BS: Palestinian 'facts'

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:53 AM

beardedbruce, we have no way of knowing if it is a fair estimate or not. You can pick a number you like and run with it if you want, but I choose not to.

I also dispute the idea that all of the Jews who fled the Arab countries did so exclusively because of the actions of Muslims.   We know that Israel engaged in acts of terrorism in Arab countries in order to create an untenable situation for the Jews in those countries so they would have to leave. There's no way to know how many would have stayed had Israel not done these things, but Israel bears a lot of responsibility for its influx of refugees, so it's not at all correct to try to make comparisons about which country resettled more refugees.

If Israel was responsible for the non-Jewish Palestinian refugees, and it was also responsible for many of the Jewish refugees, it bears a much greater responsibility for making sure that those refugees are settled. And on top of that, it is against international law for a country to not allow refugees to return to their homes after a war has ended, so all of the refugees from what is now Israel have a legal right to return to their homes according to international law.

You have asserted that the governments of the Arab countries from which Jews fled ought to allow them to return, but you have not been able to provide any information about whether or not any of those Jews has expressed a desire to return to their countries of origin, so I think that assertion is just a distraction. The governments of those other countries don't have a responsibility to repatriate anyone if there is no one who wants to be repatriated.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:58 AM

Also, Israel has a large number of internal refugees. These are Palestinians who fled their homes, but stayed in what is now Israel, and are Israeli citizens. Israel has never allowed any of these refugees to return to their homes. Israel is in no position to point fingers at other countries for not settling the refugees fleeing Israel to their countries if Israel is has not even been willing to allow the non-Jewish Arab refugees in their own country to return to their homes.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 01:09 AM

Bobert, do you have any quotes or excerpts from Khalidi's book that can help us understand where he's getting that 4,000,000 number?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 01:22 AM

Ok, I've got it figured out. Bobert, that 4,000,000 figure is for the number of Palestinians who currently live in refugee camps, not for the number who fled during the Nakba. Google "million palestinian refugees" (without the quotes), and a whole lot of information comes up.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 05:32 AM

I also dispute the idea that all of the Moslims who fled the Israel did so exclusively because of the actions of Jews. A number ( "some") left because they were ordered to by the Arab League, to get out of the way of Arab armies, with the promise they would get ALL of Palestine once the Jews were driven into the sea.

So, if we look at the numbers, there are LESS hen the number of claimed Arab Moslim refugees that can be attributted to Israel, and more that are are the responsibility of the Arab Nations.


You want to continue to haggle over the numbers?


"We know that Israel engaged in acts of terrorism in Arab countries in order to create an untenable situation for the Jews in those countries so they would have to leave. "

This is a claim that may be true in some cases, but the number of such acts and the number of Jews affected has NOT been shown- so, like the number of children sold by Jewish criminals, how can you count them?

Why is it that ALL the non-determined numbers are against Israel, and NEVER against the Palestinian Arab numbers?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: GUEST,albert
Date: 18 May 08 - 05:41 AM

It seems to me that Zionists and pro Zionist commentators are getting increasingly worried that they are losing the battle of ideas over the question of Israel/Palestine.

Sixty years after the founding of Israel the stain of the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homeland continues to spread.

And we have seen what the Zionist programme has meant for the Palestinian people and the peoples of neighbouring countries.
For the Palestinians it has meant mass murder in places like Deir Yassim as the Israeli state was founded.It has meant the occupation and theft of Palestinian land and the eradication of hundreds of Palestinian villages with the systematic attempt to eradicate them from their land and history.

There have been decades of military attacks on Palestinian civilians and refugees and massacres directed by the Israeli military in Beirut and elsewhere.

There has been the continued attaempt to break the spirit of the Palestinians with mass arrests,the closure of Palestinian universities ,the endless checkpoints, the torture of prisoners, the theft of precious water and the building of the huge Apartheid Wall.

After 60 years of this display of military might and the backing of the US a person would think that the future of Israel is rosy.

How come then it is a society which has turned in on itself as it seeks to justify its racism,its oppression,its petty and vindictive cruelties and its military swagger?

Last year it was stopped in its tracks by handfuls of Hezbollah fighters in the hills of South Lebanon but not before it had made a determined attempt to wipe out the civilian infrastructure of that country.
Today it is throttling poor starving Gaza but still it cannot bring the Palestinian Gazans led by Hamas to heel.
And with Mubharrak in Egypy looking like an over the hill thug and the debacle in Iraq the future of the whole Middle East and Israel's role as America's attack dog there is in turmoil.
albert

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 08 - 06:24 AM

Do I hear you right Bruce?

You wish to argue that the Palestinians left of their own accord, more or less? I am prepared to defend my country to the hilt, in general (sometimes not) but even I would not put that spin on 1948.

It seems to me beyond argument that the state of Israel was unlawfully established on Palestinian land.

This does not of course justify all actions thereafter against Israel, or against Jews, but it should inform the reaction to the actions of (some) Jews and/or Israel against some or all of: -

Hamas
Other Gazans
Hezbollah
Other Lebanese
The Lebanon
Other Palestinians

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 06:42 AM

1. "You wish to argue that the Palestinians left of their own accord, more or less?"

NOT what I said.

"A number ( "some") left because they were ordered to by the Arab League, to get out of the way of Arab armies, with the promise they would get ALL of Palestine once the Jews were driven into the sea."

TRUE OF FALSE- And when I give the quotes from the Arab League broadcasts you get to eat you keyboard.

2. "It seems to me beyond argument that the state of Israel was unlawfully established on Palestinian land"

It may seem like that to you, but please look at the San Remo conference and tell me what you think the Mandate Palestine was supposed to be ( hint "Jewish Homeland") . How much of the Mandate territory would you allow the Jews to have- give a percentage.

Britain was the party that decided on the two state solution- take it up with the Queen.

You are stating that the UN does not have the power to do what it did????

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 07:40 AM

The British Peel Commission proposed a Palestine divided between a Jewish and an Arab State...
The UN, the successor to the League of Nations, attempted to solve the dispute, creating the UNSCOP (UN Special Committee on Palestine) on May 15, 1947. After spending three months conducting hearings and general survey of the situation in Palestine, UNSCOP officially released its report on August 31. A majority of nations (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. A minority (India, Iran, Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained. On November 29, the UN General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, in favour of the Partition Plan, while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. Both the United States and Soviet Union agreed on the resolution. In addition, pressure was exerted on some small countries by Zionist sympathizers in the United States.[70] The five members of the Arab League who were voting members at the time voted against the Plan.
The partition plan was rejected out of hand by the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs and by most of the Arab population. Most of the Jews accepted the proposal, in particular the Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 07:49 AM

some source documents

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Bobert
Date: 18 May 08 - 07:50 AM

Like I said, BB...

If you don't like my source, who BTW is a noted author and professor at Columbia University, then either you or whomever you have found that you are nquoting on numbers, need to confront the good professor... Until then I'd be more inclined to believe a man with his credentials over some blogger with an ax to grind...

But as long as you hang on to your misinformation I don't see that much of anything you say about the Palestian situation can have much validity since it is based on faulty information...

Garbage in, garbage out...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Bobert
Date: 18 May 08 - 07:57 AM

It has been brought to my attention that my lexdexia has kicked in... Make that number 1.3 Million dispalced...

Sorry if that has 'cuased any sleeplessless on anyone's part...

That's 1,300,000... The 4,000,000 is the number of refugees from the Iraq invasion...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:02 AM

( he must have used both feet to count this time...)

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:03 AM

Richard,

"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948

"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
- The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948

"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."
- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949

"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."
- Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183

"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city...By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.".
- Time, May 3, 1948, p. 25

The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea.
- Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:05 AM

So in other words YOUR CLAIM OF 4 MILLION was garbage.

1.3 million is an arguable number, but I will admit it is at least possible. Glad you apologized for the comments yopu made supporting the impossible number.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:06 AM

Like *I* saID, Bobert...

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Bobert
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:11 AM

Yes, it was "indeed" garbage... Lexdexia is some interesting stuff...

Okay, bb, back to the original point, which was not the 4M or the 1.3M, which is simply stated that anyopne involved in the negoitiation of any settlement that is not accutely aware of the massive displacements is bound to not be successfull... That was and continues to the point...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: goatfell
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:14 AM

Well I beleive in Palestinians and Christians alike and the way the that they are being treated by the Jews.

but that is between them and God

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:46 AM

Bobert,,


"Until then I'd be more inclined to believe a man with his credentials over some blogger with an ax to grind..."

And I would rather accept the census number that were made over some academic with an axe to grind. If you continue to accept figures without thought, ( as you have demonstrated) you only hurt your own arguements.


"According to official records of the League of Nations and Arab census figure 539,000 Arabs left Israel at the urging of 7 converging Arab armies so that they would not be in the way of their attack. They promised the fleeing Arabs they would return and move into the Jews' houses after the anticipated successful annihilation of the Jews.
"We know that 850,000 Jews were ejected from the Arab countries where they had lived for hundreds of years. This included successful people whose property and assets, including community assets were immediately confiscated. 750,000 penniless Jews from Arab countries fled to Israel.

"This was a virtual exchange of population. The Jewish refugees were immediately accepted by the new State of Israel. They were provided with shelter (albeit temporary tents) food and clothing."





******************************************************************************************
official records of the League of Nations and Arab census figure 539,000 Arabs left Israel
******************************************************************************************


AND I allowed for 640,000 ( about 155,000 remained in Israel and MAY have been displaced- so I added 100,000 in an attempt to be fair)


SO, about those Jewish refugees....

"anyone involved in the negoitiation of any settlement that is not accutely aware of the massive displacements is bound to not be successfull... That was and continues to the point... "

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:55 AM

I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem, [Daily Telegraph, September 6, 19481
- Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948

The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.
- Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949

We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah ("The Secret Behind the Disaster") by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952

The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. . . . He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.
- Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha's successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951

Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals . . . declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations.... It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands . . . and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise.
- Arab Higher Committee, in a memorandum to the Arab League, Cairo, 1952, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963

"The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."
- from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954

"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war."
- General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948

"The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews"
- Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953

"[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949

"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe. [However] ...A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military . . . left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. . . . Evacuation by sea goes on steadily. ...[Two days later, the Jews were] still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns... [as for the Arabs,] another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbor are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place an one of the boats leaving Haifa.""
- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz

"The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did."
- Jamal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, told to the United Nations Security Council, quoted in the UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23, 1948, p. 14

"the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision"
- The Arab National Committee of Haifa, told to the Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963

"...our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents ... Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families."
The Haifa Workers' Council bulletin, 28 April 1948

"...the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but the most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country."
The TIMES of London, reporting events of 22.4.48

" The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States' opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously, and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs.
...The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families."

- Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948

"Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return."
- Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, The Memoirs of Haled al Azm, (Beirut, 1973), Part 1, pp. 386-387

"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of refugees... while it is we who made them to leave... We brought disaster upon... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave... We have rendered them dispossessed... We have accustomed them to begging... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children - all this in service of political purposes..."
- Khaled al Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war [note: same person as above]

"As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property."
- bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957
One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC's threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go.
Commentary Magazine -- January 2000, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/0001/letters.html

****************************************************************************************

So, I think I am safe in saying that ""A number ( "some") left because they were ordered to by the Arab League, to get out of the way of Arab armies, with the promise they would get ALL of Palestine once the Jews were driven into the sea."


OK?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 08:59 AM

More numbers, Bobert...

"Estimates of the number of Arabs who fled the newly-created State of Israel in 1948 (i.e. from the area inside Israel's pre-1967 borders) vary from 430,000 to 957,000, depending on who you ask. The most reliable figure appears to be 539,000.
In the 1967 Six Day War, between 125,000 (Israeli estimate) and 250,000 (UNRWA estimate) Arabs fled from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which came under Israeli administration. Of these, say some researchers, close on two-thirds were first-time refugees, the others were refugees from 1948 who fled once again.

According to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), in 1996 the number of refugees stood at 3.3 million, located as follows:

Jordan: In 10 camps - 242,922. Not in camps - 1.1 million

Judea and Samaria: In 20 camps - 147,302. Not in camps - 385,136

Gaza: In five camps - 378,279. Not in camps - 338,651

Lebanon: In 12 camps - 182,731. Not in camps - 169,937

Syria: In 10 camps - 89,472. Not in camps - 257, 919

TOTAL: In 57 camps - 1.04 million. Not in camps - 2.26 million.

- Middle East Digest - October 1998

The refugee problem was created in 1947-48, when the Palestinians and their Arab allies rejected United Nations Resolution 181 and tried to prevent by force implementation of the partition plan that called for the creation of a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in Palestine. During the fighting, 600,000 to 700,000 Arabs fled or were driven out of areas that eventually became the state of Israel. (There were also about 17,000 Jewish refugees who fled or were driven out of areas that came under Arab, i.e., Jordanian, control.) Israel's record in this chain of developments was far from spotless. But the major reason for the displacement of people was the war itself, which the Arabs imposed on Israel in an attempt to abort its birth.
The Palestinian refugees were but one example among many of the large-scale involuntary population displacements that took place during and after the First World War. Most of the other refugee problems, involving tens of millions of Karelian Finns, Sudeten Germans, and Muslims and Hindus in the Indian subcontinent, faded away as displaced populations were absorbed in countries of similar religious and/or national character. The one glaring exception was the Palestinian refugees, who found shelter but few civic or political rights in neighbouring Arab countries (Jordan being the main exception).

The refugee status of the Palestinians was perpetuated by the host countries and the Palestinian leadership, and by the international community, through the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the only UN body dedicated to a specific refugee group (all other refugees in the world are the responsibility of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees). As a result, refugee status was passed down from father to son to grandson over 50 years, so that, today, they number three million to four million. That is why the Palestinians now account for about one-fourth of the world's refugees -- an impressive figure until one imagines how many refugees there would be if all the Finns and Germans and Indian Hindus and Muslims and European Jews who were made refugees after the Second World War (not to speak of the Greeks and Turks and Armenians who were made refugees during and after the First World War) were still considered refugees in the year 2000.

- Mark Heller, co-author of No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

With regard to the Palestinian refugees today, according to the "Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - 1 July 1997 - 30 June 1998" there were 3,521,130 refugees as of June 30, 1998 (Table 1). However, the report (available at www.unrwa.org) also states that:
UNRWA registration figures are based on information voluntarily supplied by refugees primarily for the purpose of obtaining access to Agency services, and hence cannot be considered statistically valid demographic data; the number of registered refugees present in the Agency's area of operations is almost certainly less that the population recorded.
Moreover, not only does the UN admit the figures are of doubtful accuracy, there being obvious reason for families to claim more members and thereby receive more aid, the UN also admits that the total includes 1,463,064 Jordanian citizens, who cannot by any stretch be considered refugees.
- Alexander Safian, PhD, CAMERA (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America)

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 09:10 AM

To give another viewpoint besides YOUR noted author,...



"Even more pertinent: No Arab spokesman made such a charge. At the height of the flight, the Palestinian Arabs' chief representative at the United Nations, Jamal Husseini, made a long political statement (on April 27) that was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists; he did not mention refugees. Three weeks later (while the flight was still in progress) the secretary-general of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a fiercely worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a word about refugees.

Why did they leave? Monsignor George Hakim, then Greek Catholic bishop of Galilee, the leading Christian personality in Palestine for many years, told a Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub, in the summer of 1948: "The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the `Zionist gangs' very quickly, and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."

The initiative for the flight was indeed no secret. One of the famous American newspapermen of the time, Kenneth Bilby, who had covered Palestine for years, explained the Arab leaders' rationale for the flight in his book New Star in the East, published in 1950: "Let the Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab countries to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea."

There is also the piquant report in the files of the British police at Haifa, of how the leaders of the Jewish community pleaded with the leaders of the Arab community not to leave Haifa, and how the Arabs refused. There is too, in the annals of the UN Security Council, a speech by Jamal Husseini heaping praise on the Arabs of Haifa for refusing to stay put and insisting adamantly on leaving their homes. The British police then kindly provided transport and helped the Haifa Arabs across the Lebanese and Transjordanian borders.

When, four months after the invasion, the prospect of the flightlings' retuning "in a few weeks" had faded, there were some recriminations. Emil Ghoury, a member of the Palestinian Arabs' national leadership, said in an interview with the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph: "I don't want to impugn anybody, but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state.

"The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously, and they must share in the solution of the problem."

The policy adopted inside the country was emphasized by the leaders of the invasion. The prime minister of Iraq, Nuri Said, thundered: "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."

One of the Arabs who fled later succinctly summarized the story of the refugees in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Difaa: "The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."

Later, after the fighting began, many Arab villagers who believed the false rumors of a massacre at the village of Deir Yassin "panicked and fled ignominiously before they were threatened by the progress of the war." So wrote the British general Sir John Glubb, who commanded the Transjordanian army. Throughout the war there were two incidents - at Ramle and Lod - in which a number of Arab civilians were driven out of their homes by Israeli soldiers."

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 09:34 AM

I'm glad that the 'facts' were limited by those quotation marks!

"No two historians ever agree on what happened, and the damn thing is they both think they're telling the truth." Harry S. Truman.

'History, and different perceptions of history, are perhaps the most important factors in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Accounts of history, interpreting history in different ways, are used to justify claims and to negate claims, to vilify the enemy and to glorify "our own" side.'

So, what do we actually 'know;?

The Palestine refugee problem was created in the course of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence

The war was won by Israel, creating a large number of Arab refugees. Estimates vary from about 520,000 (Israeli sources) to 726,000 (UN sources) to over 800,000 (Arab sources) refugees

This number has grown to include over 4.6 million displaced persons, about 3.7 million of whom are currently registered as refugees with the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees). Of these, somewhat over a million live in camps run by the UNRWA

Generally, refugees living in the camps live in conditions of abject poverty and overcrowding.

Israel views the 1948 refugees as hostile persons sympathetic with a belligerent aggressor, and passed a law forbidding their return, and assigning all their land holdings to a custodian of absentee property.

The central practical issue regarding the refugees is the right of return claimed by the Palestinians. UN General Assembly Resolution 194 stated "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date." Resolution 194 further stated that those refugees who do not wish to return are entitled to compensation for properties lost under international law and equity.

The Arab states do not want the refugees. With the exception of Jordan, they are unwilling to give them citizenship. The territory that might be allocated to the Palestinian state, about two thousand, two hundred square miles, is probably too small to house all of them adequately.
Israel and the Palestinian areas both have extremely high population densities - over 300 persons per square kilometer in Israel and over 500 per square kilometer in the occupied territories, including over a million refugees.

These are simple 'facts' the numbers represent thousands of personal 'tragedies.

It would be useful here to discuss ways of resolving the refugee problem not continue to dispute the age old differing perspectives of history as to whether they fled or were forced to flee - there is plenty of 'evidence' and 'facts' to support both view points.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 09:38 AM

Agreed.

"UN General Assembly Resolution 194 stated "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date." Resolution 194 further stated that those refugees who do not wish to return are entitled to compensation for properties lost under international law and equity. "

This applies to the greater number of Arab Jewish refugees as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 09:45 AM

"Estimates vary from about 520,000 (Israeli sources) to 726,000 (UN sources) to over 800,000 (Arab sources) refugees"

MAXIMUM estimates- there are lower ones for all three sources.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 10:07 AM

bb lets just stick with the UN figures for starters....

There were a number of interim estimates however, according to the Final Report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East published by the United Nations Conciliation Commission, December 28, 1949 the number is given, as I noted, as 726,000

Perhaps you could also state the source of your 'facts'?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 10:10 AM

beardedbruce - PM
Date: 18 May 08 - 07:49 AM

some source documents

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 10:16 AM

The official Isreali Govt figure in 1948 is 520,000 (as I quoted) and 590,000 in 1992

Source

Based on the full text of a report prepared by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and published in translation by the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds, 10 September 1992.

on which 'source documents' do you base your 'facts'?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 10:27 AM

the Palestinian sources I refer to come from

Hagopian, Edward and A.B. Zahlen, "Palestine's Arab Population," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. III, Walid Khalidi et al., eds., 1974, pp. 32-73.

and

Khalidi, Walid et al., eds., All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, 1992, Appendix III, p. 582.

In mid 1946 the figure is given as 714,150 - 744,150
cited source -

Said, Edward et al., A Profile of the Palestinian People, Third Ed, 1990, p. 6; Abu-Lughod, Janet, "The Demographic Transformation of Palestine," in Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, ed., The Transformation of Palestine, 1971, pp. 139-63.

Could I once more request the source of your 'facts

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 10:31 AM

various sources, giving various numbers. I will go with 640,000 for the reasons I stated earlier- it allows for a number of internal relocations as well as the census supported UN numbers.


I will at least pick numbers that are within the range of actual populations.


And YOUR source for the number of Jews driven out of Arab nations?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 10:56 AM

I don't believe I actually gave any indication of numbers however the Jewish refugees include a number of Jews evacuated from their homes in Palestine/Israel, and a much larger number of Jews who fled Arab countries.

The Jews of Jerusalem, and those of Gush Etzion, Atarot, Neve Yaakov and kibbutzim in the Gaza strip were forced to evacuate their homes and leave their property without compensation. The total number of such persons might have been under 10,000. They are more numerous if dependents are included.

In most cases, Jews were not allowed to take out their property, and in many cases they were forced to leave.

This Exodus did not take place all at once in 1948 in all countries.

Post 1948
In Egypt, Jews lingered on until they were forced to leave after the 6-Day war in 1967.

Not all of the Jews who left Arab or Muslim countries may be considered refugees, but over 600,000 were apparently forced to leave without their property and could be defined therefore as refugees.
In addition there were about 100,000 Jews in Iran in 1948. At the time of the Khomeini revolution in 1979, there were about 80,000. About 55,000 found life impossible under the Islamist revolution and fled Iran, leaving abut 25,000 in 2004

source
The Forgotten Refugees:
Jews From Arab Lands
By ADA AHARONI and ALAIN ALBAGLI

Jewish Population of Arab Countries *
   
856,000 1948
475,050 1958
72,600 1968
32,190 1976
7,800   2001

*Copyright 2006, by MidEastWeb for Coexistence

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 11:04 AM

http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm
seems a reasonable start on Arab refugee numbers.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 11:06 AM

Earlier, either here or in the Obama thread I gave a by nation list for the Jewish refugees. ( with source material, I believe)

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 11:19 AM

I note your souurce bb and the proviso it contains

'IMPORTANT NOTE

Many of the figures presented on this page must be incorrect, because they conflict with other reports. The purpose of showing these data is to examine the discrepancies. It is an abuse of the intent of this essay, and it is intellectually dishonest, to post one table or set of figures from this page in isolation, and to use those numbers to "prove" a political point about Jewish or Arab rights in Palestine.'

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 11:22 AM

it is intellectually dishonest, to post one table or set of figures from Any source in isolation, and to use those numbers to "prove" a political point about Jewish or Arab rights in Palestine.

i have tried to look at all sources, and evaluate the reasoning and source numbers.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 11:45 AM

Nevertheless the 'fact' remains that refugee camps currently house around one third of all registered Palestinian refugees**

**The UNRWA defines a Palestinian refugee as:

"persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War."

UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948.

The number of registered Palestine refugees has subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.3 million in 2005 and continues to rise due to natural population growth.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 11:48 AM

As does the number of Arab Jewish refugees.

The point is, do we look for a solution both sides can accept, or insist that one side bear the entire burden?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:18 PM

I agree a solution must be found.

'the time has come to engage in a sulha and to stop killing one another.'
Prof Aharoni, a professor of sociology in Israel and abroad, and president of the World Congress of Egyptian Jews

Reconciliation, possibly along the path of the South African experience, is one solution.

This is not the short term 'fix' of the 'two nation state'

'after four decades of intensive Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 war -- Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created.'

Two populations inhabit one piece of land and, if the land cannot be divided, it must be shared. Equally.

from Los angeles Times article
May 2008

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:25 PM

Hope?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:25 PM

A number ( "some") left because they were ordered to by the Arab League, to get out of the way of Arab armies, with the promise they would get ALL of Palestine once the Jews were driven into the sea.

We happen to know that this is a lie that was concocted for public relations purposes by the leaders of Israel. It's also a huge libel against the Palestinians who were the victims of a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:32 PM

This is a claim that may be true in some cases, but the number of such acts and the number of Jews affected has NOT been shown- so, like the number of children sold by Jewish criminals, how can you count them?

I didn't say we had a hard and fast number for this. It's true that we don't know how many fled because of Israeli activities and how many fled because of problems not related to Israeli activities.

For this reason, it's not really possible to determine in every case, who was responsible for the Jewish refugees, and also for this reason, it's not accurate to say try to fix blame on the countries from which the Jews fled. It's not accurate to try to fix blame on either Israel or these countries. We simply don't know.

In the case of the Palestinian refugees, however, we do know who is responsible. We know that there was a systematic and brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing waged against the Palestinians, causing many hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:37 PM

CarolC,

"We happen to know that this is a lie that was concocted for public relations purposes by the leaders of Israel."

WE know nothing of the kind- did you even look at the citations I put up, and WHO said them???



" It's also a huge libel against the Palestinians who were the victims of a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing."

As much a libel as your accusations about Israel being the cause of the 6-day war? You seem to think it a libel if anyone disagrees with you- So I will now call it a libel when you say something I disagree with. I have not seen what I would consider any proof of your accusations, yet I have seen quotes from both outside observers and Palestinian Moslims about the Arab League telling them to get out of the way of the Arab armies and then they would get the land that the Jews had.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:42 PM

We know that the Arab League told them to leave their homes.


You can't revise history. There are report, by anti-Jewish parties, as well as neutral observers.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:50 PM

WE know nothing of the kind- did you even look at the citations I put up, and WHO said them???

Beardedbruce, hundreds of thousands of them had already been ethnically cleansed months before Israel even declared its independence, and before they were supposed to have been warned by "the Arabs" to temporarily leave.

Secondly, the Arab armies did not fight in any areas that had been given to the Jews in the partition plan, with the exception of a small part of Old Jerusalem. So the only Israelis they were fighting to clear out were the ones who were in the process of taking, by force, land that had been given to the Palestinians in the partition plan.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 01:47 PM

BUT!
leaving aside who DID what and to who where do we go from here?

There is hope from within from movements like Ta'ayush ("living together"), an Israeli-Palestinian grassroots movement against Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land.

Prof. Gadi Algazi, a co founder of the movement (who spent 10 months in a military prison before he was released as a result of public outcry) has observed the Israeli tower-and-stockade surveillance is strangling Palestinians living in the so-called "Seam Zone." This is the confiscated area between the Israeli side of the wall and the Green Line.

He points out that most of the 12,000 Palestinians living in this no-man's-land are 1948 refugees and their descendants, who have no access to schools, clinics or markets. They must apply for permission to remain in their unrecognized villages, which receive no electricity or water.

"The apartheid system thrives on details," he stressed. "Exhaustive forms must be filled out by everyone over age 12. They ask such intrusive questions as what do you study, who is your teacher, why do you want to sleep in your village?"

"The Wall has created the world's largest open air prison without guards," Algazi noted.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2004,

Three times the height of the Berlin Wall and proposed to run the eqivalent of london to Zurich!

meanwhile..... Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has stated

I will not agree to accept any kind of Israeli responsibility for the refugees. Full stop."
Then he added: "I don't think we should accept any kind of responsibility for the creation of this problem. Full stop."

He said the return of even one Palestinian refugee to Israel was "out of the question."

quoted in 2007

How to reconcile the irreconcilable - where to start.....?

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 02:08 PM

This is how we do it - right here. By raising awareness of the problem.

These guys (who, in my opinion, are some of the biggest heroes in the world right now) are saying, and I believe they are one hundred percent right about this, that the way to do it is to continue to speak out and continue to raise awareness about this, until the public outcry is too great to be ignored any longer. These two former members of the Israeli military are saying that this situation is driven by public opinion in the United States and Israel. They believe that most people in both countries would not stand for what is going on if they knew the truth of what is being done to the Palestinians. When public opinion in the US against apartheid is too strong to ignore any longer, that's when the leaders of both the US and Israel will be forced to correct the problem. Until then, nothing will be done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37MFa7ZKQWo&feature=related

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Emma B
Date: 18 May 08 - 02:24 PM

Much has been said on mudcat about the situation in Ireland.

'Imagine if, after an IRA bombing, a British prime minister declared Catholic areas in Northern Ireland to be hostile territory, and threatened to reduce or cut off goods, water, fuel and electricity supplies.'

'Collective starvation is being used as a political tool of pressure. One Israeli official admitted: "It is meant to be used as leverage on the civilian population, to pressure the Hamas regime over the Qassam fire."

'The World Food Programme lists it as a global hunger hotspot. Out of its 1.5 million residents, 1.1 million have to survive on food handouts. The Israeli journalist, Amira Hass, describes Gazans as being imprisoned in "an enclosed space like battery hens".'

'British government ministers condemn boycotts of Israel, but cannot even muster a word of condemnation of Israeli practices that actually endanger hundreds of thousands of lives. The hypocrisy is not lost on millions of Arabs and Muslims.'

'... this crushing of Gaza will continue to bolster Hamas's support as well as those who will make Hamas seem like the good guys'

From Life behind the wire by Chris Doyle director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding.

Greater 'understanding' is needed urgently

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 08 - 02:53 PM

This video is also worth watching for a better understanding of what life is like for Palestinians under Israeli military occupation. It was made a few years ago, but the checkpoint situation has not improved for them since then...

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: Peace
Date: 18 May 08 - 03:11 PM

There needs to be a homeland for Palestinians. There also is a homeland for Jews. The various Arab neighbours need to fuck off because they have done nothing to help. And in fact, the US needs to fuck off, too. HOWEVER, unless the only security Israel can have is the possession of nuclear weapons and the will to use them, then there is NO percentage in Israel agreeing to anything in the Middle East. As long as people continue to say crap like 'Israel started the 1967 war', there will be no agreement. Not here, not there.

Arab and Muslim governments--spokesmen for those governments or Hezbollah-type groups--have said things like 'anhilation of Israel', 'wipe it from the map', and other rhetoric which boils down to killing 5,000,000 Israelis. To say that that is not what they meant is simply bullshit.

If the only way people here can see a resolution to the problem as being Israel doing all the given, the problem will not get resolved.

I have yet to see the same vehement hatred that is directed at Israel being directed at Hezbollah or Hamas. When it is, it is couched in terms such that "well, if the Israelis hadn't done such-and-such, then these groups wouldn't have been necessary", and that is just justification for psychopaths to continue killing civilians, and when Israeli civilians get killed by rockets or suicide bombers, guess what? They respond. And guess what else? As long as this sort of rhetorical crap is perpetuated, there will be NO peace in the Middle East because there is not one good reason for Israel to pursue peace. To the Palestinians it is about a homeland. To the Israelis, it is about survival. Jews ahve been left to the mercy of countries before: Poland, Ukraine, France, etc. They were slaughtered. Denmark refused to play the game. Danish Jews were saved.

So while you folks get all teary-eyed about displaced people, save some of those tears for the other displaced people. And until such time as you demonstrate in your posts that what you seek is a solution for humans, not just Palestinian humans, I will contine to read your posts with disdain, and there will be no common ground here, either.

I respect that you have views. Respect that they are not the only views.

Subject: RE: BS: Palestinian 'facts'
From: pdq
Date: 18 May 08 - 03:16 PM

"philistines - Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary :

(Gen. 10:14, R.V.; but in A.V., "Philistim"), a tribe allied to
the Phoenicians. They were a branch of the primitive race which
spread over the whole district of the Lebanon and the valley of
the Jordan, and Crete and other Mediterranean islands. Some
suppose them to have been a branch of the Rephaim (2 Sam.
21:16-22). In the time of Abraham they inhabited the south-west
of Judea, Abimelech of Gerar being their king (Gen. 21:32, 34;
26:1). They are, however, not noticed among the Canaanitish
tribes mentioned in the Pentateuch. They are spoken of by Amos
(9:7) and Jeremiah (47:4) as from Caphtor, i.e., probably Crete,
or, as some think, the Delta of Egypt. In the whole record from
Exodus to Samuel they are represented as inhabiting the tract of
country which lay between Judea and Egypt (Ex. 13:17; 15:14, 15;
Josh. 13:3; 1 Sam. 4).

    This powerful tribe made frequent incursions against the
Hebrews. There was almost perpetual war between them. They
sometimes held the tribes, especially the southern tribes, in
degrading servitude (Judg. 15:11; 1 Sam. 13:19-22); at other
times they were defeated with great slaughter (1 Sam. 14:1-47;
17). These hostilities did not cease till the time of Hezekiah
(2 Kings 18:8), when they were entirely subdued. They still,
however, occupied their territory, and always showed their old
hatred to Israel (Ezek. 25:15-17). They were finally conquered
by the Romans.

    The Philistines are called Pulsata or Pulista on the Egyptian
monuments; the land of the Philistines (Philistia) being termed
Palastu and Pilista in the Assyrian inscriptions. They occupied
the five cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath, in
the south-western corner of Canaan, which belonged to Egypt up
to the closing days of the Nineteenth Dynasty. The occupation
took place during the reign of Rameses III. of the Twentieth
Dynasty. The Philistines had formed part of the great naval
confederacy which attacked Egypt, but were eventually repulsed
by that Pharaoh, who, however, could not dislodge them from
their settlements in Palestine. As they did not enter Palestine
till the time of the Exodus, the use of the name Philistines in
Gen. 26:1 must be proleptic. Indeed the country was properly
Gerar, as in ch. 20.

    They are called Allophyli, "foreigners," in the Septuagint,
and in the Books of Samuel they are spoken of as uncircumcised.
It would therefore appear that they were not of the Semitic
race, though after their establishment in Canaan they adopted
the Semitic language of the country. We learn from the Old
Testament that they came from Caphtor, usually supposed to be
Crete. From Philistia the name of the land of the Philistines
came to be extended to the whole of "Palestine." Many scholars
identify the Philistines with the Pelethites of 2 Sam. 8:18."