Libya’s Civil War, Arab Refugees, and Palestinian Statehood
“How Many Palestinian Arab Refugees Were There?” asks Professor Efraim Karsh in Israel Affairs (April, 2011). The discussion and his work are critical, because they lie at the heart of other pivotal questions: who are the “Palestinian refugees,” and from where did they come?
Unfortunate victims of the Arab war to destroy Israel in 1948, they have been cared for by UNRWA for 60 years (UNRWA’s yearly budget is now a billion dollars) in numerous towns in Judea and Samaria, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Numbering about 5 million or more according to recent estimates, these once-refugees and their descendants constitute two-thirds of the population in Jordan; many hundreds of thousands reside as second-class residents in southern Lebanon and Syria; many more have headed to Iraq and the Gulf states.
For over four decades the world has increasingly condemned Israel for its “illegal occupation” of Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan: claims of “stealing Palestinian land” and “violating international law.” Israel’s presence there is a result of the 1967 Six-Day war. For Arabs, however, the first and far greater “sin” was the establishment of Israel in 1948: the “Nakba (catastrophe)” which they claim caused Palestinians to flee and created the refugee problem.
Used as weapons in the struggle to destroy Israel, the issue of Arab refugees is a humanitarian concern, one for which Israel is blamed although it’s hard to understand what Israel could have done. The fate of the “refugees” is one of the most difficult knots preventing a resolution of the conflict.
So: who are these refugees?
The Libyan civil war offers an example of what likely happened during the 1930s and 1940s, especially in 1948 in Palestine during the British Mandate when jobs and war attracted Arabs from the region.
Hundreds of thousands of non-Libyans working in Libya, many settled with families, are caught up in the current war. Many thousands were recruited into the armies of both sides from neighboring Arab countries, including mercenaries looking for high-paying jobs (according to reports, $1,000 a day). This is similar to what happened in Palestine before 1948 when large numbers of Arabs moved to Palestine, facilitated by the British. At the same time, Britain actively opposed Jewish immigration and acquisition of land.
Arab attacks increased against Jews in 1947 and especially in early 1948, when Arab gangs and militias drew many outsiders into their forces. In 1948, when Israel was established, they joined the armies of five Arab countries in a war of extermination.
Arabs who were in Palestine in 1949, both native and foreign, either stayed in Israel or became “Palestinian refugees.” Since UNRWA accepted anyone who said they had lived in Palestine for at least two years, there is no way of knowing who was genuinely Palestinian and who was not.
Many good points here but assuming for the sake of argument that the Palestinian narrative–that the peaceful Arabs were expelled en masse by the nefarious Jews–one wonders what difference that should make.
After World War I about a million Ionian Greeks, whose ancestors had lived in western Turkey for at least 2,500 years, were forced out and went to Greece. About a quarter of a million Turks from the Salonika region went to Turkey. None of these people are in refugee camps, or even were for very long.
In the wake of the first Russo-Finnish War 400,000 Karelian Finns were expelled by the Soviets. The number of refugees in Europe after World War II is conservatively estimated at thirty million. The number of Hindus and Muslims who went between India and Pakistan after partition in 1947 can never be known but I believe a low estimate in well into the millions. And of course, the number of Jews who were forced out of Arab lands after 1948 is, coincidentally, about equal to the number of Palestinians who left what became Israel.
And except for the Palestinians, not one of these millions upon millions of refugee is festering in a camp and to my knowledge the Karelian Finns, for example, do not declare a “right of return,” nor are they engaging in acts of grotesque savagery to gain it. My sympathy for the Palestinian refugees is equal to but no more than my sympathy for the Sudeten Germans.
The Palestinians are political pawns just like “victim” groups in the U.S.
I laugh every time I hear the phrase “refugee camp”. How many years has it been since the war of independence and the 6-day war?
I love fantasy; have you ever written any Conan stories?
If the Palestinians declare statehood based on the Armistice lines of 1949, it means an end to the claims of “Palestinian refugees”
No it doesn’t. They can demand both, and indeed they have:
http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=218340
The Palestinians estimated Israel’s absorption capacity at slightly more than a million people over a 10-year period. That’s the only concession the Palestinians were willing to make on the issue. And even that would be only temporary.
They expected additional “returns” later on.
And this demand is part of their framework for establishing a state in the West Bank and Gaza. It is in addition to that.
According to the article, Israeli leadership has agreed to this dynamic in principle, but negotiations fell apart because Olmert was only willing to commit to accepting 10,000 refugees a year, and only for 10 years.
repeated from another thread (Radosh on Syria)
I believe Yom Kippur War II comes in September.
Not for the destruction of Israel, but rather
the creation of a Palestinian ‘state’, as a base for
future raids, re Lebanon.
I thought the majority of “Palestinian” Arabs originated as
migrant farm workers brought in debt bondage to the six ruling Arab
landholders in the area in the 1910s.
Imported and local mercenaries, a la Iraq or Lebanon, makes much sense.
It certainly fits both Africa and the MidEast Islamic structures.
I do know that “Palestinian” referred to Jews until 1967.
The Arab League hired an American public relations firm, and paid them $10 million, to answer one question- “How do we take the high opinion of small, oppressed, plucky Israel in the world’s eyes?”
After a year of research, the firm answered- “Become the small, oppressed image yourselves”. In 1967, for the first time, Arabs began calling themselves Palestinians. Before, calling an Arab that would’ve gotten you a punch in the nose.
Also, the original Nakba-’disaster’ was in 1922.
This was unknown as the French has successfully covered it up until about 2004.
Syria Palestina was one country, under French control. The Arabs and Ottoman Turks had allied with Germany in WWI, and lost.
The French provicial government divided Syria Palestina region in two- Southern Syria became “Palestine”, leaving many patriotic Syrians rather angry and confused.
The Arab ‘leadership’ at the time told it’s people, “Run, the Jews are going to kill you!”
Most, however, were fleeing to escape the vicious Arab gangs rampaging in the neighborhoods, who were looking for ‘sympathizers’ or just easy targets.
When the families tried to come back home, the gangsters told them,
“The war is not finished yet. We’re keeping your house and land and no, you can’t have it back.”
Arab Palestine is occupied… by other Arabs!
Every other people has helped their own to resettle and begin a normal life again. The Arabs keep the Palestinians in “refuge camps” for politcal reasons (the destruction of Israel), and only help with arming and training terrorists. The rest of the world (especially the U.S. and Europe) support the “refugees” of 60 yrs. through the U.N. Most of that money has gone into private bank accounts and not to improving the lives of the common man. They are led by mafia-like thugs and continue to teach hatred and violence to each generation in the mosques, schools, and media.
Before Israel’s War of Independence, the description “Palestinian” referred to the Jews of the region. The term “Palestinian”, as used now, is a misnomer. The Arabs who inhabit the land east of the Green Line and in Gaza are broken into large clans or families of 10,000 each or more. For the most part, they have not merged interests. Some, in fact, are converted (forced) Jews (see http://www.the-engagement.org). This is a well known fact by Jews who dwell east of the Green Line in the various Yishuveem who know Arabs in the Westbank firsthand. Furthermore, there is no coherent “Palestinian” culture which identifies itself as unique although there is a great poet of the people named Mohammed Darwish and there are some other outstanding writers and artists. There is no ongoing system of government, no scientific enterprise and the institutes of advanced education are of a recent variety. In terms of “myths” (the stories of a people), ironically, it is the Nakba itself which, since publicized, which may have the greatest effect on joining the remainder of the Arab people into a coalescence. I suspect that his “myth” is utilized as a cry for union and return to the “homeland”, a homeland to which refugees never will return because their lives are far more satisfactory in their new dwelling places in Europe and the Americas and the call to “return from exile” does not possess much force. By comparison, for the Jewish people, the attraction of return to their homeland is very forceful (the myths and stories of the Torah as a collective binder) and therefore they populate Israel. In other words, the archetypes for the Arab return are very weak. Unlike Jews to Israel, very few Arabs have returned to “Palestine”. The attraction is weak. The collective is weak. the culture, if, indeed, it is a culture, is new, just beginning, and lacks force.
You thought the weather was bad these past few years. Wait until the CFR controlled government tries to force Israel to agree to statehood for the terrorists known as Hamas, and the PLO.
One word. Bunker.
If one reads the research that Alexander H. Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky did into UNWRA and a British General
A Tale of Two Galloways. Notes on the Early History of UNRWA and Zionist Historiography
one comes to the testimony to the Subcommittee on Near East and Africa of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Reverend Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee who quotes Lt. General Sir Alexander Galloway:
one can see that the following
The fate of the “refugees” is one of the most difficult knots preventing a resolution of the conflict.
is not quite so difficult if the truth is unveiled and acknowledged that the Arab League has forever used the so called Palestinians as cannon fodder against the Jews of Israel.
There is no chance of peace until the Arab League accepts it instead of using the Palestinian subterfuge.
Joseph Schechtman wrote extensively on population transfers during wars, another called “The Arab Refugee Problem” taken from official accounts, newspapers, docments, etc. – written at the time and shortly thereafter, Moshe Aumann also wrote a manificant monograph: “Land Ownership in Palestine 1880-1948″, based upon deeds, documents, Peel Palestine Royal Commission Report, UN documents, James Parkes: “Whose Land?”, etc. If anyone is interested, it ain’t hard to find the “facts” and massive population increase during the turn of the century due to increased work and wages – huge influx of arab nationals from other areas – as well as Jewish immigration during the 1800′s and early 1900′s – Jewish land purchases from absentee Arab landowners at exhorbitant prices ($1000 per hectare), etc. Again, Bernard Lewis, Tom Segev, Safran, Laqueur, Hitti, Harkabi, Susan Lee Hattis, etc. ALL have written extensively. Unfortunately, lies are more easily believed. Ignorance abounds. Oy.