The Arab-Israeli conflict: Time to move on
As a result of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, roughly 800,000 Jews were expelled from various Arab countries in which they had been living for generations.
Consequently, they were forced, like millions of other refugees throughout the 20th century, to resettle elsewhere. Although certainly not an easy task, eventually both the initial refugees and their descendants were able to let go of the past and move on with their lives.
Unlike the Jewish refugees from Arab countries, the story of the roughly 500,000 Arab refugees created by Israel’s War of Independence has been vastly different. Rather than being encouraged to resettle elsewhere, they were turned into permanent refugees to be used as a political tool against Israel. For this purpose, a special UN agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), was created in 1950 for the sole intent of maintaining, as opposed to resettling, the original refugees.
Even today, nearly seventy years later, UNRWA continues with this policy unabashedly. As they boldly state on their site “We are committed to fostering the human development of Palestine refugees by helping them to acquire knowledge and skills, lead long and healthy lives, achieve decent standards of living and enjoy human rights to the fullest possible extent.” Noticeably absent from this list is any attempt to help the refugees restart their lives in another place.
The exact opposite is the case for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), an agency that was also established in 1950 and which deals with every other other refugee population in the world. According to its site, "The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide.”
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Lots more at:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4786722,00.html
It's time to face reality, the Palestinians have been used as pawns against the Jews since before WWII, they have been fed a diet of lies, have been inculcated since birth to embrace violence as THE way to realize their goals, have done no nation building outside of a security entity, their government has devolved into a (multiple party) dictatorship, and they already number more than the entire population of Israel thanks to the perma-refugee status granted to them. The whole situation is ridiculous and without precedence, I think the colonialist countries Britain and France who illegally occupied the ME for so long should pony up some money for reparations and facilitating relocation.
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