Yo y'all - it's the Nakbah! "...If words have any meaning, it is certainly accurate to describe the outcome of the 1948 war as a catastrophe for the Palestinians. Between 600,000 and 700,000 men, women, and children—even more, depending on who is telling the story—left their homes. Palestinian civil society disintegrated.
"...At the war’s end, the refugees dispersed to the Jordanian-occupied West Bank, the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, and neighboring Arab countries. Many lived in tents, eking out a bare subsistence, and were then denied the right to return to their homes by the new State of Israel.
"...During the 1948 war and for many years afterward, the Western world—including the international Left—expressed hardly any moral outrage about the Palestinian refugees. This had nothing to do with Western racism or colonialism and much to do with recent history. The fighting in Palestine had broken out only two years after the end of the costliest military conflict ever, in which the victors exacted a terrible price on the losers.
"...11 million ethnic Germans living in Central and Eastern Europe—civilians all—who were expelled from their homes and force-marched to Germany by the Red Army, with help from the Czech and Polish governments and with the approval of Roosevelt and Churchill. Historians estimate that 2 million died on the way.
"...Around the same time, the Indian subcontinent was divided into two new countries, India and Pakistan; millions of Hindus and Muslims moved from one to the other, and hundreds of thousands died in related violence.
"... Against this background, the West was not likely to be troubled by the exodus of a little more than half a million Palestinians after a war launched by their own leaders.
One source of annoyance I have over this issue is the fact that many Palestinians were not land owners (many land owners were Jordanian), and while they were evicted, they couldn't lose land they never owned. Couple this with the fact that countries like Jordan and Egypt refused to take in these people (as the article alluded to) and it ended up becoming deliberate provocation. As long as the Palestinians are unhappy and bordering Israel, they can continuously wage a proxy war for the other countries.
ReplyDeleteIf they actually care about the Palestinians, they would take them in and give them a home. The countries of the middle east act so worked up about the Palestinian situation yet none of them seem willing to give them homes. They're the ones with all the real estate, Israel just has a tiny chunk. It's all manufactured. Just like leaders in the Middle East blaming all their woes on Israel and the United States to cover for their own incompetence.
For heavens sake. Are Israeli sympathizers still at the point where they are begging Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians? Like it or not, the people who are fighting today have deep roots in the very land Israel now governs.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteOne doesn't have to be sympathetic towards Israel to see that the Palestinian refugees continue to be pawns. As far as roots, if their lives are horrible as we are led to believe, the roots they have are decrepit. They should be more than happy to have any reasonable accommodations. We both know that won't happen because it's politically advantageous to keep them where they are. If they really are so fond of their current lives, they should learn to peacefully co-exist with Israel.
I point out Islamic countries refusal to admit so-called Palestinians merely to show hypocrisy. The other Islamic countries have been always willing to instigate, but never willing to truly better the plight of the Palestinians. It's like crying everyday because someone is starving and blaming others but never bothering to give them food.
Well, that's the rub A'Mous - millions of refugees world wide had long time roots and it didn't help them any. Why should Palestine be magically immune?
ReplyDeleteNever see rowdy Deutschers detonating themselves for a right of return to Danzig, or any Greeks freak about Smyrna.
Arab League bears a heavy responsibility for the sitch as it is. Specifically Syria and especially Jordan and Pyramidland. Launching all those wars then bailing on their own people for eons.
Wasting their political muscle with the Three No's in Khartoum, fear of recogging Little Satan in diplopolititary terms (as Egypt has and Jordan almost has made the prob with Palestine an issue that could be settled and re settled easily within Arab League.
Yassar Arafat was born in Cairo in 1929 and served in the Egyptian army.
ReplyDeleteWhat was his excuse?
SAME AS
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