Why There Are Palestinian Refugees from 1948

Nadene Goldfoot      Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt Armies fighting against Israel's birth. 1948.                                                              

   
In 1948 when Israel was created and received the yes vote to be a state, the Palestinian leaders told the population in Palestine to leave their homes. The reason was that they were amassing their armies and were going to attack and take this new state and then they would give them the homes of the Jews for leaving and giving them room to fight.
                                                                               

You know the rest of the story.  The leaders and neighbors who fought against Israel in the War of Independence lost and the Arabs didn't return.  Instead they wound up in refugee camps run by the UN.  No one thought their condition of being refugees would continue.  UNRWA Director John Blandford Jr wrote that he thought the Arab governments would assume responsibility for relief by July 1952.  The Palestinians are THE ONLY DISPLACED PERSONS TO HAVE BECOME WARDS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY.   

 They know how to milk a good thing.

Look at what has happened to other people in the same position who have taken back their people who were refugees:

German minorities were living in Poland and Czechoslovakia where were expelled after WWII and were allowed to take only those possessions they could carry.  They received no compensation from confiscated property.  WWII's boundaries and population were considered accomplished facts that could not be reversed after the war.  

Finland was forced to give up 1/8 of its land and absorb over 400,000 refugees which was 11% of the nation's population from the Soviet Union.  These were the LOSERS of the war.  There was no aid for their resettlement.  "and the Continuation War alongside the Axis Powers in 1941–1944 – were waged against the Soviet Union."

India and Pakistan:  1947:  8 million Hindus fled from Pakistan in 1947.  6 million Muslims who left India were afraid of becoming a minority in their respective countries.  They didn't want to be in the middle of violence.  The exchange of populations was the best solution they all had come up with.  No special international relief organizations were established to aid them in resettlement.  Remember, they were both poor nations.  

How Turkey and the Arab States Differ with same situation:  

Turkey refused to take back all 250,000 Turks from Bulgaria in 1950.  Ankara's logic was:  The necessity for any country to refuse an entry visa to those would-be emigrants whose social and political allegiances would render their presence harmful to the country is too obvious to require debate.  Despite the strain it put on the Turkish economy, 150,000 of the refugees were integrated into the country.  The Turks didn't want this burden but accepted it as a responsibility and set to work to clean it up as fast as possible.  The Arabs have them in refugee camps but they are not integrated into their society, can't work, on the UN dole, etc.  

Arab leaders didn't want the Arabs to be repatriated into the neighboring countries.  Israel kept trying to find a solution to the refugee problem but in 1967 could not agree to allow all Palestinians to return.  No nations wants to take in a 5th column of such a size after 20 years of being nurtured in hatred of and totally dedicated to its destruction.  Allowing Palestinians to return, which is what Hamas is after and was one of their stipulations in the peace talks with Kerry, would be like admitting into the USA nearly 70,000,000 sworn enemies of the nation.  Arabs refused to negotiate a separate agreement anyway.  The problem is that Arabs refuse to accept Israel's existence.  

A one time Arab Leader against Israel was Egypt's President Nasser.  He committed belligerent acts toward the Jewish state, which had nothing to do with the Palestinians.  He was sort- of interested in the Palestinian refugees it was because they could contribute to his ultimate objective which was the destruction of Israel. He had said to his interviewer on September 1, 1961:  "If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist."                                                 

                                                      General Moshe Dayan 

 "At 15 he enlisted in the Haganah and went on to serve in Wingate's special night brigade. In June 1941 he lost his eye in Syria when a French sniper hit his binoculars. From the age of 26 and until the day he died, Dayan wore the famous eye patch."

To add more refugees to the problem, King Hussein went along with the Six Day War of 1967 cooked up by his neighbors again in 1973, even though he was asked not to by Israel.  He attacked Jerusalem, Israel's capital.  During the fighting, 175,000 of the registrants had fled for a 2nd time and about 350,000 fled for the first time to get out of the way of their fighting.  About 200,000 moved to Jordan, 115,000 moved to Syria and about 35,000 left the Sinai for places in Europe.  Most of the Arabs who left had come from homes in Judea and Samaria.  

Israel allowed some Judean Samarian Arabs to return.  In 1967, more than 9,000 families were reunited and by 1971 Israel had readmitted 40,000 refugees.  But back in 1968 Jordan stopped people wanting to remain in the EAST BANK (Jordan) from emigrating from the West Bank and Gaza.  In other words, they kept the Palestinians out of Jordan.

U Thant,  from the Security Council of the UN  was allowed to send a representative to ask about the welfare of civilians in the wake of the war and told the mission to investigate the treatment of Jewish minorities in Arab countries as well as Arabs in Israeli-occupied territory.  Syria, Iraq and Egypt refused to permit the UN reps to carry out his investigation.  

The Syrians have fled their homes in the Arab Spring Civil War against Assad.  Many wound up in refugee camps nearby.  Some fled to Egypt with the inducements from Morsi, who thought they would vote for him when he ran for president, and he was already head of Muslim Brotherhood who had attacked Assad in Syria.  Those in Egypt had no compensation as they were stopped from registering by Egypt.  People had to find their own housing and food and pay for it all.  Most ran through all their savings, and then had to return to destroyed homes, no jobs and an IS who had taken some of their country already.  

Arab states have had Palestinians in refugee camps for the past 66 years.  They are not learning skills of trade except for those in the UNWRA offices with menial positions.  This is the 3rd generation to be brought up like this.  The Arab states could easily allow the refugees citizenship in the states they now reside.  They want to keep them in this position to destroy Israel with in the hope they will be forced to relocate in  Israel.  Those that come from Judea-Samaria were already relocated.  These in camps want to enter Israel.  

Resource:  Myths and Facts a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Dr. Mitchell G. Bard and Joel Himelfarb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Finland_during_World_War_II