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In 1948 Arab leaders encouraged all Arab refugees to leave Israel promising to purge the land of Jews. More than two-thirds left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same. Arab refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
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 Reward For Terror. Who's Responsible for the "Palestinian Refugees". Palestinian Refugees Were Invited to Leave in 1948. Refugees and a few "brooms". |
by Joram Ettinger, Israel's Embassy former liaison with the U.S. Congress
*There were 100 million refugees in the world since Second World War, and 80 million refugees during 1933-1945. Most are no longer refugees. Only the Arabs have perpetuated the Palestinian refugees, as a means to destroy Israel.
*820,000 JEWISH REFUGEES and 300,000 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES were produced by a war launched, against Israel, by the Palestinians and the Arab states.
*300,000 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES: 800,000 Arabs resided in the country in November 1947 and 170,000 upon the conclusion of Israel's War of Independence. Of the 630,000, 100,000 were allowed to return, 100,000 were absorbed in Arab countries, 50,000 Bedouins joined their tribes in Jordan and Sinai, 50,000 were migrant laborer who returned to their homes in Arab countries.
*A PALESTINIAN REFUGEE, according to UNRWA, was any Arab who stayed in the country for two years prior to 1948.
*A MAJOR MIGRATION FROM MUSLIM COUNTRIES, especially to the coastal plain, took place during 1830-1947. MOST PALESTINIAN REFUGEES resided in the coastal plain.
MOST PALESTINIAN REFUGEES WERE ARAB MIGRANTS
*The origin of most Palestinian refugees was from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Algeria and Libya, migrating during 1830-1947. The Arab population of Jaffa, Haifa and Ramleh grew 17, 12 and 5 times during 1880-1947.
*"30,000-36,000 SYRIANS migrated to Palestine in recent months" (Syrian daily, La Syrie, Aug. 12, 1934).
*JAFFA ABSORBED ARABS FROM 15 COUNTRIES, who populated some "Egyptian Neighborhoods": Abu Kabir, Salameh, Sumeil, Sheikh Muneis, Feja, etc.
Egyptian occupation (1831-1840) produced thousands of Egyptian migrants in Jaffa, Petach Tiqva, Hadera, Kalansawa, Acre, Beit She'an, Nablus, etc.
*THOUSANDS OF ARAB MIGRANT LABORERS were imported by the Ottoman Empire and Britain for infrastructure projects, and as a result of the expansion of Jewish businesses, while severe British measures limited Jewish Aliya.
CAUSES OF PALESTINIAN REFUGEES
*ABU MAZEN: "Arab armies forced Palestinians to leave their homes." ("Filastin A-Thawra", March 1976).
*London Economist (Oct. 2, 1948):" The most potent factor [in the flight of Palestinians] was the announcements made by the Arab-Palestinian Higher Executive, urging all Haifa Arabs to quit...It was clearly intimated that Arabs who remained in Haifa would be regarded as renegades."
*THE FLIGHT OF THE ARAB ELITE (BEFORE THE WAR), the INTER-PALESTINIAN GANG WAR (as it was during 1936-39) and the ARAB DEFEAT on the battle field, expanded the number of refugees. Many returned to their countries of origin.
*"[ARAB LEADERS] ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FLIGHT... They disseminated rumors exaggerating Jewish atrocities...They instilled fear in the hearts of the Arabs, until they fled, leaving their homes..." (Jordan's "Al-Urdoun", April 9, 1953).
*In 1948, The BRITISH MANDATE urged Jewish and Arab minorities to evacuate mixed towns. The Arabs evacuated (Tiberias, etc.) and the Jews stayed and prevailed (Safed, etc.).
MISREPRESENTATION OF THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE PHENOMENON has been intended to de-legitimize Israel and to legitimize the "claim of return", as a means to destroy Israel.
The Refugee Issue
The issue of Palestinians refugees is a sticking point in the peace negotiations. But who is responsible for these refugees?
by Rabbi Shraga Simmons,
Aish.com
The issue of Palestinian refugees is a sticking point in Middle East peace negotiations. How did this problem begin, and who is responsible?
In the 1948 war, approximately 600,000 Jewish refugees were persecuted and expelled from Arab lands including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco -- leaving behind an estimated $30 billion in assets. These Jewish refugees were welcomed by Israel, and with their descendants, now comprise a majority population of the State of Israel.
In the same war, according to the UN, approximately 720,000 Palestinians refugees fled to Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and the West Bank and Gaza. The UN estimates that they and their descendents now number about 3.7 million.
The Arab League forbade any Arab country from accepting these refugees or settling them in normal housing, preferring to leave them in squalid camps. Former UNRWA Director Ralph Galloway stated in 1958: "The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die."
Again, it was Arabs who resisted efforts by Israel to settle the refugees in normal housing from 1967-95, when Israel administered the lands.
And again in the late-1990s, when 97 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza lived under full jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, the refugees continued to be confined to camps -- despite the millions of UNWRA and international relief dollars which poured into PA coffers specifically for this purpose.
It is important to note, as Joan Peters documents in her seminal work, "From Time Immemorial," that the vast majority of these refugees did not live for generations on the land, but rather came from Egypt, Syria and Iraq as economic opportunities increased during the first half of the 20th century, the formative years of Jewish aliyah.
The United Nations' standard definition of a "refugee" is one who was forced to leave a "permanent" or "habitual" home. In the case of Arab refugees however, the UN broadened the definition of refugee to include anyone who lived in "Palestine" for only two years prior to Israel's statehood in 1948.
The number of 3.7 million refugees is further inflated, given that the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees does not include descendents in its definition of refugees, nor does it apply to a person who "has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality." Under this definition, the number of Palestinians qualifying for refugee status would be well below half a million. Yet the UN has created a new set of rules for Palestinian refugees.
A key question is the issue of responsibility: Since five Arab armies launched the 1948 war, logic dictates that they are responsible for the outcome. Yet it is still instructive to know: Did Israel forcibly evict these Arabs in 1948, or did they leave voluntarily?
Though historical sources vary, many statements from Arab leaders and the media support the contention that Arabs created the refugee problem:
The Beirut Daily Telegraph (September 6, 1948) quoted Emil Ghory, secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee:
The London Economist (October 2, 1948) reported an eyewitness account of the flight of Haifa's Arabs:
Habib Issa, secretary-general of the Arab League, wrote in the New York Lebanese daily "al-Hoda" (June 8, 1951):
Former Prime Minister of Syria, Khaled al-Azem, wrote in his memoirs, published in 1973 in Beirut:
The PA's current prime minister, Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen") wrote in the PLO journal "Palestine a-Thaura" (March 1976):
There is a common misconception regarding UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948. The resolution does not recognize any "right" of return for refugees, but recommends that they "should" be "permitted" to return, subject to two conditions: that the refugee wishes to return, and that he wishes to live at peace with his neighbors.
Even though the Arab states originally rejected Resolution 194, they now misquote it to back the demand of an unlimited right of return to within the borders of the State of Israel. In Yasser Arafat's January 1, 2001, letter to President Clinton, he declared:
In the summer of 2000, Palestinian negotiators submitted an official document at Camp David, demanding that the refugees automatically be granted Israeli citizenship, and that the right of return should have no time limit. Additionally, the PA demanded that Israel provide compensation amounting to $500 billion dollars. Abu Mazen said that compensation payments should be made by Israel alone, and not from any international funds.
Israel maintains that settling refugees in Israel is a crude political move to destroy the Jewish state through demographics. If the whole point of a Palestinian state is to provide an independent home for their people, why do they insist on going to Israel?
While the political outcome remains uncertain, one thing is tragically clear: Thousands of Palestinians remain in squalid camps, used as political pawns in the ongoing war against Israel.
As Jordan's King Hussein stated in 1960:
(Sources: MEMRI, Ha'Aretz, Joan Peters, Moshe Kohn, Prof. Shlomo Slonim, Prof. Ruth Lapidoth).
Who's Responsible for the "Palestinian Refugees"
Website: Truth Must Be Said
The issue of Palestinians refugees is a sticking point in the peace negotiations. But who is responsible for these refugees?
In the 1948 war, 600,000 Jewish refugees were expelled from Arab lands including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco -- leaving behind an estimated $30 billion in assets. These Jewish refugees were welcomed by Israel, and with their 2 million descendants, they now comprise a majority population of the State of Israel.
In the same war, an equal number of Palestinians refugees fled to Arab countries, primarily Jordan and Egypt. From 1948-67, these refugees were left in squalid camps by their host society, Jordan and Egypt. The United Nations estimates that they and their descendents now number about 3.7 million -- living in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and throughout the Western World.
Yasser Arafat demands the "right of return" for all 3.7 million Palestinians to within the borders of the State of Israel.
Israel maintains that these refugees primarily left of their own accord, and that Palestinian demands that these refugees be absorbed into the State of Israel is just a political move to destroy the Jewish state through demographics.
In the Gaza Strip today, 420,000 Palestinians still live in squalid refugee camps, under full jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority.
Who is responsible for these refugees?
In Their Own Words
Did Israel forcibly evict these 600,000 Arabs from their homes in 1948? Or did they leave voluntarily? This is the salient question.
Here is a collection of historical quotations from Arab leaders, relating to these Palestinian refugees:
On April 23, 1948 Jamal Husseini, acting chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee (AHC), told the UN Security Council: "The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce... They preferred to abandon their homes, belongings and everything they possessed."
On September 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, as saying: "The fact that there are those 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..."
On October 2, 1948, the London Economist reported, in an eyewitness account of the flight of Haifa's Arabs: "There is little doubt that the most potent of the factors [in the flight] were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit... And it was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
The Jordanian daily Falastin wrote on February 19, 1949: "The Arab states... encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies."
On June 8, 1951, Habib Issa, secretary-general of the Arab League, wrote in the New York Lebanese daily al-Hoda that in 1948, Azzam Pasha, then League secretary, had... "...assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property, and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states."
On April 9, 1953, the Jordanian daily al-Urdun quoted a refugee, Yunes Ahmed Assad, formerly of Deir Yassin, as saying: "For the flight and fall of the other villages, it is our leaders who are responsible, because of the dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs... they instilled fear and terror into the hearts of the Arabs of Palestine until they fled, leaving their homes and property to the enemy."
Another refugee told the Jordanian daily a-Difaa on September 6, 1954: "The Arab governments told us, 'Get out so that we can get in.' So we got out, but they did not get in."
Former Prime Minister of Syria, Khaled al-Azem, in his memoirs, published in 1973, listed what he thought were the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948: "The fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and leave for the bordering Arab countries... We brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees by calling on them and pleading with them to leave their land."
In the March 1976 issue of "Falastin a-Thaura," then the official PLO journal, PLO spokesman Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen") wrote: "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, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."
British Foreign Office Document #371/75342/XC/A/4991 records: "Following a visit to refugees in Gaza, a British diplomat reported the following: 'But while they express no bitterness against the Jews... they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states: 'We know who our enemies are,' they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes."
What Arafat Demands
Despite all this, Yasser Arafat is demanding an unlimited right of return of 3.7 million Palestinian refugees to within the borders of the State of Israel. In Arafat's January 1, 2001, letter to President Clinton, he declares:
"Recognizing the Right of Return and allowing the refugees' freedom of choice are a prerequisite for ending the conflict."
Recently, Arafat's economic adviser, Dr. Mahar Al-Kurd declared that, in addition to compensation for the refugees, the Palestinians would demand "compensation for damage incurred by the [Israeli] occupation since 1967." This separate "bill" includes compensation for the "exploitation" of Palestinian beachfront on the Dead Sea, as well as the return of direct and indirect taxes, including those related to tourist activity, that Israel has collected from Palestinians.
Palestinian negotiators submitted an official document at Camp David, which included these demands:
Israel will also compensate states (such as Syria and Jordan) that have provided the refugees with asylum.
The Palestine Liberation Organization will receive compensation for public Palestinian property that has remained in Israel.
The refugees who will return to Israel must not be settled in areas that could endanger their lives or well-being, or that lack a suitable infrastructure.
The refugees returning to Israel will automatically be granted Israeli citizenship.
The right of return will have no time limit.
An international committee will carry out monitoring work in Israel to ensure that the refugees are integrated and protected.
The total "bill for compensation" amounts to over half a trillion dollars. Yes, trillion.
Abu Mazen, deputy to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, said after the last Camp David summit, that the compensation payments to Palestinians should be made by Israel alone, and should not come from any international compensation funds.
(Arafat demands published in Al-Ayyam (PA), January 2, 2000, translation courtesy of MEMRI. Camp David details courtesy of Ze'ev Schiff in Ha'Aretz. Refugee quotes courtesy of Moshe Kohn and Prof. Shlomo Slonim.)
Palestinian Refugees Were Invited to Leave in 1948
At the time of the 1948 war, Arabs in Israel were invited by their fellow Arabs -- invited to "leave" while the "invading" Arab armies would purge the land of Jews.1 The invading Arab governments were certain of a quick victory; leaders warned the Arabs in Israel to run for their lives.2
In response, the Jewish Haifa Workers' Council issued an appeal to the Arab residents of Haifa: [See the Official British Police Report]
While the Haifa pattern appears to have been prevalent, there were exceptions. Arabs in another crucial strategic area, who were "opening fire on the Israelis shortly after surrendering,"4 were "forced" to leave by the defending Jewish army to prevent what former Israeli Premier Itzhak Rabin described as a "hostile and armed populace" from remaining "in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route . . ."5 In his memoirs, Rabin stated that Arab control of the road between the seacoast and Jerusalem had "all but isolated" the "more than ninety thousand Jews in Jerusalem," nearly one-sixth of the new nation's total population.
According to a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, however, "the majority" of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, and "68%" left without seeing an Israeli soldier.7
After the Arabs' defeat in the 1948 war, their positions became confused: some Arab leaders demanded the "return" of the "expelled" refugees to their former homes despite the evidence that Arab leaders had called upon Arabs to flee. [Such as President Truman's International Development Advisory Board Report, March 7, 1951: "Arab leaders summoned Arabs of Palestine to mass evacuation... as the documented facts reveal..."] At the same time, Emile Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Command, called for the prevention of the refugees from "return." He stated in the Beirut Telegraph on August 6, 1948: "it is inconceivable that the refugees should be sent back to their homes while they are occupied by the Jews.... It would serve as a first step toward Arab recognition of the state of Israel and Partition."
Arab activist Musa Alami despaired: as he saw the problem, "how can people struggle for their nation, when most of them do not know the meaning of the word? ... The people are in great need of a 'myth' to fill their consciousness and imagination. . . ." According to Alami, ar indoctrination of the "myth" of nationality would create "identity" and "self-respect."8
However, Alami's proposal was confounded by the realities: between 1948 and 1967, the Arab state of Jordan claimed annexation of the territory west of the Jordan River, the "West Bank" area of Palestine -- the same area that would later be forwarded by Arab "moderates" as a "mini-state" for the "Palestinians." Thus, that area was, between 1948 and 1967, called "Arab land," the peoples were Arabs, and yet the "myth" that Musa Alami prescribed-the cause of "Palestine" for the "Palestinians" -- remained unheralded, unadopted by the Arabs during two decades. According to Lord Caradon, "Every Arab assumed the Palestinians [refugees] would go back to Jordan."9
When "Palestine" was referred to by the Arabs, it was viewed in the context of the intrusion of a "Jewish state amidst what the Arabs considered their own exclusive environment or milieu, the 'Arab region.' "10 As the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser "screamed" in 1956, "the imperialists' 'destruction of Palestine' " was "an attack on Arab nationalism," which " 'unites us from the Atlantic to the Gulf.' "11
Ever since the 1967 Israeli victory, however, when the Arabs determined that they couldn't obliterate Israel militarily, they have skillfully waged economic, diplomatic, and propaganda war against Israel. This, Arabs reasoned, would take longer than military victory, but ultimately the result would be the same. Critical to the new tactic, however, was a device designed to whittle away at the sympathies of Israel's allies: what the Arabs envisioned was something that could achieve Israel's shrinking to indefensible size at the same time that she became insolvent.
This program was reviewed in 1971 by Mohamed Heikal,12 then still an important spokesman of Egypt's leadership in his post as editor of the influential, semi-official newspaper Al Ahram. Heikal called for a change of Arab rhetoric -- no more threats of "throwing Israel into the sea" -- and a new political strategy aimed at reducing Israel to indefensible borders and pushing her into diplomatic and economic isolation. He predicted that "total withdrawal" would "pass sentence on the entire state of Israel."
As a more effective means of swaying world opinion, the Arabs adopted humanitarian terminology in support of the "demands" of the "Palestinian refugees," to replace former Arab proclamations of carnage and obliteration. In Egypt, for example, in 1968 "the popularity of the Palestinians was rising," as a result of Israel's 1967 defeat of the Arabs and subsequent 1968 "Israeli air attacks inside Egypt."13] It was as recently as 1970 that Egyptian President Nasser defined "Israel" as the cause of "the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land." Although Nasser thus gave perfunctory recognition to the "Palestinian Arab" allegation, he was in reality preoccupied with the overall basic, pivotal Arab concern. As he continued candidly in the same sentence, Israel was "a permanent threat to the Arab nation."14 Later that year (May 1970), Nasser "formulated his rejection of a Jewish state in Palestine," but once again he stressed the "occupation of our [Pan-Arab] lands," while only secondarily noting: "And we reject its [Israel's] insistence on denying the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people in their country."15 Subsequently the Arabs have increased their recounting of the difficulties and travail of Arab refugees in the "host" countries adjacent to Israel. Photographs and accounts of life in refugee camps, as well as demands for the "legitimate" but unlimited and undefined "rights" of the "Palestinians," have flooded the communications media of the world in a subtle and adroit utilization of the art of professional public relations.16
A prominent Arab Palestinian strategist, AI-Haytham Al-Ayubi, analyzed the efficacy of Arab propaganda tactics in 1974, when he wrote:
[* As Rosemary Sayigh wrote in the Journal of Palestine Studies, "a strongly defined Palestinian identity did not emerge until 1968, two decades after expulsion." It had taken twenty years to establish the "myth" prescribed by Musa Alami.18]
The high visibility of the sad plight of the homeless refugees -- always tragic -- has uniquely attracted the world's compassion.19 In addition, the campaign has provided non-Arabs with moral rationalization for abiding by the Arabs' anti-Israel rules, which are regarded as prerequisites to getting Arab oil and the financial benefits from Arab oil wealth. Millions of dollars have been spent to exploit the Arab refugees and their repatriation as "the heart of the matter," as the primary human problem that must be resolved before any talk of overall peace with Israel.
Reflecting on the oil weapon's influence in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Al-Ayubi shrewdly observed:
Thus Al-Ayubi recommended sham "peace-talks," with the continuation, however, of the "state of 'no peace,'" and he advocated the maintaining of "moral pressure together with carefully-balanced military tension..." for the "success of the new Arab strategy." Because "loss of human life remains a sore point for the enemy," continual "guerrilla" activities can erode Israel's self-confidence and "the faith" of the world in the "Israeli policeman."
Al-Ayubi cited, as an example, "the success of Arab foreign policy maneuvers" in 1973, which was:
As Al-Ayubi noted, "The basic Arab premise concerning 'the elimination of the results of aggression' remains accepted by the world." Thus the "noose" will be placed around the neck of the "Zionist entity."
But the Arabs' creation of the "myth" of nationality did not create the advantageous situation for the Palestinian Arabs that Musa Alami had hoped for. Instead, the conditions he complained of bitterly were perpetuated: the Arabs "shut the door" of citizenship "in their faces and imprison them in camps."21
Khaled Al-Azm, who was Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war, deplored the Arab tactics and the subsequent exploitation of the refugees, in his 1972 memoirs:
Propaganda has successfully veered attention away from the Arab world's manipulation of its peoples among the refugee group on the one hand, and the number of those who now in fact possess Arab citizenship in many lands, on the other hand. The one notable exception is Jordan, where the majority of Arab refugees moved,* and where they are entitled to citizenship according to law, "unless they are Jews."23
Palestinian leadership will not let the refugee problem be solved In 1958, former director of UNRWA Ralph Galloway declared angrily while in Jordan that:
Prittie, "Middle East Refugees," in Michael Curtis et al., eds., The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1975), p. 71.
******
1. Habib Issa, ed., Al-Hoda, Arabic daily, June 8, 1951, New York; see Economist (London), May 15, 1948, regarding "panic flight"; also see Economist, October 2, 1948, for British eyewitness report of Arab Higher Committee radio "announcements" that were "urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit."
5. New York Times, October 23, 1979.
6. Yitzhak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 23, pp. 22-44.
8. Musa Alami, "The Lesson of Palestine," The Middle East Journal, October 1949.
10. P.J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation (London: Croom Heim, 1978), pp. 256-57.
14. Interview with Nasser, Le Monde (Paris: February 1970), cited in Vatikiotis, Nasser, p. 259.
20. AI-Ayubi, "Future Arab Strategy in the Light of the Fourth War."
21. Musa Alami, "The Lesson of Palestine," The Middle East Journal, October 1949.
Refugees and a few "brooms"
Pnews - Current Events, News & Articles
"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity.... yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel." -----Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council (Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977)
"The Oslo accords were a Trojan Horse; the strategic goal is the liberation of Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea" ---Faysal Al-Husseini, Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, in his last interview, 'Al-Arabi' daily newspaper (Egypt), June 24, 2001
Prior to the 1948 war against Israel the Iraqi Prime Minister said all the Arabs would need would be "a few brooms" to drive the Jews into the sea. All they were waiting for was the British and said, "once we get the green light from the British we can easily throw out the Jews." [Sir Geoffrey Furlonge, "Palestine Is My Country: The Story of Musa Alami (Praeger Press, 1969)]
Hostilities didn't just start with the partition. After Islam absorbed what it could of Judaism, it attempted to destroy the rest of Judaism. Islam dominated an area which extended from the Pyrenees to Hindustan after destroying the Persian Empire and the Byzantines - from Syria to Egypt after Mohammed's death in 632. The Muslim religion became known as "Conquering Islam", which strengthened the faith of believers who gave credit to Allah for their battle successes. To have Jews now re-establish what was taken from them would be an affront to Allah.
"Kill a settler every day.... Shoot at settlers everywhere.... Woe to you if you let them reach their homes safely or travel safely on the roads.... I want you to kill as many settlers as possible.... Do not pay attention to what I say to the media, the television or public appearances. Pay attention only to the written instructions that you receive from me." - Yasser Arafat, addressing his people at a public event, July 2001
UN resolution 181 (November 29, 1947) approved a partition plan for Palestine. This plan was not accepted by Arabs and relinquishing the British Mandate in favor of partition and Israel independence resulted in war between all of the Arab countries in the region and the newly declared State of Israel.
Now about 50 years later one of the stumbling blocks to peace the Palestinians claim are the refugees who fled that war and subsequent wars with Israel.
Palestinians claim there are three and a half million Palestinian refugees. This figure is bogus; it is inflated - but what refugees do exist, they are there because they listened to their leaders and left while the land was to be purged of Jews.
And if a "Law of Return" for Palestinians was accepted based on anywhere near the Palestinian claims there would not be enough resources to meet their needs which is obvious to Palestinians. There is not enough water and no economy to support them. There is only Israel which is what they want and have been brazen enough to say so and yet there are those who still think that giving up some land in Gaza and the West Bank will satisfy them. It won't. They want it all.
A Palestinian "Law of Return" would change the character of the "Jewish" state. Those who oppose "Jewish" state claim this is a theocratic designation ignoring the fact that a "Jewish State" is a national designation.
"Thousands of Arabs, including the more affluent, left for nearby Arab states before Jewish statehood." *
"Jaffa was boiling: every second that passed you heard a new rumour, and after every minute the imaginary tales and lies became bigger, finally, they were accepted as definite truth by the public. When the sun was setting down, many of the Mufti henchmen patrolled the streets in private and lorry cars, calling upon the people: oh! men, oh! heros; Help..Help.., stop the Jewish attack! They have attacked your brothers in the Manshiya; they pillaged their properties; burned their holdings and raped their women and girls. They have committed awful acts of horror and brutality against your brothers!! In but a few minutes Jaffa's inhabitants were INCITED (emphasis mine) and AGITATED (emphasis mine) shouted and fied into the air -- On Them! On Them! on Tel-Aviv, the town of the wicked...Groups and individuals, they marched on and among them, behind them or in front of them, went the Mufti henchmen belittling the Jewish strength..." * This is the same Mufti who had supported the Hitler and the Nazis.
Assam Pasha, Secretary General fo the Arab League, described "three characteristics of the future war; the belief in glorious death as a road to paradise, the opportunites of lust and the Bedouin love of slaughter for its own sake"* Does any of this sound like the Muslims are peace loving to you?
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab higher Committee encouraged the refugees to flee from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem, and that certain leaders...make political capital out of their miserable situation..." *
"For years we have lived together in our city, Haifa...Do not fear: Do not destroy your homes with your own hands...do not bring upon yourself tragedy by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens..But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace for you and your families."
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