Behind the 'Palestinian' silence on Syrian refugees
Yet rather than making this argument, the PA has gone to great lengths to ignore the Syrian crisis. As Abu Toameh noted, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s UN address in September devoted a mere two sentences to the subject, without ever even mentioning Syria by name (“This year and in the last few years, Palestine refugees continue to pay – despite their neutrality – the price of conflict and instability in our region. Tens of thousands are forced to abandon their camps and to flee in another exodus searching for new places of exile”). The rest of the speech was devoted to attacking Israel. Hence Abbas deplored the 27 Palestinians killed “by the bullets of the occupation,” but never mentioned the hundreds killed in Syria during this period; he excoriated the construction of new Jewish homes in Jerusalem, but never mentioned the wholesale destruction of Palestinian homes in Syria.
Nor are these omissions accidental–because in fact, the PA leadership doesn’t want a state to succor its refugees. If it did, it wouldn’t still be demanding that any deal allow Palestinian refugees to relocate to Israel instead of Palestine, nor would senior PA officials be publicly declaring that the refugees will be denied citizenship in a future Palestinian state. It also wouldn’t still be insisting on land swaps of no more than 1.9 percent, rather than the 4 to 6 percent needed to accommodate the major settlement blocs; it would view this minor compromise, which wouldn’t even reduce the Palestinian state’s total area, as well worth making to get a state quickly and start absorbing its refugees–just as the Jews were willing to make much larger territorial concessions in the 1930s and 1940s due to the urgent need for a state to absorb their refugees.
The Syrian crisis remains absent from Palestinian talking points because Palestinians are still far more intent on destroying the Jewish state–inter alia by flooding it with millions of Palestinian refugees–than in making the compromises needed to get a state of their own and absorb those refugees themselves. And that’s also precisely why peace remains impossible.Indeed.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Middle East peace process, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian refugees, Syrian refugees
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:24 PM
1 Comments:
That's partially the reason. The deeper reason is that were there ever to be some sort of half baked 'palestinian' nation, day one, every single Arab state would march its 'palestinian refugees' to the border, at gunpoint for them to return to their homeworld. This would create enormous logistical problems for them as they finally fall victim to the effects of their own half century of nonsensical hate speech. Overnight 'palestine' would, by their own reckoning, have to take in about 5 million 'refugees'. With no other options - the 'palestinian state' would therefore declare them all 'refugees'. That is, 'palestinian 'refugees' in 'palestine' under 'palestinian' control among their own people in their own ethnically cleansed home. Of course politically that's a good thing since it will allow them to live on the EU/UN's dime and it will, of course allow them to scream that it's the Jews' fault for not giving them more land. But in practical ways it's a humanitarian disaster. Wouldn't it be funny if after a half century of their terrorism they finally get a 'state' under more or less 100% of their terms and it's the biggest disaster in the Mideast, ever?
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