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Dateline: Middle East
Volume 25 • Winter 2008
Published by The Student Coalition for a Just Peace in the Middle East

PALESTINIANS AND THE ARAB WORLD
Dana Remer

Ararely examined aspect of the Palestinian problem is the abandonment of Palestinian refugees by the surrounding Arab nations. When the Arab states rejected UN Resolution 181 in 1947, which proposed that the British Mandate of Palestine would be divided into two states, many Arab families residing in the area made the decision to abandon their homes for greener pastures.

If the Arabs had accepted the 1947 UN Partition resolution, not a single Palestinian would have become a refugee and an independent Arab Palestinian state would now exist alongside an independent Jewish state.

In 1948, just as the surrounding Arab states started to attack the newly-created state of Israel, the Palestinian exodus started, with the departure of 30,000 wealthy Arabs, followed by 50,000 more people soon thereafter. The wealthier Arabs tried to enter surrounding Arab nations, until the Palestine Arab Higher Committee began refusing their entry visas, insisting that it was not their problem to accept refugees. Less affluent people moved to Egyptoccupied Gaza or Jordan-occupied West Bank. According to September, 1948 UN Mediator on Palestine Reports, a total of 472,000 Arabs became refugees. Most Israeli estimates, based on British and Israeli census reports, put the number a little higher at 650,000 refugees.

A second refugee population was created in 1967, in light of another Arab-Israeli war, and, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), approximately 500,000 people tried to flee, almost a quarter of them some for the second time. Initially, Syria, Egypt and Jordan accepted many refugees
but since most were left to fend for themselves in dilapidated refugee camps a large number of them eventually returned to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

No Arab state, with the exception of Jordan, provided a stable environment for Palestinian refugees. The refusal of Arab nations to accept Palestinians refugees and grant them citizenship, or even until today to provide financial aid or offer employment, 60 years after the original partition, communicates their desire to
keep the “Palestinian problem” alive. For these regimes, it may actually be in their best interest to ensure that the situation for Palestinians does not improve.

If the Arab nations were to help the Palestinians integrate they would no longer have an excuse to condemn Israel, and might be faced with international pressure to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Acknowledging Israel’s existence could lead to a whole host of domestic issues, as most Arab governments scapegoat
Israel and the Jews for all their problems and failures. Without Israel to scapegoat, these regimes could face serious civil unrest.

Having taken all these facts into account, it is obvious that the Palestinians are being taken advantage of both by their own Palestinian Authority government, which has not put to good use the billions of dollars in aid money provided by the international community, and by the rest of the Arab nations who exploit the Palestinian situation for their own needs. The Palestinian Authority Government and the surrounding Arab nations, who together foster hatred for Israel and the West and perpetuate the Palestinian human rights crisis, should be held to account.

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