Hear, Hear

Submitted by Peter J. Herz (Taiwan), Sep 11, 2003 at 06:02

First, the UN and Arab states condemned the offspring of the 1948 Arab refugees to a subsidized, self-perpetuating "refugee" status in the countries where they were born, very often the only countries they ever knew. Next, in the 1970's, the UN's Communist and Third World majority rather than the people in Nablus, Ramallah, Jericho, and Gaza elect the Egyptian-born Yasir Arafat as Palestinian leader, even though he seems capable of nothing save promoting terrorism and destabilizing any country stupid enough to let him take up residence in it.

Granted, the UN has to listen to what its member states want, especially in dealing with matters that take place inside their own borders. Hence, if Syria or Sa'udi Arabia want to keep the offspring of the 1948 refugees stateless, stateless they must remain. In such a situation, it would be better if the US, working outside the UN framework, got together with a bunch of other states that have absorbed and naturalized refugees to work out a plan to be vigorously pushed in their diplomacy with the Arab states.

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