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Palestinian Refugees Were Used as a Political Prop

(Wall Street Journal) Prof. Fred Baumann - In "Palestinians Deserve a Passport" (op-ed, July 20), Abdullah Ektileh justly focuses on the abominable treatment Palestinians have been given by Arab governments. Where, in the great population exchanges of the 1940s, Muslims were absorbed into Pakistan, Hindus into India, Silesian Germans into West Germany and Jews from Arab lands into Israel, the Palestinians were an exception. Rejected by their fellow Arabs, who largely kept them cooped up in camps and fed a diet of hatred and revenge from birth, Palestinians were meant to be a tool for a war of total destruction against the Jewish state. Eventually, the plan backfired and, after the (barely) failed attempt of radicalized Palestinians to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, they became too dangerous to absorb. To this day, they suffer from their exclusion by their fellow Arabs, while directing their passionate hatred toward Israel. The Oslo agreement intended for them to become citizens of a Palestinian state, one offered by Israel in 2000, 2001 and 2008. During what was supposed to be a transition period, Oslo granted them autonomy under the Palestinian Authority. But the PA has flatly refused all those offers of statehood and promoted terrorism, even making payments to Palestinians who kill Jews. By their policies, the Arab states created a monster that terrifies them and also has made the two-state solution, one perfectly sensible in theory, a practical impossibility. The Palestinian leadership's last card has been posing as victims. While that has succeeded in whipping up a worldwide wave of Jew-hate, it has done nothing to help the Palestinians themselves. The writer is Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College.
2023-07-27 00:00:00
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