Why they lie
Khaled Abu Toameh blasts the Arab governments, including the 'Palestinian Authority' for continuing to lie to the 'Palestinian refugees' about the prospects of them returning to their putative former homes in Israel. No Arab or Palestinian leader has ever dared to confront the refugees with the truth, namely that they are not going to move into Israel. On the contrary, Palestinian and Arab leaders continue to tell these people that they will go back to their former villages and towns.The bigger question is why the rest of the World is also not willing to tell the 'Palestinian refugees' the truth. I attribute that to the anti-Semitic desire of many countries in the rest of the World to destroy the Jewish state.
Arab and Palestinian governments are lying to the refugees because they want to avoid any responsibility toward their plight. The Arab governments hosting the refugees have done almost nothing to improve the living conditions of the refugees.
On the contrary, Palestinian refugees living in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan have long been subjected the victims of racism and other repressive and unjust measures and laws that deprive them even of basic rights. Governments such as Jordan receive a payment for each refugee, turning the refugees into nothing more than property, like stocks on Wall Street.
Since its establishment in 1994, the Palestinian Authority has also done very little to help the refugees. In the West Bank, most of the international aid is being invested in major cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Jenin, as well as scores of villages.
UNRWA is also not offering a solution to the refugees. Instead, the UN agency is perpetuating the problem by creating new generations of refugees. UNRWA is in fact encouraging the refugees to stay where they are. For UNRWA, refugees are a gigantic UN jobs program, providing over 30,000 of them, costing over $1 billion USD a-year, or, according to separate sources, a third of all other UN regugee services combined.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:33 AM
1 Comments:
I've used Lozowick's _Right to Exist_ to teach my oldest daughter about Israel. Learned a lot myself. Lozowick is not as much of a hawk as I'm inclined to be. I think he would call himself an Israeli centrist. But he's a real historian and does a good job. One of the things that impressed both her and me the most in his book was this: When there were the Clinton-forced talks in 2000 about the establishment of a "Palestinian" state, the "Palestinians" were really concerned and were asking the UNRWA whether they would lose their refugee status if a state were established! They wanted to continue to be considered "refugees" even if they had a "state of their own" to belong to. Why? Because they wanted to continue to receive the dubious benefits of being supported by UNRWA and also because they wanted to be able to continue to push for a right of return to Israel proper.
That really showed what they're up to and what their motives are.
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