Dahlan also criticized the PA and Fatah in particular for neglecting Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Lebanon.
"Why are we treating our people in those refugee camps just as neglectfully as we treat our people in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip?" he asked."The PA spends only 0.003 percent of its budget on the Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon, and we are talking about 600,000 Palestinian refugees living dire conditions and deprived of the right to work, movement, education and medical treatment, not to mention what Palestinian refugees in Syria have been suffering as a result of the war," Dahlan alleged.
“I challenge whomever to prove the opposite.”Of course, the reason why 'Palestinians' are deprived of the right to work, movement, education and medical treatment is because they are not citizens of the countries in which they have lived for nearly 70 years. Here's one example:
LebanonBut the reason that the Arab countries never absorbed their 'Palestinians' and made them citizens (except in Jordan - the article goes on to describe Syria, but they're not citizens there either) is because doing so would have meant giving up on holding them hostage to the Arab dream of destroying Israel - a dream that most of the Arab countries have themselves given up at this point, and that would no longer exist but for the Oslo Accords.
Around half of the 400,000 refugees live in camps, deprived of many rights. Refugees don't have any property rights, no access to the Lebanese healthcare system and there are certain restrictions on jobs we are allowed to do. We are issued handwritten [travel documents](www.passport-collector.com/2011/08/10/lebanon-refugee-passport-for-palestine/) of appalling quality (large size, cheap paper). The travel documents don't even have a full date of birth, just the birth year. You probably know about the Sabra and Chatila massacre (from the movie Waltz with Bashir, perhaps my favorite animated movie) were 3000 Palestinian civilians were killed in cold blood. These are at the top of my head, I'm sure there's more. This is what a British MP Gerald Kaufman said in 2011 when he visited the camps:
When I went to Gaza in 2010 I thought I had seen the worst that could be seen of the appalling predicament of Palestinians living in conditions which no human being should be expected to endure. But what I saw in the camps in Lebanon is far worse and far more hopeless. The conditions are unspeakable, but for over 400,000 of our fellow human beings this is their life: today, tomorrow and for a future that cannot even be foreseen. At least in Gaza, frightful though the situation is, the people are free within the confines of their blockaded prison. In the camps of Lebanon they are not free.UPDATE1: Since many here are blaming the PLO and its involvement in the civil war. That's definitely true to a large extent, however you're missing a few points. Most Palestinians refugees were placed in camps in south Lebanon when they arrived. These camps were gradually militarized and became the grounds for operations against Israel and because the PLO had so much power back then, they started making trouble and trying to control part of the country. So had the Lebanon absorbed it's Palestinian population properly, this wouldn't have happened.
Even Dahlan himself admits that were it not for the 'Palestinian street,' the 'Palestinians' could live in peace in Israel.
The failures of PA leadership, in addition to repressive Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territory, could have dire consequences, Dahlan said.
"If this situation continues, we will either yield to the occupation's conditions and rules -- which is impossible at the popular level -- or have a popular uprising, which will be very dangerous," he said, adding that the status quo could no longer be sustained.Because after seventy years of living the lie that they would one day return to their 'homes' in 'Palestine,' you can't quite tell these people in one day that the lie was a dream that's not going to come true. Of course, if you never start, you'll never be able to tell them either....
Dahlan strikes me as much more of a realist (although he is also a brutal murderer with the blood of Israelis and Americans on his hands) than most of the 'Palestinian leadership.' But he still has a long way to go, and he's not very popular anyway, having been disgraced by Hamas when they took over Gaza.
One reason is that if the Arabs feel they are close to the creation of this state, the last thing they need to ever happen is for all those Arab states to kick out all their so called refugees so they can 'return to their homeland'. They would instantly fall victim to their own nonsense rhetoric about who is a refugee. Overnight millions of people would be marched to the borders of the countries they've lived in for 70 years and told to go be 'palestinian' somewhere else. This would plunge this imaginary 'palestinian' state into one of the largest humanitarian disasters in memory, too large even for the Arabs to exploit at the expense of the Jews. It would disrupt their criminal enterprises that siphon aid, most importantly.
ReplyDelete