to accept a large number of refugees, but proved unwilling. Lebanon insisted it had no room for the Palestinians. In 1950, the UN tried to resettle 150,000 refugees from Gaza in Libya, but was rebuffed by Egypt.
After the 1948 war, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and its more than 200,000 inhabitants, but refused to allow the Palestinians into Egypt or permit them to move elsewhere. Egypt’s handling of Palestinians in Gaza was so bad Saudi Arabian radio compared Nasser’ regime in Gaza to Hitler’s rule in occupied Europe
during World War II.
In 1952, the UNWRA set up a fund of $200 million to provide homes and jobs for the refugees, but it went untouched.
Former director of UNRWA, Ralph Garroway, had this to say in August
1958:
“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.”
Israel consistently sought a solution to the refugee problem, but could not simply agree to allow all Palestinians to return.
No nation, regardless of past rights and wrongs, could contemplate taking in a fifth-column of such a size. And fifth-column it would be;
people nurtured for 20 years [in 1967] in hatred of and totally dedicated to its destruction. The
re-admission of the refugees would be the equivalent to the admission to the U.S. of nearly 70,000,000 sworn enemies of
the nation.
The Arabs, meanwhile, adamantly refused to negotiate a separate agreement. The crux of the issue was the Arab states' unwillingness to accept Israel’s existence. This was exemplified by Egyptian President Nasser’s belligerent acts toward the Jewish State, which had nothing to do with the Palestinians. He was only interested in the refugees to the extent that they could contribute to his ultimate objective. As he told an interviewer on September 1, 1961:
“If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.”
Little has changed in succeeding years. Arab governments have frequently offered jobs, housing, land and other benefits to Arabs and non-Arabs,
all the while consistently excluding Palestinians. For example, Saudi Arabia chose not to use unemployed Palestinian refugees to alleviate its labor shortage in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Instead, thousands of South Koreans and other Asians were recruited to fill jobs.
The situation grew even worse in the wake of the Gulf War. Kuwait, which employed large numbers of Palestinians but denied them citizenship, expelled
more than 300,000 of them.
Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States, Saud Nasir Al-Sabah made this
staement in the Jerusalem Report, June 27, 1991.
"If people pose a security threat, as a sovereign country we have the right to exclude anyone we don't
want." (Sounds like a fair and reasonable
decision to protect the nation of Kuwait. Why shouldn't Israel
be allowed to make this same self preservation judgment
call?)
For decades the refugees have held the UN responsible, instead of themselves, for ameliorating their condition. Though many Palestinians are unhappy with the treatment they have received from their Arab brothers, most refugees
unrealistically choose to focus their discontentment on "the Zionists," whom they blame for their predicament rather than the vanquished Arab armies who left them in limbo after their failed attempt to take over the land of Israel. The refugees to this day remain a political pawn of the Arab nations to bring undue political pressure on the nation of Israel. Amazingly today, many partially
informed (if not totally uninformed) persons foolishly point a finger of blame at the nation of Israel for the Palestinian refugee situation.
Why is there so much negative focus on Israel for doing
what all sensible nations
do around the world? On the America/Mexican border, even
though the Rio Grand River offers a protective
natural boundary, the US federal government has also
established barricades, fences, and yes, even the
unthinkable, WALLS. All this border protection by
one of the most powerful nations in the world, and that as
a division against their non-hostile neighbor Mexico.
However, if the people of Mexico decide to start lobbing missiles over the US border into Texas cities,
or sending Mexican suicide bombers to Washington DC, as
does Israel, you can be sure that the US will shoot back, and with full prejudice, I’m certain.
The current political “issue” being hoisted as a flag
of dissention against Israel is the demand that Israel take down the security wall separating them from the west bank. For those that think this is an acceptable choice, consider that your own fences or even your own doors to your home— that you wisely lock at night— are
a “wall” to your neighbors. Why not take down the wall around your own homes and either leave your doors open at night, or better yet, take them off the hinges entirely. Admittedly, there are those among your neighbors that will come into your home while you are resting or asleep and take what is yours, or kill or injure your family members. Not withstanding, how dare you put up a wall to protect yourself, you sound like the Israelis.
Get the picture? It’s just common sense to want to protect yourself. Hundreds of Israelis have died from terrorist attacks with the wall in place, most intelligent people can foresee what will certainly happen if the wall is taken down.
“...if
there were a Palestinian state, why would its leaders want their
potential citizens to be repatriated to another state? From a
nation-building perspective it makes no sense. In fact, the
original discussions about repatriation took place at a time that
there was no hope of a Palestinian state. With the possibility of
that state emerging, the Palestinians must decide if they want to
view themselves as a legitimate state or if it is more important
for them to keep their self-defined status as oppressed, stateless
refugees. They really can't be both.”
Fredelle
Spiegel
“The
Palestinian demand for the 'right of return' is totally
unrealistic and would have to be solved by means of financial
compensation and resettlement in Arab countries.”
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
A
MUST SEE!
Palestinian propaganda in the News:
Faked Shooting Scenes used as propaganda against Israel:
Go here to view this SecondDraft.com eye opening video:
http://seconddraft.org/streaming/pallywood.wmv
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