The ignorance and bigotry spouted by so many of the writers here is astonishing! So many opinions from so many people who seem to know nothing about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Reds–learn some factual history!)and who have never even visited that part of the world — they drown out the few sane and informed comments here (thanks, Chileno, for sounding an intelligent note and pointing out some facts). Many things might be said to correct this ignorance. Let me mention just a few of the more salient points. First: What should be most interesting about the Palestinian refugees and their miserable plight is that of all the millions and millions of displaced populations who emerged from the conflicts of the mid-20th century, they are the ONLY group for whom no permanent solution has been found in 60 years. Why is this so? Part of this crime may be laid at the doorstep of the UN: the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission on Refugees) was created to address the ongoing problem of refugee populations; but Palestinians are the sole group of refugees with a UN agency dedicated exclusively to their care: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which operates independently of the Convention on refugees. Moreover, while the UNHCR actively seeks durable solutions to refugee problems, UNRWA has declined to entertain any permanent solution for the Palestinian refugees, insisting instead on a politically unfeasible “return” to pre-1967 Israel. The Arab nations are also responsible, having refused to take in these refugees and instead having cynically decided to leave them to rot as a wonderful public relations image to keep their fight against Israel alive — a good way to keep the “Arab Street” ablaze and thus unable to look too closely at the corruption and misrule they live under in most of their countries. Let’s leave aside the fact that many Palestinians voluntarily fled their homes in 1947-48, and accept that others were forcibly ejected by the new nation of Israel. And let’s remind the world that while those 500,000 Palestinians were changing domiciles, nearly 1,000,000 Jews were forcibly expelled — or fled — from Arab countries at the same time. However, of all the millions of displaced Jews, from both Europe and Arab lands, all who wished to settle in Israel were not only admitted, but welcomed and assimilated as quickly as possible. Today, those 500,000 Palestinians and their descendants number in the millions, a leaderless, miserable, poverty-stricken population that is a cauldron for terrorism and suicide bombers. Of course their Arab brethren who, along with the UN, are largely responsible for their plight, will not take them in now — how great a force for destabilization would they be in Egypt, Syria, Saudia Arabia, Jordan and so on?
On a personal note, and back to the article by de Winter which sparked the discussion of “whose house this is” and “whose land this is”. Let’s ask the questions, “Who is a refugee”? and “How long can one maintain legitimate refugee status”? I was born in France into a family of Ashkenazi Jews who had already fled or been expelled from their homes in Hungary, Germany and Poland before WWII. I was brought to the US as a small child. While most of my extended family perished in the Holocaust, those who survived made their way to the United States and Israel, or returned to France. I do not consider myself a “refugee,” my adult children can in no way be thought of as refugees, nor can I fathom that my grandchildren in California might consider themselves “refugees” from a house in Hungary or a farm in Poland or Germany which they have never seen and which is now probably a factory or a school — or someone else’s house! If we did think that way, or worse, allow others to encourage this fruitless thinking, we all might be the miserable occupants of slums like the Palestinians. I have also lived in the modern post-Soviet Czech Republic and witnessed a civilized system at work in offering reparations to those who had lost lands and property under the Communist regime. The lesson I learned from the Czechs, both those who fled to the West and those who didn’t? They understood that after fifty or sixty years, you can’t go home again: people were paid for homes that had become factories or schools or whatever. That’s a lesson yet to be learned by the Palestinians and those who have worked so hard to keep their anger ablaze for generations.
LIFE MOVES IN ONLY ONE DIRECTION: FORWARD. That is the main difference between the misery we see today in Gaza and the vibrant nation built by the Israelis — or, for that matter, by other countries whose populations have undergone forced or chosen removal: India comes to mind here! The conspiracy of the UNRWA and the Arab League to keep this population in “refugee camps” (please read “slums”) has sown the seeds of today’s disaster. And one last thought about the silence in the West Bank during this past month (those Palestinians are not interested, it would seem, in continuing this long agony), and the contrasting havoc and in Gaza: de Tocqueville said that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. I do not wish death and disaster on anyone, most especially the Palestinians, who have been so cruelly used by so many outside parties. But they elected Hamas in a democratic process. If the last month has not convinced them of their error in choosing hatred and terror and a fruitless yearning for a lost and largely imagined past over liberty and prosperity, what will?
