The Reason Nothing Ever Gets Resolved

It has been nearly 70 years that Jews and Palestinian Arabs have been fighting over Israel. The Israeli state was founded in 1948. At that time, there were about 600,000 Jews in what became Israel. There were about twice that number of Arabs in Palestine, but the majority lived in areas that were not designated to be part of the Israeli state. When Israel became independent in May of 1948, the armies of five neighboring states invaded to throw the Jews out. The leaders of these countries told Arabs living in Israeli territory to flee ahead of their armies. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs left and moved to temporary refugee camps in Arab countries to await the defeat of Israel. As fighting progressed, there were additional Arab refugees created. Meanwhile, in the Arab world there were riots directed at local Jewish communities. As Israel became independent, there were just under a million Jews who lived in the Arab countries. Some of these communities, like the one in Egypt, were thousands of years old. In these riots, people were killed and homes and businesses were destroyed. Eventually about 850,000 Jewish refugees fled to Israel.

The treatment of refugees was quite different by the two sides. In Israel, refugees were welcomed as new citizens and were integrated into Israeli society. In the Arab countries, the Palestinian refugees were forced into refugee camps where they remain today, over sixty years later. Indeed, one of the demands from Palestinians in the so called peace negotiations is that the refugees be allowed to return to their land and properties from before 1948.

These are facts. They are not open to dispute. Nevertheless, these facts are not accepted by the Palestinians. Let me explain. Yesterday, Hanan Ashrawi, a well known member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, rejected the assertion that Jews in Arab countries left those countries as a result of persecution. Ashwari announced that those Jews were not refugees.

“Arab Jews were part of the Arab region, but they began migrating to Israel after its establishment. They did so in accordance with a forethought plan by the Jewish Agency to bring Jews from all around the world to build the State of Israel.”

Asrawi has in the past been part of the Palestinian negotiating team at peace talks, but she is delusional in her statements. If you ever wonder why Israel and the Arabs cannot reach a peaceful solution to their differences, this is a good reason why. Imagine if the United States were to try to reach peace with the Taliban while those people believed that 9-11 was not a terror attack launched by al Qaeda but an American plot to justify an attack on Afghanistan.