Arabs Begin to Blame Their Own Leaders for ’Refugee' Status

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Arabs who left Israel in the 1948 are are beginning to blame Arab countries for leaving them stateless after promising a quick return to “Palestine.” "They [Arab leaders] said, 'A week, two weeks, approximately, and you'll return to Palestine,'" Sadek Mufid, formerly of Akko (Acre) and now living in Lebanon, recently told Palestinian Authority television.

His comments were translated by Palestinian Media Watch. 

Saudi Arabia has led an Arab world demand that normalization of ties with Israel and the establishment of the PA as a state be conditioned on Israel's allowing the immigration of approximately five million Arabs. Most of them are descendants of Arabs who claim they used to live in Israel.

The United Nations has classified them as “refugees” and placed them in villages, known as “camps,” in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and Arab countries. The Arab designation of “refugees” is maintained today by the refusal of Arab countries to allow them citizenship, voting rights, or the ability to move into better housing, in order to preserve their “unique status.”

Mufid’s testimony represents a new trend of Arab leaders, writers and former Israeli Arab residents who have begun to speak out and openly blame the Arab leadership for the creation of their situation.Mufid describes a mass departure to Lebanon from Israel, which led to the creation of "11 or 15 refugee camps." He does not place the blame on Israel. As Palestinian Media Watch has previously reported, other recent accounts also describe a deliberate exit from Israel under orders from Arab leaders, as the Israeli government has always claimed, which contradicts the Palestinian leadership's charge that the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who left in 1948 were expelled by Israel.

Mufid, who left the village of Dir Al-Qasi  near Akko in 1948, told the PA TV's weekly program Returning, "We headed first from Dir al-Qasi to Rmaich [Lebanon], considering what they [Arab leaders] said at the time: 'By Allah, in a week or two, you will return to Palestine.' The Arab armies entered Palestine, along with the Arab Liberation Army. We left - we and those who fled with us - and we all headed for Lebanon. Some people came to Rmaich and others came to the villages on the border, such as Ein Ibl and also to Bnit Jibil. People scattered. And we have about 11 or 15 [refugee] camps in Lebanon."

In another PA television interview, an elderly Arab recalled how his family left Ein Kerem, in eastern Jerusalem. “The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us. ‘Get away from the battle lines. It's a matter of 10 days or two weeks at the most, and we'll bring you back to Ein Kerem. And we said to ourselves, 'That's a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That's a lot!' That's what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by." 

Two years ago, Jordanian-based Aryan journalist Jawad Al Bashiti wrote in Al-Ayyam, “The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe [establishment of Israel and the refugee problem] are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our catastrophes today... The first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the ‘Arab Salvation Army’ told the Palestinians, ‘We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission in the best way and so you won't be hurt.' It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states [against Israel] was a big illusion.” 
Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

No Such Thing As Palestinian Refugees...

by Hillel Fendel

Prof. Nitza Nachmias of the Jewish-Arab Center in Haifa University says that if it wasn’t for UNRWA and its half-billion dollar annual budget, the Palestinian refugee problem would have been solved long ago.

“In essence,” she told Arutz Sheva’s Shimon Cohen on Sunday, “there’s no such thing as Palestinian refugees. If people would stop calling the places in which they live ‘refugee camps,’ then they would see that these places are just like villages and towns anywhere else, and the inhabitants are totally rehabilitated… Refugee camps are like the maabarot [in which Israel housed its hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from North Africa and elsewhere] in the 1950’s or the camps now in Haiti – not the villages with streets and stone houses in what is known as Palestinian refugee camps of today.”

“They are rehabilitated better than refugees who are not supported by UNRWA,” Nachmias said. “Practically, factually and legally, there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian refugees.’ … Refugee camps are a fiction, and most of those who claim to be refugees have already been integrated into other countries."

Prof. Nachmias, a senior researcher at the Jewish-Arab Center who also teaches in Asheklon College and the University of Maryland, feels that Israel has taken the wrong approach in dealing with this issue: “We can’t simply push it off to the ‘final status talks’ and say, ‘We don’t accept the demand for the right-of-return because it will destroy the Jewish character of our state;’ what do they care about our Jewish character? If they deserve to be here, then it’s tough luck on us! Rather, Israel should take a pro-active approach, basing itself on international law and precedents, and declare that the Palestinian refugee issue no longer exists. They are no longer refugees!”

Rules for Palestinians are Different?
“According to international law,” Nachmias explains, “a refugee is an individual or family that was forced to run away – but this definition does not extend to children [of the original refugees], a community or a group. The only exception to this rule is the Palestinians, for whom the international laws are apparently different.”

If it wasn’t for UNRWA, Nachmias indicates, the issue of Palestinian refugees would have gone away a long time ago: “UNRWA is [no longer] a welfare agency, but rather an international employment agency for the Palestinians. UNRWA has 30,000 Palestinian employees, with 100 international experts at the helm. It is the biggest employer of Palestinians, and has an annual budget of a half-billion dollars. I discovered documents of pension funds of over a billion dollars a year, managed by brokers in Switzerland. All this for what is defined as a ‘welfare agency’ whose mandate is renewed every three years.”

'Send UNRWA Out'
“Israel must nullify the status of Palestinian refugee camps; there is no other place where the UN controls territory. We must send the UNRWA out and transfer the control of these places to the Palestinian Authority, and then when the status of each individual resident there is reviewed, we will see that none of them match the legal definition of a refugee, and they are established citizens.”

“Only in Lebanon are there refugees who are not allowed to work in certain professions; they are a small fraction of the total.”

Despite the UNRWA’s power and well-oiled financial network, “the world will support Israel in this case because it will also remove the onus of the refugees, and also because Israel can show, if it makes the effort, that it is rooted in international law.” 
Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua