Tuesday, June 08, 2010
The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora
The Palestinian Arabs who live and have citizenship in Israel have a wonderful life compared to those who have the misfortune to live in an Arab country.
An estimated 4.6 million Palestinians live in Arab countries; how's that working out?
Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war.
In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions. Their living standard has been deemed "catastrophic" by both UNRWA and by the Lebanese government which created it.
The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe.
In Jordan they face the threat of losing their citizenship as tensions build with Jordanians.
Millions of Palestinians live in refugee camps; they can't own land or participate in normal economic life. The only governing authority that Palestinians living in the camps have ever known is UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. They have no ties to a "homeland" and are a recruiting ground for al-Qaeda.
Palestinian refugees and their descendants inside Syria are not allowed to vote or hold Syrian passports, but they are free from the overt discrimination that has turned Lebanon into a recruiting ground for al-Qa'ida.
Read the entire article by Judith Miller No way home: The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora - Middle East, World - The Independent
An estimated 4.6 million Palestinians live in Arab countries; how's that working out?
Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war.
In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions. Their living standard has been deemed "catastrophic" by both UNRWA and by the Lebanese government which created it.
The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe.
In Jordan they face the threat of losing their citizenship as tensions build with Jordanians.
Millions of Palestinians live in refugee camps; they can't own land or participate in normal economic life. The only governing authority that Palestinians living in the camps have ever known is UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. They have no ties to a "homeland" and are a recruiting ground for al-Qaeda.
Palestinian refugees and their descendants inside Syria are not allowed to vote or hold Syrian passports, but they are free from the overt discrimination that has turned Lebanon into a recruiting ground for al-Qa'ida.
Read the entire article by Judith Miller No way home: The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora - Middle East, World - The Independent
# posted by Norma : 6/08/2010 08:56:00 PM
