Op-Ed
Palestinian Arabs Eschew Responsibility
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Alumni Viewpoint
September 24, 2007 - 11:00pmChris Tozzi’s critique (“Column does not mention suffering of Palestinians,” Letters, Sept. 20) of Judd Robert Rothstein’s Guest Room article (“Arab Jews — an Oxymoron,” Sept. 19) displays incredible ignorance of historical fact. What is this Israeli “ethnic cleansing project” of which he speaks? Who were these “welcoming nations” ready to gather in the Jews suddenly expelled from their centuries-old communities throughout the Middle East in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948? (Remember, this was but a short time after the annihilation of six million European Jews, during a six-year period when NO country, not even the U.S., would open its gates to desperate Jewish refugees.)
Yes, Chris, there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in squalid camps through the Middle East today. But who put them there? And who KEEPS them there?
Why are Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan confined to camps today, 60 years later, held by their Arab “hosts” as pawns in the campaign against Israel that the Arabs just can’t seem to let go of?
Better yet, why are there such camps in Gaza, Ramallah, Nablus, etc., where there is Palestinian autonomy? No refugees in the history of the world have ever been so confined by their own people.
Israel, by contrast, has absorbed millions of refugees from all over the world. (That includes non-Jews, too — like Muslims from Serbia, boat people from Vietnam, and Sudanese — whom no other nation would accept.) And they have all been absorbed. There are no refugee camps in Israel.
There are, however, a million Palestinian Arabs enjoying full rights of citizenship in Israel. Do you find it interesting that in the “peace” talks between Israel and the P.A., what emerges is a State of Israel where Palestinians can be full Israeli citizens, but the new Palestinian state must be 100 percent Judenrein? How ironic that one of the proposals has been to make a land swap — borders would be redrawn so that Palestinian towns in Israel could be part of the new Palestinian state, in exchange for Jewish communities in the West Bank, contiguous to Jerusalem, that would become part of Israel. NO DEAL, say the Palestinians, who don’t seem to be turned on by the prospect of giving up their Israeli citizenship, which gives them more rights than they could ever enjoy in any Arab country.
The P.A. has been the recipient of billions of dollars of largesse, and what do they have to show for it? Have they ever done anything with the millions from Saudi Arabia, from the E.U., and from — yes — the U.S., to improve, let’s say, the housing situation in Gaza? Instead, what gets past the corrupt leaders (remember, Arafat, a man of humble origins, died a multimillionaire, and his widow is still living the high life in Paris), has gone to create a veritable armed citadel that is just itching to provoke an all-out war with Israel. (It must really irk them that their daily rocket attacks on Sderot have not yet provoked such a war.)
After the Six-Day War in 1967, when Egypt (which created the refugee camps in Gaza) was forced to withdraw from that territory after its 19-year occupation, Israel embarked on the first and only bold effort to ease the plight of Palestinians there. The plan was to build high-rise apartment complexes in Gaza and move the “refugees” out of the camps. The construction of these complexes would also be an economic boon, giving employment to lots of Gazans. What was the Arab reaction? At Arafat’s urging, the Arab nations rushed to the U.N. to condemn Israel for violating the Geneva Convention against “forcible resettlement of refugees.” In other words — leave them right where they are, where we can continue to use them as pawns to extort money from the rest of the world, to be used against Israel.
Chris, it’s about time the Palestinian Arabs and their apologists stopped whining and trying to blame Israel for all their ills. When is the last time we heard a statement of responsibility emanating from the Palestinian community, other than for a terrorist attack?
Peter A. Berkowsky, law ’67, can be contacted at fud42@comcast.net. Alumni Viewpoint appears periodically.