The plight of the Arab refugees demands the sympathy and immediate attention of the world community. Action for a just solution of the problem requires an understanding of its historical background. It was fellow Arabs who purposefully created the refugees and have kept them trapped in camps to use them as a political weapon against Israel.
In 1949, the Arabs living in Palestine left because:
- Arab propagandist s urged Palestinians to get out of the way of the advancing Arab armies.
- There was fear of Jewish retaliation to the Arab terrorism already taking place.
- Extensive broadcasts from Cairo, Damascus, Amman, and Beirut warned that any Arabs who stayed would be hanged as collaborators when the Arab armies reached them. (Israeli radio had asked them to stay where they were.)
Thus the Palestinian Arabs were victims of Arab propaganda even in 1948.
Since then the number of refugees has been wildly exaggerated to suit Arab propaganda needs. The latest official figures (for early 1967) list 1,300, 000 refugees, but the director of the relief agency [UNRWA] Laurence Michelmore, has himself stated that his organization "had never claimed that their figures were exact" (statement before the UN Special Political Committee in December, 1967). In fact 117, 000 dead people are still drawing rations. Actually, there are now 370,000 refugees still living in camps.
Half the refugees live in Gaza. They are still refugees because the Egyptian government did not allow them to leave but kept them trapped in camps for eighteen years. Refugees were imprisoned for trying to leave Gaza.
Vast population exchanges took place after World War II. Four million Koreans were resettled; nine million East Germans were integrated into West Germany; and fifteen million refugees in India and Pakistan have ceased to be an international problem. Half a million Jewish refugees from Arab lands were resettled in Israel. Only the Arab refugees remain - as a monument to Arab intransigence.
[Harvard] Progressive Students for Israel
