"Palestinian «Refugees»"?
Another of the big lies that are being passed off as truth by politics and mass media is the "Palestinian refugees" issue: the allegedly "native" population that were "evicted" by the Israelis. Actually, in 1948 the Arab so-called refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders, who promised to purge the Land of Jews. Almost 70 % of them left without having ever seen a single Israeli soldier.
On the other side, nothing is said about the Jewish refugees that were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. As soon as the State of Israel was founded, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from every Arab country, mainly Yemen, Iraq and Egypt. The Mizrachim, also known as Babylonian Jews, were living in present-day Iraq since the Babylonian exile in the 6th century b.c.e., the Teymanim or Yemenite Jews were settled in the Sabean Kingdoms long before Roman times. Arabs have expelled them from the lands where those Jews were living for many centuries! The number of Arab so-called refugees that left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000, while the Jewish refugees that were forced out from Arab lands is estimated to be some more than that... Nevertheless, the UN has never demanded from Arab states to receive the Jews that were settled there for many generations and to restore their property and to provide them employment. Meanwhile, the so-called Palestinian "refugees" were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab countries to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory (Israel's extension is less than 1% of the territory of all Arab lands). Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, the so-called Palestinians are the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. On the contrary, Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel.
The truth is that the Arab League keeps the Palestinian refugees issue as a political weapon against Israel, with which they continue to fool the United Nations and propagate their perfidious policy. The proofs of such intention are given by Arab sources themselves: At a refugee conference in Homs, Syria, the Arab leaders declared that «any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason». In 1958, former director of UNRWA Ralph Galloway declared angrily while in Jordan that «the Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die». King Hussein, the sole Arab leader that directed integration of the Arabs, in 1960 stated: «Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal».
Between 1948 and 1967, the Arab flow into the Israeli territories occupied by them (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) was intensified. The UNRWA reported in 1951-52 that «200,000 Arab "refugees" were languishing in Gaza, along with 80,000 original residents who barely made a living before the refugees arrived», notwithstanding, a project to accommodate 10,000 families in the Sinai area (then under Egyptian control) was suspended. How is that the Gaza Strip, having around 80,000 allegedly native residents and twice and half that number of immigrants is only fifty years later overpopulated, with about one and half million of "native people dwelling there since ancestral times"?
The Arab states are acting a downright discrimination policy against Palestinians, preventing them with all means to achieve any sort of integration in the Arab countries (the same ones from where the Palestinians' grandparents emigrated to the Holy Land). Iraq and Syria were the most appropriate lands for resettlement of the so-called Palestinian refugees. Between 1948 and 1951, more than 120,000 Jews left Iraq to settle in Israel, leaving all of their goods and homes behind them. Most of them were businessmen and artisans, and many were wealthy. Their departure created a large gap in Iraq's economy; in some fields, such as transport, banking and wholesale trades, it reached serious proportions, and there was also a dearth of white collar workers and professional men. Salah Jabr, former dictator of Iraq recognized that «the emigration of 120,000 Jews from Iraq to Israel is beneficial to Iraq and to the Palestinian Arabs because it makes possible the entry into Iraq of a similar number of Arab refugees and their occupation of the Jewish houses there». Nevertheless, Palestinians in Iraq have been "allowed to live in the country but not to assume Iraqi nationality", despite the fact that the country needs manpower and "is encouraging Arab nationals to work and live there by granting them citizenship, with the exception of Palestinians".
Syria was also almost a desert in the early fifties and a very suitable land to give home to the "refugees", not only those already dwelling in Syria but also those in Lebanon and Jordan. In 1949 a newspaper editorial from Damascus stated that «Syria needs not only 100,000 refugees, but five million to work the lands and make them fruitful». Indeed, two years later the Syrian government officially requested that half a million Egyptian agricultural workers be permitted to emigrate to Syria in order to help develop Syrian land which would be transferred to them as their property. The responsible Egyptian authorities have rejected this request on the grounds that Egyptian agriculture is in need of labour as well. Syria was offering land rent free to anyone willing to settle there. It even announced a committee to study would-be settlers' applications. In fact, Syrian authorities began the experiment by moving 25,000 of the refugees in Syria into areas of potential development in the northern parts of the country, but the rigid Arab League position against permanent resettlement prevailed. Palestinians in Syria are still regarded as "refugees" and discriminated as such. The situation in all the remaining Arab states is the same: even though the great majority of the so-called Palestinian refugees has now left the camps for a better life as immigrant workers, they are being denied citizenship in the Arab countries to which they had moved. Regardless of their good behaviour and the many years they are living there, they are still discriminated and denied full integration in society. They must be kept as "refugees" forever, until they may occupy the Land of Israel once that Jews have been expelled or annihilated, that is the ultimate aim of the Arab League policy. Of curse, they would never achieve in doing so, as every time that the Arabs attacked Israel, the Arabs have undergone a shameful defeat.
The current myth is that these Arabs were long established in "Palestine", until the Jews came and "displaced" them. The fact is, that recent Arab immigration into the Land of Israel displaced the Jews. That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is attested by the ruling of the United Nations: That any Arab who had lived in the Holy Land for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a "Palestinian refugee".
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