Some Thoughts Concerning the Palestinian ‘Refugee’ Dodge - by Evelyn Gordon

...As the journalist Amos Harel noted drily, “Such candid words are very rarely uttered by Arab statesmen.” Which is a pity, and not only because these fake Palestinian refugees divert desperately needed money and services away from real refugees

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
30 June '16..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/the-palestinian-refugee-dodge/

One the most remarkable news items I’ve read lately is Haaretz’s report on a conversation between an Israeli and “a well-known Egyptian statesman…who held top positions in the past and still has great influence on the generals in Cairo.” The Israeli raised the issue of the Palestinian refugees, and the Egyptian exploded:

“What refugees are you talking about?” the Egyptian scolded his Israeli interlocutor. The region is flooded with millions of new refugees living under impossible conditions and desperately needing help. These people fled the terrors of war in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, rotting in the desert in the summer and freezing in the winter.

He went on. The tents they get from neighboring states and international relief agencies are insufficient. Giant tent cities have sprouted up everywhere in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey…

There was more. Against this backdrop, the Palestinians’ insistence on portraying third-generation refugees, the grandchildren of those who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war, is groundless. Many of these refugees live in stone dwellings with proper infrastructure, continuing to benefit from handouts from the UN Relief and Works Agency. Their leaders use them to perpetuate the Palestinian problem.

As the journalist Amos Harel noted drily, “Such candid words are very rarely uttered by Arab statesmen.” Which is a pity, and not only because these fake Palestinian refugees divert desperately needed money and services away from real refugees–a point I’ve made here before. No less significant is what a candid discussion of the refugee issue would reveal about the Palestinian statehood project.

Earlier this month, the reporter Khaled Abu Toameh published an article on the growing unrest, which has already led to violence, in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank. “A quick chat with young Palestinians, including Fatah members, in any refugee camp in the West Bank will reveal a driving sense of betrayal,” he wrote. “They speak of the PA as a corrupt and incompetent body that is managed by ‘mafia leaders’… The feeling is that the PA leadership has done virtually nothing to improve their living conditions and that the real money is going to big cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem, and Hebron.”

Nor is this sense of betrayal unjustified. In the 22 years since its establishment, the Palestinian Authority has received billions of dollars of international aid each year, making it the biggest per capita aid recipient in the world, by a very large margin. But it hasn’t used any of this money either to move the refugees out of their squalid “camps”–which aren’t actually camps, but slum neighborhoods of nearby cities—or to improve conditions in these neighborhoods.

Sorry, but Ayman Odeh is not a man of peace

...Ayman Odeh is not a man of peace. He is far from accomplishing the mission described in Foreign Policy. To Odeh, Israel is a temporary colonial entity. He does not condemn terrorism against Israel and even legitimizes it, and in the internal Israeli-Arab debate, he represents the side that prefers to leave the Arabs alienated from and hostile to the Jewish state. Odeh is a nationalist politician who exploits the openness of Israeli democracy in order to divide, cause friction, and incite. Peace will not come as long as people like Odeh are viewed as moderates deserving of honor and respect.

Image by © ALAA BADARNEH/epa/Corbis

Akiva Bigman..
Commentary Magazine..
14 December '15..

The standing ovation given to Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint Arab List party in Israel, at the Haaretz conference yesterday is a clear demonstration of how he is seen by Western elites. The hundreds of journalist and intellectuals who packed the hall in New York see him as a leader who promotes peace and equality, the embodiment of the progressive dream for the small Jewish-Arab state. His critique of the “establishment that occupies two nations” excited the crowd, and his vision of social justice no doubt touched the hearts of the wealthy Jewish liberals in the audience. The standing ovation for Odeh was a standing ovation for a shared goal: coexistence and equality in a multi-national welfare state.

Foreign Policy has chosen Odeh, an Israeli Arab Member of the Knesset, for its list of 100 leading global thinkers for 2015. In explaining their choice, the editors note that “Middle East peace talks may be all but dead, but Ayman Odeh still dreams of resolving the world’s most intractable conflict,” adding that he “heads the Joint List, a coalition of Arab political parties that united for the first time ever to run in Israel’s March elections.” According to Foreign Policy, Odeh has “yoked diverse leaders — Islamists, secular feminists, socialists,” and his party “is now the Knesset’s third largest and the biggest Arab legislative faction in Israeli history.”

It is difficult to argue with success, but nearly every one of these sentences misrepresents the facts.

MK Odeh has not “united” the Arab parties or “yoked” Arab leaders. In order to understand this, we need a bit of background. In the Israeli political system, many parties run in Knesset elections. In the last elections, no fewer than 25 parties ran, only ten of which won seats. A party must receive a certain minimal percentage of the vote to enter the Knesset. Any party receiving less than this percentage — the “electoral threshold” — will remain outside, even if has received tens of thousands of votes.

The electoral threshold is occasionally changed through legislation, with the aim usually being to neutralize small parties in order to stabilize the political system around medium-size and large parties. In the previous Knesset, right-wing MKs, led by Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beitenu, initiated a relatively dramatic increase in the electoral threshold, from 2 to 3.25 percent. This provided an immediate incentive for small parties with three to four MKs to join together.

The Arab parties, which have a rich record of rivalries and internal conflicts, have received 2 to 4 percent in recent years, placing them on the border of the electoral threshold. A higher threshold endangered their existence, and the decision to undertake a “historic union” was meant to enable them to survive. It was not Odeh who united the Arab parties, but Avigdor Lieberman.

That’s if there was any union at all. The parties that make up the Joint List preserved their organizational and ideological independence, and aside from the fact that all are in the opposition (which is nothing new), they do not operate as one list. The “Joint List” is daily riven by disputes over how to approach the Arab League, cooperation with the Zionist parties, and various draft bills. Even the name of the list shows this: it is only “joint” and not “united.” In Hebrew, this difference indicates technical but not substantive cooperation.

What about Odeh’s goals and policies? Is he a man of peace and conflict resolution? Not if one looks at the evidence. Odeh habitually attacks Israel in a way that leaves no hope for either negotiations or a settlement that includes compromises by both sides; he also consistently walks a fine line between the legitimate and the illegitimate in his support for terrorism.

Wanting an Independent State? As a Matter of Fact, Not Really.

...But then, the attainment of statehood would have shattered Palestinian leaders' pan-Arab and Islamist delusions, not to mention the kleptocratic paradise established on the backs of their long suffering subjects. It would have transformed the Palestinians in one fell swoop from the world's ultimate victim into an ordinary (and most likely failing) nation-state thus terminating decades of unprecedented international indulgence.

Ahmad Shuqeiri,
"Palestine is part
and parcel in the
Arab homeland," adding
that Palestine "is
nothing but southern
Syria.

Efraim Karsh..
Middle East Quarterly..
Summer 2014..

The Palestinian leadership's serial rejection of the numerous opportunities for statehood since the Peel Commission report of 1937 casts a serious doubt on its interest in the creation of an independent state. Instead of engaging in the daunting tasks of nation-building and state creation, all Palestinian leaders without any exception—from the Jerusalem mufti Hajj Amin Husseini, who led the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to the late 1940s; to Yasser Arafat, who dominated Palestinian politics from the mid-1960s to his death in November 2004; to Mahmoud Abbas—have preferred to immerse their hapless constituents in disastrous conflicts that culminated in their collective undoing and continued statelessness. At the same time, of course, these leaders have lined their pockets from the proceeds of this ongoing tragedy.

(Continue)

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Pouring Cold Water on WikiLeaks

Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
14 December '10

Of all the WikiLeaks revelations, the most captivating may be learning that several Arab leaders have urged the U.S. government to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Most notoriously, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called on Washington to "cut off the head of the snake." According to nearly universal consensus, these statements unmask the real policies of Saudi and other politicians.

But is that necessarily so? There are two reasons for doubts.

First, as Lee Smith astutely notes, the Arabs could merely be telling Americans what they think the latter want to hear: "We know what the Arabs tell diplomats and journalists about Iran," he writes, "but we don't know what they really think about their Persian neighbor." Their appeals could be part of a process of diplomacy, which involves mirroring one's allies' fears and desires as one's own. Thus, when Saudis claim Iranians are their mortal enemies, Americans tend uncritically to accept this commonality of interests; Smith maintains, however, that "the words the Saudis utter to American diplomats are not intended to provide us with a transparent window into royal thinking but to manipulate us into serving the interests of the House of Saud." How do we know they are telling the truth just because we like what they are saying?

Second, how do we judge the discrepancy between what Arab leaders tell Western interlocutors sotto voce and what they roar to their masses? Looking at patterns from the 1930s onwards, I noted in a 1993 survey that whispers matter less than shouts: "Public pronouncements count more than private communications. Neither provides an infallible guide, for politicians lie in both public and private, but the former predict actions better than the latter."

The Arab-Israeli conflict, for example, would have ended long ago if one believes confidences told to Westerners. Take the example of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's strongman from 1952 to 1970 and arguably the politician who most made Israel into the abiding obsession of Middle Eastern politics.

(Read full "Pouring Cold Water on WikiLeaks")

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Shock, horror! Arafat (gasp) encouraged terrorist attacks!!

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War
01 October '10

In a syndicated Associated Press report issued yesterday, one of the highest-up thugs in the Hamas terror hierarchy, Mahmoud Zahar, is quoted telling Gaza City students that when Yasser Arafat realized negotiations with Israel were failing ten years ago, he "recommended to Hamas to carry out a number of military operations in the heart of the Hebrew state."

The AP report says it has confirmation of the closed-door session, and says Zahar declined to deny them. It says other Hamas leaders refused to discuss the statements on the record, and several privately expressed displeasure but did not deny them. Zahar's statement were made Tuesday - the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 28, 2000, eruption of violence that became known as the second intifada.

A far more reliable source, the Jerusalem Post's peerless Khaled Abu Toameh, writes that this is the first time a senior Hamas source has conceded that some of the suicide-bombing murders carried out by its agents during the second intifada, which erupted 10 years ago, were ordered by Arafat. Until now, it was widely believed that Arafat had only ordered his Fatah militiamen to carry out terror attacks on Israel.

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Have Arabs Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iranian Bomb?

Contrary to a recent and much-discussed poll, Arabs may not be warming to an Iranian nuclear weapons program.


Charlie Szrom
The American
13 July '10

A new poll published August 5 by the University of Maryland, Zogby International, and researcher Shibley Telhami argues that the Arab world has warmed to the idea of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. The poll of six Arab countries finds that 57 percent of respondents this year said an Iranian nuke would be a “more positive” development for the region, compared to only 29 percent who gave that answer in 2009 when asked, “If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, [what] is the likely outcome for the Middle East region?” This finding has been widely reported (including by outlets in Iran), yet may paint an incomplete picture of Arab attitudes on a potential Iranian nuclear weapons program. The recent poll diverges from other recent polling of the Arab world. When attempting to understand Arab public opinion, policy makers, the media, and the public should take into account these contradictory polls and the overall difficulty of polling the Arab world.

Among others, Pew Global Attitudes’ June poll arrived at different conclusions from the UMD/Zogby/Telhami poll on this question. In the three countries in which Pew and Telhami polling overlapped—Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon—Pew found that in only one country, Lebanon, citizens became less concerned between 2009 and 2010 about the threat from an Iranian nuclear weapon. This is likely due to the large Shi’a community in Lebanon and the considerable influence of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization in the country. In Egypt and Jordan, the number of people concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon rose by 5 and 19 points, respectively. Pew also found a slight increase in Egypt in the past year among those opposed to an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and only slight declines in Jordan and Lebanon.

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The Israel-Arab Conflict: "Root Causes" and "Red Herrings"

Martin Sherman
JINSA
28 July '10

The Context: Restoring Memory

Israel is continuously accused by its detractors of "occupying" Palestinian territory and "usurping" Palestinian land by means of an "expansionary settlement policy."

"Occupation" and "Settlements" have thus become the buzzwords by which to denote, to decry and defame Israel's control of the territories across the 1967 armistices lines. This prevailing custom is wildly at odds with the realities that forced Israel to seize these territories in an unequivocal act of self defense against threats of annihilation, in classic preemptive exercise of the right of "anticipatory self defense."

A 2003 article "Jus ad Bellum: Law Regulating Resort to Force", published by the American Bar Association, sets out the rather stringent conditions for the legitimate exercise of "anticipatory self defense." It stipulates that the necessity for action must be "instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." It goes on to quote a "recent edition of a leading treatise [which] states that [anticipatory] self-defense may justify use of force under the following conditions: an attack is immediately threatened; there is an urgent necessity for defensive action; there is no practicable alternative, particularly when another state or authority that legally could stop or prevent the infringement does not or cannot do so..."

There is clearly not doubt that these conditions were met in June 1967.

The declarations of Arab leaders, before Israel held a square inch of territory now claimed to be "occupied," show irrefutably that "an attack was immediately threatened" and that there was indeed "an urgent necessity for defensive action." Furthermore, there was clearly no practicable alternative, particularly when another state or authority that legally could stop or prevent the infringement did not do so..." (since the UN had, at Cairo's behest, removed its troops from the Israeli-Egyptian border; and the United States and other maritime powers refused to remove Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran, and to honor their commitments to allow Israel the right of navigation in the Red Sea.)

(Read full report)

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The Middle East that could have been

Efraim Karsh argues that the Palestinian-Jewish struggle might have ended peacefully in 1947-- if only Arab leaders hadn't opted for war


Ephraim Karsh
National Post
14 May '10

"There is no place in Palestine for two races. The Jews left Palestine 2,000 years ago. Let them go to other parts of the world, where there are wide vacant places."

--Hajj Amin Husseini, 1936

"We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption--proven throughout all our activity in the Land of Israel --that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs." --David Ben-Gurion, 1937

On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine into two independent states -- one Jewish, the other Arab -- linked in an economic union. The city of Jerusalem was to be placed under an international regime, with its residents given the right to citizenship in either the Jewish or the Arab state.

For Jews all over the world, this was the fulfillment of a millenarian yearning for national rebirth in their ancestral homeland. For Arab political and intellectual elites, it was a shameful surrender of (a however minute) part of the perceived pan-Arab patrimony to a foreign invader. In Jewish localities throughout Palestine, crowds danced in the streets. In the Arab capitals there were violent demonstrations.

"We are happy and ready for what lies ahead," the prominent Zionist official and future Israeli prime minister Golda Meyerson(Meir) told thousands of revellers in Jerusalem. "Our hands are extended in peace to our neighbours. Both States can live in peace with one another and co-operate for the welfare of their inhabitants."

To this, however, the response of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), the effective "government" of the Palestinian Arabs, headed by the militant ex-mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Husseini, was an all-out war. In the five-and-a-half months between the passing of the UN resolution and the end of the British mandate, the former mufti's forces, assisted by a sizeable pan-Arab irregular army, carried out thousands of attacks on their Jewish neighbours in an attempt to prevent them from establishing their state.

This failed, and by the time the last British high commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham, left the country and the state of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, Palestinian Arab society had all but disintegrated, with 300,000-340,000 of its members fleeing their homes to other parts of Palestine and to the neighbouring Arab states.

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Arabs allow indirect talks

Soccer Dad
02 May '10

In Arabs Back Indirect Talks Between Palestinians - NYTimes.com, Michael Slackman reports:

Arab ministers gathered late Saturday at the offices of the Arab League here at the request of the Palestinian leadership, which sought regional support before agreeing, again, to enter into indirect talks.

But while the Palestinians and the Arab ministers agreed to endorse jump-starting peace talks that have been stalled for more than a year, they did not give ground on the issue of settlements.

We keep hearing how important the issue of Palestine is to the Arab world. The collection of unelected kings and despots who rule these countries are touchingly concerned about the self determination of the Palestinians. Yet if it's so important, why do the Palestinians require "regional support" to participate in "indirect" negotiations with Israel?

This reminds me of a 27 year old observation by Daniel Pipes:

Recognizing the critical role of Arab help has several implications for Middle East politics. First, it means that the PLO has very little of the political power so often ascribed to it. The PLO may appear to shape the policy of most Arab states, but in fact it reflects their wishes. It brings up the rear, echoing and rephrasing the weighted average of Arab sentiments. This suggests that it will moderate only when its Arab patrons want it to; so long as the Arab consensus needs it to reject Israel, the PLO must do so. Aspiring peacemakers in the Middle East must therefore not make settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute contingent on PLO concurrence, for this is to give a veto to the organization least prone to compromise.

If the Palestinian Authority require support (or perhaps permission) to negotiate however gingerly with Israel, maybe it isn't quite so independent as advertised.

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What Comes from Israel-Bashing

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
06 April '10

In the list of foreseeable consequences from the Obami’s assault on Israel is the radicalization of more moderate Arab leaders, who can’t be seen as less aggressive than the Obama team in insisting on unilateral concessions by Israel. As this report explains:

Jordan’s leader also delivered in an interview Monday with The Wall Street Journal a rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, charging that his policy of building homes for Jewish families in East Jerusalem has pushed Jordanian-Israeli relations to their lowest point since a 1994 peace treaty.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said he will push the Obama administration next week to impose on Israel the terms and time-line for new peace talks with the Palestinians, as concerns mount inside his government that the stalled dialogue could fuel a new round of violence in the Middle East that targets moderate Arab states…

King Abdullah’s calls for Mr. Obama to essentially dictate the terms for Israeli-Palestinian talks is feeding into a policy debate in Washington over how hard to push Mr. Netanyahu.

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Arabs became refugees following leaders' promise: "A week, two weeks... and you'll return to Palestine"

Itamar Marcus/Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)
15 February '10

An Arab refugee in Lebanon described in an interview on Palestinian Authority TV how he and other Arabs left for Lebanon from Israel during the 1948 war, after Arab leaders said their absence would be temporary:

"They [Arab leaders] said: 'A week, two weeks, approximately, and you'll return to Palestine,'" said Sadek Mufid.



This refugee's testimony is yet another example of how Palestinian leaders, writers and refugees themselves have begun to speak out in recent years and openly blame the Arab leadership for the creation of the Arab refugee problem. Mufid describes a large departure to Lebanon from Israel, which led to the creation of "11 or 15 refugee camps." He does not place the blame on Israel.

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