In any abridged analyses of this kind, one has to ask: What happened when.
After the UN Nov. 29, 1947 resolution, a large number of upper and middle class Palestinians left their homes to move to Amman, Beirut or Damascus. Thus, when war was started by the Arabs on May 14, 1948, the Palestinian leadership was already safely ensconced in various resorts. This left the farmers and shopkeepers to fend for themselves.
When artillery shells start falling on your village one either hunkers down or flees. Similarly, thousands of refugees tried to flee to France at the start of the Second World War. Even though the Arab radio requested villagers to stay in their homes most Palestinians fled with the (partial) understanding that when the Arabs were victorious in driving the Jews into the sea, they would get back home. When it became evident that the Arab coalition was starting to lose the great exodus started between May and June 1948, primarily because of fears and rumours of reprisal.
A lot of these tales were started by the Zionist propaganda machine and further exacerbated by the Arab leadership encouragement for the evacuation of Palestinian women and children. Of course, no Palestinian male would leave his family in such an undertaking. Only in the second half of this conflict, after the ceasefire in July, were Palestinians forcibly removed from certain areas, including the Negev desert. On the other hand, many Jews were “encouraged” to leave the Arab nations especially after the 1956 war. They do not have the right of return.
After a few more wars the present situation on the ground and the plight of the Palestinians needs to be looked at. First, there is no “right of return” for the Palestinians for the same reason as Japanese-Canadians do not have the right of return to their former homes on the West Coast. Palestinians have historically lived in Egypt, (Trans) Jordan, Syria and Lebanon as well as Iraq and Turkey and Yemen. But the biggest problem exists in the dealing with refugees from war between the Israeli State and the Arab countries.
Yasser Arafat (remember him?) is rumoured to have amassed close to a billion dollars through cement deals and extra fuel taxes on the citizens of Gaza. Or, “Hamas, says Professor Ahmed Karima of Al-Azhar University in Egypt, has long become a movement of millionaires. According to Karima, the organization can count no less than 1,200 millionaires among its members.” Check out the villas in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City, where a lot of war correspondents stay during a war. In other words, it is a fact, however inconvenient to some pre-conceived notions, that after spending billions of dollars in Gaza and the West Bank by western countries, most folks still live in poverty. And the only blame for that can be put squarely on the corrupt leadership of the Palestinian people.
Talking to paid mouthpieces of an advocacy group is not going to change facts and can hardly be considered unbiased, because the Palestinians had just as much time to build a country as the Israelis. I do not condone illegal acts of any kind by whomever. I just think that well meaning folks forget the history of the region and those that forget the past are doomed to repeat the errors of yesteryear.
Joe Prins, St. Albert
