Enforced Misery: The PA and the Balata ‘Refugee’ Camp
The conventional wisdom is that the Middle East peace talks between Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas will go nowhere, as each side is engaged in an elaborate charade to please the Obama administration.
Netanyahu cannot move one hundred thousand Israelis off the West Bank, nor can he give up the strategic high ground in the Judean desert. Abbas cannot speak for the majority of the Palestinians, and his lack of legitimacy is underscored by his currently serving the sixth year of a four-year term. Like Yasser Arafat, Abbas has shown no desire to go down in history as the Palestinian who gave up the refugees’ “right of return.”
The refugee problem is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to peace. And it has taken on a life of its own, as the refugees have become a useful gimmick in the peace charade.
Depending upon whose estimate you read, there are some twenty or thirty thousand “refugees” in the Balata refugee camp outside of Nablus. Balata is simultaneously the most populous and smallest of the Palestinian refugee camps — its growing population is confined to one square kilometer, making it one of the most densely populated and miserable places on the planet.
Any regime with an ounce of compassion would have shut Balata down and integrated its people into the surrounding community. Balata is a place without hope, a quagmire of despair, where the day-to-day misery of its inhabitants is partially ameliorated by Western charities and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), while inadvertently building a culture of dependence.
Balata’s creation could ostensibly be laid at Israel’s doorstep, but its perpetuation cannot. The current residents of Balata are only refugees by a crude reworking of the meaning of the term. They themselves have fled from nothing, and sought refuge from nothing. They are the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the people who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war.
If you want to use the term “apartheid” to characterize some aspect of Middle East politics, then Balata is a good place to apply it. It is the Palestinian Authority’s answer to Soweto.
The PA does not permit the children of Balata to go to local schools. It does not permit the people of Balata to build outside the one square kilometer. The people of Balata are prevented from voting in local elections, and the PA provides none of the funds for the necessary infrastructure of the camp — including sewers and roads.
Balata and the other refugee camps are showcases of contrived misery. They are Potemkin villages in reverse. Naïve peace activists and unsophisticated Western clergy are led through such camps to witness the refugee drama, with Israel conveniently and prominently cast in the role of villain.
Stop funding UNRWA & the problem will solve itself no matter what the Arabs want.
Who the hell do you think funds the phony refugee problem? The U.S. & the EU.
These “refugee camps” weren’t people fleeing from Jewish agression in 1948, they were fleeing TO Jewish controlled areas to get away from the invading Arab Muslim armies.
That’s why those camps were in Israel, not in Egypt and Syria…
The PLO and Hamas however quickly took control there through infiltration and now effectively run them (and have for decades) as recruitment and training centers, with full support from the United Nations, shipping in weapons and explosives in UN and Red Cross/Crescent vehicles.
PA/Arab misogyny, violations of human rights, and most especially Judenrein policies are okey dokey with Washington and the rest of the power players.Therefore, whenever they bray about Israel being ‘mean’ to the PA Arabs, well, it only reinforces their mendacious double standards, and the absolute fact that they use the PA Arabs as a bludgeon against Israel.
The biggest stumbling block and the biggest obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians is not the refugees, not Jerusalem, and not even the 1967 borders.
No Mr. Miller, the only obstacle to peace between the two sides is the Palestinian goal of the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish People.
The peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have always failed because the Palestinians, instead of negotiating in good faith towards a just and agreed settlement with Israel, have always treated the negotiations as simply another front in their war to destroy Israel.
The Palestinians do not even discuss the negotiations as peace talks, rather they describe the talks as a way to end the Israeli “occupation.” Indeed, Palestinian TV and radio, as well as the schools and universities, broadcast programs and teach courses in the illegitimacy of Israel and preach the most horrific anti Semitic slanders imaginable.
The Palestinians have rejected out of hand every compromise Israel has ever offered, including Israeli offers of dividing Jerusalem and removing practically every Jewish settlement. The Israeli offers the Palestinians haven’t rejected they have simply ignored, and worse, the Palestinians have never offered a single compromise of their own. Indeed, the Palestinians have stated publicly over and over again, that they will never, ever even recognize Israel as a Jewish State.
The Palestinians uncompromising and rejectionist positions are the single obstacle to peace with Israel.
I am not in disagreement. It is just that in the charade of negotiations the refugees are presented as a stumbling block and if the Arabs were truly interested in negotiations that block could easily be removed.
here is an obstacle to peace that the Arabs themselves could eliminate within years, if not months, by shutting down the refugee camps and integrating their inhabitants into the surrounding communities.
When Israel after “occupying” Gaza during the 1967 war in which it defeated the Egyptians, started building housing for Gazans and putting in infrastructure for their well being the UN objected:
Why Palestinians Still Live in Refugee Camps
At the Dohar Debates it was said that normalizing the lives of the Palestinians currently living outside Israel would be “playing into the Zionists hands”.
So it is clear that the quality of the lives of the Palastinians is meaningless to their own brothers and the purpose of their existance is purely to “get at the Zionists”.
Read this before deciding that Jordan is an exception:
http://www.hudson-ny.org/982/we-are-property-the-jordanian-government-gets-paid-for-every-palestinian-living-here
Well, gee, maybe it’s because the PA didn’t snitch on themselves to the U.N. Humans Rights Commission? You, know, that U.N. civil rights program that requires all countries to submit reports on themselves about their civil rights violations committed against there own people? We just joined it. And we snitched on Arizona for enforcing Federal immigration law as an example of how progressive civil rights enforcement should work at the U.N. And that’s why you still have Arabs who call themselves Palestinians still hanging out in concentration camps, because the countries providing the concentrations camps sit on the U.N. Civil Rights Commission. See? It’s a process.
This an incredible article that stands in the sharpest contrast to all that is written about Jordan and its treatment of the refugees. It amazes me that you can read almost forever and not even come close to this understanding of the true behavior of the Jordanian government, which in large measure is no different from that of other Arab countries. It underscores the inhumanity of the Arabs toward their own people.
Mr.Miller,
All we have to do, is remember how Arafat thanked Assad Father, when he allowed PLO to come to Syria. Now, I’m not a friend of Syrians, especially while they playing these game with Iran, but Assad father had a very good way of dealing with terrorists. Come to think of it, King Abdullah father also was very “fond” of them. He fell in love with them in September, As I recall. Now, What year was that.
Dear Skydiver,
The year was 1970, and it was Abdullah’s father, Hussein, whose Beduin Army slaughtered thousands of Palestinian terrorists, as well as any non combatant Palestinian men, women, children, and babies who got in the way or just had the bad luck to be there. This Jordanian massacre and later expulsion of the Palestinians led to the establishment of the Black September terrorist organization which was supposed to take revenge on Jordan and King Hussein but as usual attacked Israeli and Jewish targets instead.
The PLO then moved it’s terror base to South Lebanon until the Israeli Army drove them out to Tunisia.
Great article!
As always, Abe, if I want to know what is really happening, I look to your articles to explain it – which you have just done with the Palestinian ‘refugee’ problem. Dead depressing – but you have explained it.
ARAB-NAZISM & GENOCIDE = ROOTS OF ‘APARTHEID-COMPARISON’ THESIS
Ahmad shukairy Arab-nazi has invented the apartheid slur (upon pluralistic democratic Israel. Where Arabs are not only treated equal in all aspects, but often enjoy more rights than Jews, in ‘affirmative action’ and other preferential treatments [1]), six years before the so-called “occupation” excuse came about: in 1961.[2] He helped the (ally of Adolf Hitler, al-Husseini, better known as the) Mufti and aided in extermination of Jews in WW2, according to testimony in Congress.[3] The same Shukairy admitted in 1956 that so-called “Palestine” is NOTHING but a part of Syria…[4] Then, in 1963, he changed his mind, and the ‘new nationalism’ is ‘conveniently’ used -since then- by Arab immigrants’ children who call themselves as “Palestinians” [mainly] since about that same year. He’s more famous for coining the Palestine Liberation Organization’s genocide slogan ‘Drive the Jews into the Sea’.[5] And if all that wasn’t enough, he also identified himself with Nazi groups in 1962.[6]
ARAB MUSLIM APARTHEID
All the while the Arab world and the Muslim world are the largest practitioners of racial and religious apartheid. Where not one minority has equal rights with the governing power’s ethnic-group/race/religion. Not to mention the still-practiced racist slavery on Asians and on blacks by Arabs. And the ethnic cleansing by the Arab world including by anti-Christian, anti-Jewish Arab-Islamic-Apartheid-Palestine.[7]
To quote from books: The Islamic world “the world’s largest practitioner of both religious and gender apartheid.”[8] “The Islamic culture of “religious intolerance, economic backwardness, gender apartheid, muzzled press, militarism, terrorism.”[9] The “antisemitism of the Arab world and the Muslim world.” The racist “long history of oppression against minorities in Arab countries.”[10]
PALLYWOOD
The lying Arab-Palestinian Goliath machine not only lies and denies Israel’s extending more rights to Arabs than to Jews (like favortism in court, affirmative action and exemption from military service), but also fabricates “memorandums” like a supposed speech by N. Mandela which was actually written by an Arab residing in the Netherland… The Arab lobby also aided J. Carter (the one who wrote a hate book in 2006 with almost an exact title of that by Palestinian-Arab M. Bishara in 2002), who uttered anti-Jewish bigoted statements like: ‘stating Freeman’s recommendations for council board members contained “too many Jews.”‘[11]
AIM
The racist Arab “apartheid” slander campaign (like infamous ‘apartheid week’) has been accompanied by usual anti-Jewish hatred outbursts, including calls to kill Jews, Swastikas, etc.[12]
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BTW
Anti Semitism always refered to exclusively anti-Jewish bigotry [see: (renowned historian and scholar) Bernard Lewis, "Semites and Antisemites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice," New York: WW Norton, 1986], including by: Arab anti-Jewish racism and Islamic anti-Jewish intolerance which is the thrust of the “conflict” that began by al-Husseini the Mufti in the 1920s. From the Wall Street Journal, “The Mufti of Berlin” – September, 2009: ‘Arab-Nazi collaboration is a taboo topic in the West. …venom pioneered by the mufti as do Islamic hate preachers around the world. Muslim Judeophobia is not as is commonly claimeda reaction to the Mideast conflict but one of its main “root causes.” It has been fueling Arab rejection of a Jewish state long before Israel’s creation.’
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Notes:
1 – ["Affirmative Action? the Israeli Edition" - Op-Eds - Israel National News, 7 Feb 2002] ["Israel: The Jewish affirmative action state, by Ariel Natan Pasko, IsraelInsider, July 1, 2005] ['Israel Government Action in the Arab Sector', Jewish Virtual Library, February 21, 2000)] ["Israel National Radio - Zionist Affirmative Action." 12/7/2010 3:58:00 PM. A7 Radio's "Behind the Scene" with David Bedein. Israel National News] ["Affirming affirmative action" - by Mohammad Darawshe, Haaretz, 02-04-10] ["Israel a safe haven for Arabs" - Israel Opinion, Ynetnews, 27 Apr 2011] ["Government approves affirmative action in civil service." 'Government offices will be encouraged to recruit staff from ethnic minorities, especially Arabs.' Globes, 12 March 06, Zeev Klein] ["Zionism as Affirmative Action" - The Israel Report April 2001] ["2000 students owe university place to affirmative action" - Haaretz. 19 Nov 2009]
2 – [Middle East Record Volume 2, 1961 By Yitzhak Oron, Ed., p. 188]
3 – [Congressional record: proceedings and debates of the United States Congress: Volume 113, Part 12 - United States. Congress - Govt. Print. Off., 1967 - Page A-525]
4 – [United Nations review: Volume 3 - United Nations. Dept. of Public Information, United Nations. Office of Public Information - 1957 - Page 8] ["Politics, lies, and videotape: 3,000 questions and answers on the Mideast crisis" - Page 392 - Yitschak Ben Gad - SP Books, 1991 - 479 pages]
5 – [America's Two Holy Wars - John Tyler - Page 246]
6 – [The re-emergence of fascism - by Dennis Eisenberg, MacGibbon & Kee, 1967, 348 Pages - Page 322]
7 – ["Christians Under Threat," Christian Action for Israel, Jan. 1998] [" 'State of Palestine' Constitution Institutes Islamic Law," Israel National News - Dec 30, 2003] ["A Not So Merry Christmas in the Holy Land" By David Bedein - Israel Beheind The News - Dec 26 2003] ["Christian Persecution in Gaza" - The Investigative Project on Terrorism - Dec 12, 2008] [Poll: Young PA Arabs want Sharia Law, Seek - Israel National News - Oct 27, 2010] [Palestinians want to live under Sharia Law - israel today - Oct 28, 2010] [The Arab Spring and Christian Persecution - AINA (press release) - Joseph Puder - Sep 7, 2011] ["What Will the New Palestinian State Look Like?" - by Giulio Meotti on Sep 21st, 2011, FPM] ["The United Nations Should Not Recognize an Apartheid, Judenrein, Islamic Palestine" - Hudson NY - September 21, 2011]
8 – [Israel: And the Palestinian Nightmare - Page 158 - Ze'ev Shemer - 2010 - 244 pages]
9 – [A theory of international terrorism: understanding Islamic militancy - Page 153 - L. Ali Khan - 2006 - 371 pages]
10 – [U.S. news & world report: Volume 131, Issues 8-18 - U.S. News Pub. Corp., 2001 - Page 120] ["Beware Palestinian apartheid," 'Op-ed: Palestinian leader Abbas seeks to adopt racist policy based on ethnic cleansing of Jews.' Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, Ynet, 08.04.10] [The Real Apartheid State, by David Bedein, 2011]
11 – [Living in the Times of the Signs - Page 219 - David R. Barnhart - 2007 - 492 pages]
12 – [M. Ignatieff: Israel Apartheid Week and CUPE Ontario's anti-Israel posturing should be condemned." National Post, March 05, 2009] ["A Double Standard For Campus Free Speech," The Jewish Press, 25 Feb 2009] ["Swastikas and Ku Klux Klan Symbols during 'Apartheid Week..." Israel National News, 3 Mar 2010]