The Palestinian Issue is Less Complicated than People Say

The fundamental villains relative to Palestine are Europeans.  They did not want Jews in Europe, so they pushed them to Palestine.  It is easy to understand why Arabs were upset by that effort.  Arabs and Jews both have ancestral claims to Palestine, and both are Semitic peoples.

According to several sources, approximately 20% of the Arabs who lived within the confines of the new state of Israel in 1948 chose to stay, while 700,000 fled.

Today, according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, there are 5.6 million Palestinian refugees, of who more than 2,000,000 live in Jordan and 2,000,000 live in Gaza and the West Bank.  According to the Palestine News & Info Agency, there are 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza today and 3.2 million in the West Bank, so most are not refugees.

That raises obvious questions:

1.  How did the number of refugees grow from 700,000 to 5.6 million? 
2.  Why are they ”the world’s oldest unsettled refugee population”?
3.  Why is Jordan the only Arab country that has welcomed Palestinian refugees?  Why is it the only Arab country that has allowed them to become citizens?
4.  Why haven’t the West Bank and Gaza become more developed?
5.  Why is so much more attention given to these 700,000 people who fled in 1948, compared to the 5.5 million Syrians who have fled or sought asylum in recent years, plus the 6.8 million Syrians who are internally displaced?  That 12.3 million Syrians is 220% of the number of Palestinian refugees.  How does the partition of Palestine compare to the partition of India which occurred one year earlier and displaced 15 to 20 million people?

The answers to these questions are clear and history has demonstrated these answers to us repeatedly, as I’ll discuss briefly below.

The day after Israel declared itself a state, it was invaded by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, all of its neighbors.  In 1967, it was attached again.  After that 6-day war, 8 Arab countries signed the Khartoum Resolutions in which they agreed to never recognize Israel, never negotiate with Israel and never have peace with Israel.  In 1973, Israel was attacked again.  Thanks to Anwar Sadat (who was assassinated for his heroic position), the Israelis traded Sinai to Egypt in return for peace in 1978.  (President Carter led that negotiation.)  In 2000, Bill Clinton persuaded Israel gave the Palestinians control over Gaza and 97% of the West Bank, but the Palestinians backed away from that deal. 

Many Arab governments remain intent on destroying Israel and killing Israeli citizens.  The reason peace efforts have been unsuccessful is because those Arab governments don’t want peace; they want to destroy Israel.  Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007; their charter reads "There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility."

I can understand that they consider the Israelis to be illegal immigrants, but does that justify killing Israelis?  Can you imagine the (appropriate) outcry if our USA government killed illegal immigrants?

Arab leaders have introduced and perfected a variety of terrorist activities:

• · More than 50 years ago, they started the scourge of hijacking commercial airplanes.
• ·  They trained and deployed suicide bombers, often targeting civilians.
• ·  They announced and paid bounties for killing Israelis, honoring the murderers.
• ·  They told prospective murderers that they would be martyrs, thereby earning seven special favors and privileges from Allah.  (By the way, I believe, and regularly tell people, Islam is a great religion!  Unfortunately, it has been hijacked by some of its adherents.)
• ·  They use human shields and house their fighters in schools, hospitals and mosques.

These actions demonstrate not only their disrespect for the lives of non-Arabs, but also their disrespect for the lives of innocent, civilian Arabs!

Relative to the questions I posed above:

1. The growth of the number of Palestinian refugees is because, unlike other refugee situations, the children of the displaced Palestinians are counted as refugees.  Why are Palestinians counted differently than other refugees?  Is it to blame Israel for the difficulties Palestinians face?  Gullible media and Westerners parrot Arab propaganda.
2.  Why are Palestinians ”the world’s oldest unsettled refugee population”?  Because Palestinians are simply pawns to many Arab governments.  If they actually helped Palestinians, these Arab governments would undermine their campaign to destroy Israel.  Their priorities are clear.
3.  Why is Jordan the only Arab country that has welcomed Palestinian refugees?

a.      I think the primary reason is that King Hussein of Jordan was one of the few Arab leaders who truly cared about the Palestinians and wanted peace.  Other Arab governments have preferred, as noted above, not to resolve the problem.

b.      Secondly, what was King Hussein’s reward for his generous support for the Palestinians?  Yassir Arafat militarized the Palestinians in Jordan and took over large parts of Jordan.  Other Arab leaders might fear a similar result.  They may fear that Iran would have a proxy army inside their country. 

4.      Why haven’t the West Bank and Gaza become more developed?  The other Arab countries  have done little to help Palestinian refugees be successful because they prefer to use the Palestinians as pawns to help them crush Israel.

The GDP of Israel has risen from $6.5 billion in 1948 to $564 billion in 2023, despite all the attacks in the past 75 years.  Can you imagine the success those 700,000 Arabs and their descendants could have had if they had stayed in Israel rather than fleeing?  Similarly, India has done quite well and Bangladesh has made impressive strides after a very tough beginning.  Pakistan is also in much better economic shape than Gaza.

5.      Why is so much more attention given to the 700,000 people who fled Israel 75 years ago and their descendants, than to the 5.5 million Syrians who have fled or sought asylum in recent years, plus the 6.8 million Syrians who are internally displaced?  Why have Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon all welcomed hugely more Syrian refugees than Palestinian refugees?  Together they are estimated to have more than 4.5 times as many Syrian refugees, even though the Palestinian count includes all descendants of the original 700,000 and has lasted so much longer.  Iran, by the way, is estimated to have no Palestinian or Syrian refugees.  (Iran has a lot of Afghan refugees.)  How much do you hear today about the displaced Hindus and Moslems of India and Pakistan?

a.      I think the 12.3 million Syrians faced greater danger had they chosen not to flee than the Palestinians faced from Israel in 1948.

b.      It is because the Palestinians have PR value in the campaign to destroy Israel.

Many people describe the Palestinian issue as very complicated and they micro-analyze each step taken by Israel, repeatedly finding flaws while ignoring the big picture.

Many of our brightest miseducated youth are proclaiming their solidarity with the Palestinian people and blaming Hamas’ treachery entirely on the Israeli government.  That’s like blaming African-Americans for the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan.

Sympathy for the Palestinians is appropriate, but it is misaddressed when it supports governments and terrorists who care less about Palestinians than do Palestinian supporters in the USA.  Ironically, Israel is more sympathetic to Palestinians than are the various Arab governments who have failed to support Palestinians for 75 years.