55 years ago, Palestinian Arabs and four Arab members of the UN went to war - not only against Israel, but against the UN decision for a two-state solution in Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians fled Jewish Israel and hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews fled Arab states.

Of the 135 million refugees in the 20th century less than 0.5% were Arab Palestinians.

At any point during the past 55 years, Arab governments could have helped the Palestinian Arabs settle down to a decent life. They could have created the infrastructure of an autonomous Palestine on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that Jordan respectively Egypt controlled until 1967, or encouraged the resettlement of Palestinians in Jordan, which constitutes the lion's share of the original mandate of Palestine. Rather than fund the Palestine Liberation Organization to foment terror against Israel they could have endowed Palestinian schools of architecture, engineering, medicine and law. What Israel did for its refugees from Arab lands, Arabs could have done much more sumptuously for the Palestinians displaced by the same conflict. Instead, Arab rulers cultivated generations of "refugees" and focused on what the Palestinian Arabs lost while attempting to destroy Israel.

Unequal UN mandates for refugees in the world: Palestinians vs. all others
20th century: 135 million refugees, less than 0.5% were Arab Palestinians
UNHCR mandated for 20 million refugees worldwide - except "UNRWA's"
UNRWA aids only Palestinians in West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria & Lebanon
UNRWA upgraded Palestinians internally displaced in 1948 to "refugees"
UNRWA upgraded also the descendants of these IDPs to "refugees"
UNRWA's Palestinian "refugees" multiplied due to natural population growth from 914,000 in 1950 to over four million in 2002.
In another 52 years (that is 104 years after their ancestors fled Israel), about 17.5 million descendants of Palestinians will qualify for UNRWA "refugee" status (given the same UNRWA definitions and the same natural increase).

Unequal UN staff members per refugee: Palestinians vs. all others
UNHCR (non-Palestinians): 1:3,582,
UNRWA (Palestinians): 1:165 (+2,000%)

Unequal wealth in the Palestinian Autonomy: Arafat vs. the Palestinians
Palestinian Autonomy gross national income per capita per day: US$ 3.70
Arafat: in Forbes Report 2003 "The World's Richest People"

Yasser Arafat ‘has £1.8bn fortune’ (William Tinning, The Herald, Nov 7, 2003): "... [Arafat] has amassed a personal fortune of between £602m and £1.8bn. ... Arafat's wife, Suha, 40, who lives away from the struggles of her homeland, is given more than £60,000 a month from Palestinian Authority funds."

Unequal refugee populations in the Holy Land: Jews and Palestinians
Most Israelis are refugees from Arab states or descendants of such refugees
Most Palestinian "refugees" descendants of 1948 internally displaced (IDP)
Arab states refuse integration of Arab Palestinian refugees & descendants
In 1991, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians evicted from Kuwait
Great numbers of Arab Palestinians expelled by Arab Gulf states
Great numbers of Arab Palestinians expelled by Arab Libya
Great numbers of Arab Palestinians displaced by Arab Iraq

Unequal names by which neighborhoods in Palestinian towns are called
"Wretched" Palestinian "refugee camps" in "occupied" West Bank and Gaza Strip are in fact neighborhoods of above average Arab towns, near Palestinian universities and compounds of the Palestinian rich and famous.
For example, Jenin (West Bank) consists of stone and concrete buildings, with schools, private university, chamber of commerce and industry, jewelry shops, CD shops, computer shops, sweet shops, travel agencies, restaurants, lawyers offices, engineering offices, banks, mosques, insurance agents, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, sports clubs, taxis, traffic jams and everything else you expect in a community.

PLAZA mall in Al-Bireh, West Bank (Website of Arab Palestinian Shopping Centers P.L.C., Dec 2, 2003): "... a national, publicly traded, Palestinian retail developer and retailer committed to establishing and operating modern shopping centers, full-scale supermarkets, food courts and modern children play areas, all aimed at upgrading the Palestinian shopping experience through providing world-class customer service, convenience, quality products, and value pricing -- all within a clean, spacious, safe and dynamic facility in order to provide all customer's daily needs “under one roof” ... The Arab Palestinian Shopping Centers P.L.C. is a 4.5 million Jordanian Dinar ($6.33 million) company and has plans to build a chain of PLAZA Shopping Centers in Palestinian cities of East Jerusalem, Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron and Gaza. The firm is publicly traded on the Palestinian Securities Exchange under the symbol PLAZA"

Unequal publicity about refugees: from Israel vs. from Arab states
Hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews fled Arab states
Hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians fled Jewish Israel
Hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians evicted by Arab Kuwait
Great numbers of Arab Palestinians expelled by Arab Gulf states
Great numbers of Arab Palestinians expelled by Arab Libya
Great numbers of Arab Palestinians displaced by Arab Iraq
Hundreds of thousands of Arab Saharawis evicted by Arab Morocco
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds evicted by Arab Iraq
Millions of black Africans displaced by Arab Sudan

Unequal health in the Middle East: Palestinians and the other Arabs
Palestinians have higher population growth, life expectancy, fertility rate and lower infant mortality than the Middle East average and than all the neighboring Arab states Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Unequal partition of the Holy Land: Jews and Arabs
Of the original 1922 League of Nations Palestine Mandate to establish the Jewish National Home (120,000 sq km), Israel received only 17% (20,330 sq km), while Arab Jordan received 77% (91,971 sq km). Golan Heights (1,200 sq km): 1%. The remaining 5% are today the West Bank (5,860 sq km) and Gaza Strip (360 sq km) under Israeli or Arab Palestinian rule, their current status subject to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, their permanent status to be determined through further negotiation. Their total area of 6,220 sq km is matching equivalent to a circle with a radius of only 45 km. This is 1/2400 (0.04%!) of the total area of the Arab world & Iran (15.15 million sq km).

True human development of the Palestinians and the other Arabs
The "wretched" Palestinians in the Israeli "Occupied Palestinian Territories" have higher Human Development Index (HDI = 0.731) than the 22 Arab states average (0.662) and than the average (0.707) of all neighboring Arab states Egypt (0.648), Jordan (0.743), Syria (0.648) and Lebanon (0.752) and only a bit lower than oilrich Saudi Arabia (0.769). HDI source: United Nations Human Development Report 2003

Unequal education and employment for Palestinians: Arab states vs. Israel
In Arab Lebanon, Arab Palestinians do not have social and civil rights, and have a very limited access to the government's public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. Palestinians are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions.
Under Israeli rule, Arab Palestinian universities in East-Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza Strip (all founded after 1967 when Israel took over these territories from Arab Jordan and Arab Egypt):
Al Azhar University of Gaza
Al-Quds University (6 campuses in Jerusalem and West Bank)
Arab American University of Jenin
Bethlehem University of Bethlehem
Birzeit University of Birzeit

Hebron University of Hebron
Ibrahimieh Community College of Jerusalem
Islamic University of Gaza
Palestine Polytechnic Institute
An-Najah National University of Nablus official website: "In 1977 it became An-Najah National University with Faculties of Arts and Science. In 1978 An-Najah National University joined the Association of Arab Universities as a full member. The university grew and advanced from this point forward constructing auditoriums, a library and a student center until it was declared a "closed military area" by the Israeli authorities in 1988. It was reopened in 1991 and has been fully functioning since. It has 10 Undergraduate Faculties, 30 Masters, and one Ph.D program. The university has also added nine professional and technical centers, such as the Center for Water and Environmental Studies and the Center for Urban and Regional Planning. An-Najah National University continues to advance and develop and offer the highest level of secondary education in the West Bank. The foundation has already been laid for its new campus, which will house the School of Medicine, a Teaching Hospital and its existing Science and Technical Faculties, and An-Najah hopes to expand to hold more than 10,000 students by the new millenium.” You got it? From 1948-1967, under the occupation of the Arab Jordanian brothers, Nablus got no university. But since 1977, under Israeli rule, Nablus not only got their first university but “the university grew and advanced”. Needless to say, while tens of thousands of Arabs study at Israeli universities, no Jew can safely enter Nablus: Hamas and Islamic Jihad Triumph in Al-Najah University Student Elections. The USA and the EU classify Hamas and Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations.

How do internally displaced (IDPs) differ from refugees (UNHCR website): "Civilians become internationally recognized as ‘refugees’ when they cross a national frontier to seek sanctuary in another country. The internally displaced, so-called IDPs, remain, for whatever reason, in their own states."

WHO IS A PALESTINE REFUGEE? (UNRWA official website): "Under UNRWA's operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict ... UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. The number of registered Palestine refugees has subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than four million in 2002, and continues to rise due to natural population growth."

UNRWA and UNCHR (UNRWA website): "UNRWA and the UNHCR are both UN agencies mandated by the international community to do specific jobs for refugee populations. UNRWA deals specifically with Palestine refugees and their unique political situation. One reason for the distinction is that in the main the UNHCR is mandated to offer refugees three options, namely local integration and resettlement in third countries or return to their home country – options which must be accepted voluntarily by refugees under UNHCR’s care. These are not feasible for Palestine refugees as the first two options are unacceptable to the refugees and their host countries and the third is rejected by Israel. Given this context, the international community, through the General Assembly of the United Nations, requires UNRWA to continue to provide humanitarian assistance pending a political solution."

Refugees by numbers 2002 (UNCHR - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees): (PDF, 289 KB) "Persons of concern to UNHCR at 1st Jan 2002: 19,783,100 ... An estimated 3.9 million Palestinians who are covered by a separate mandate of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are not included in this report. However, Palestinians outside the UNRWA area of operations such as those in Iraq or Libya, are considered to be of concern to UNHCR. At year-end their number was 349,100."
UNRWA in Figures (UNRWA - U.N. Relief and Works Agency in the Near East, Dec 31, 2002) (PDF, 32 KB)

 The Refugee Curse (Daniel Pipes, The New York Post, August 19, 2003: "Here's a puzzle: How do Palestinian refugees differ from the other 135 million 20th-century refugees?
Answer: In every other instance, the pain of dispossession, statelessness, and poverty has diminished over time. Refugees eventually either resettled, returned home or died. Their children - whether living in South Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Germany or the United States - then shed the refugee status and joined the mainstream.
Not so the Palestinians. For them, the refugee status continues from one generation to the next, creating an ever-larger pool of anguish and discontent.
Several factors explain this anomaly but one key component - of all things - is the United Nations' bureaucratic structure. It contains two organizations focused on refugee affairs, each with its own definition of "refugee":
The U.N. High Commission for Refugees applies this term worldwide to someone who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted . . . is outside the country of his nationality." Being outside the country of his nationality implies that descendants of refugees are not refugees. Cubans who flee the Castro regime are refugees, but not so their Florida-born children who lack Cuban nationality. Afghans who flee their homeland are refugees, but not their Iranian-born children. And so on.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), an organization set up uniquely for Palestinian refugees in 1949, defines Palestinian refugees differently from all other refugees. They are persons who lived in Palestine "between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict." Especially important is that UNRWA extends the refugee status to "the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948." It even considers the children of just one Palestinian refugee parent to be refugees.
The High Commission's definition causes refugee populations to vanish over time; UNRWA's causes them to expand without limit. Let's apply each definition to the Palestinian refugees of 1948, who by the U.N.'s (inflated) statistics numbered 726,000. (Scholarly estimates of the number range between 420,000 to 539,000.)
The High Commission definition would restrict the refugee status to those of the 726,000 yet alive. According to a demographer, about 200,000 of those 1948 refugees remain living today.
UNRWA includes the refugees' children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as Palestinians who left their homes in 1967, all of whom add up to 4.25 million refugees.
The 200,000 refugees by the global definition make up less than 5 percent of the 4.25 million by the UNRWA definition. By international standards, those other 95 percent are not refugees at all. By falsely attaching a refugee status to these Palestinians who never fled anywhere, UNRWA condemns a creative and entrepreneurial people to lives of exclusion, self-pity and nihilism.
The policies of Arab governments then make things worse by keeping Palestinians locked in an amber-like refugee status. In Lebanon, for instance, the 400,000 stateless Palestinians are not allowed to attend public school, own property or even improve their housing stock.
It's high time to help these generations of non-refugees escape the refugee status so they can become citizens, assume self-responsibility and build for the future. Best for them would be for UNRWA to close its doors and the U.N. High Commission to absorb the dwindling number of true Palestinian refugees."

JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa): "In 1945 there were nearly 900,000 Jews living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,000. Today, 99% of these ancient Jewish communities no longer exist in the lands where Jews lived for thousands of years. In some Arab states, such as Libya, the Jewish community no longer exists; in others, only a few hundred Jews remain. Of the 900,000 Jewish refugees, approximately 600,000 were absorbed by Israel, where today almost half of Israel's Jewish citizens are the original refugees and their descendants. The remainder went to Europe and the Americas."

Justice for Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries (JJAC)

The Forgotten Refugees. An exchange of populations (David Littman, NRO, Dec 3, 2002)

Arab Saharawi refugee camps (Western Sahara Online): "The temperature in the refugee camps reaches IN SHADE a scorching 135 F (57.2 Celsius) in summer and plunges below freezing in winter. Sandstorms, called siroccos, rip through the refugee camps without warning. Flash floods wipe out entire tent neighborhoods, destroying everything in their path. In the southwest corner of Algeria, nearly 200,000 refugees are struggling to survive in this inhospitable part of the great Sahara Desert." ... "The International Court of Justice in The Hague issued a ruling in 1975 that neither [Arab] Morocco nor [Arab] Mauritania has any claim to the territory of Western Sahara. Mauritania could not militarily, politically or economically sustain fighting against the POLISARIO troops and signed a peace agreement in 1979. They acknowledged the sovereignty of the Western Saharan nation in exile, the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) which was founded in 1976. On the other hand, Morocco refuses to this day to relinquish any claims to Western Sahara." More ...

Palestinians are driven from homes by armed Iraqis (Jack Fairweather, The Daily Telegraph, Jun 9, 2003): For all its golden words in support of the Palestinian cause, the [Iraqi] government refused to let them own their homes and restricted their employment to manual labour ... While the Palestinian cause may stir the passions of Arabs across the Middle East, Palestinians themselves are often regarded with suspicion. Palestinian militants were involved in civil wars in Jordan and Lebanon. In 1991, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were evicted from Kuwait after the emirate was liberated from the Iraqis. And in 1993 and 1994, hundreds were evicted from Libya on the grounds that Yasser Arafat had supported Saddam. Now it is the Palestinians in Baghdad who are the victims of the political upheaval."

In Postwar Iraq, Fortunes of Palestinians Worsen (Pamela Constable, Washington Post, Aug 3, 2003): "... even those [Palestinians] who were born in Iraq or married an Iraqi cannot become Iraqi citizens or hold passports, and few other countries accept their Iraqi travel documents. Moreover, Palestinians could not own property such as houses or cars until last year, when Hussein suddenly reversed a long-standing policy. And although they were entitled to the same public education as Iraqis, they were barred from a variety of military and public-sector jobs ..."

Palestinians Expelled by Libya Stranded (Salma Shawa, Washington Report, Aug/Sep 1996)

Palestinians in Lebanon (Julie Peteet, World Refugee Survey 1997): "Despite international law governing the treatment of refugees, the Lebanese state implemented laws to restrict Palestinians in a variety of ways. In 1962, legislation placed Palestinians on a par with foreigners so that their gaining employment required a work permit. While Palestinians circumscribed this requirement for nearly two decades, the post-1982 period has witnessed its vigorous implementation. For example, Decision no. 289/1, issued by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs on December 18, 1982, set out the categories of employment closed to foreigners, which range from banking to barbering. The ministry also issued a circular detailing the arenas of work open to foreigners, with work permits, as: 'construction workers and workers in ancillary tasks, excluding electrical installations, sanitation facilities and glass mounting; agricultural workmen; tanning and leather workers; excavation workers; textile and carpet workmen; smelters; sanitation workers; nannies, nurses; servants and cooks; car wash and ubrication workers.' In other words, Palestinians are forbidden to work in all but the most menial of positions."

The Legal Status of Palestinian Refugees and their Relation with the Lebanese State (Nasri Saleh Hajjaj, Shaml, the Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center)

UNRWA official website: "Palestine refugees in Lebanon face specific problems. They do not have social and civil rights, and have a very limited access to the government's public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. The majority rely entirely on UNRWA as the sole provider of education, health and relief and social services. Considered as foreigners, Palestine refugees are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions. This has led to a very high rate of unemployment amongst the refugee population."

Lausanne Peace Treaty of Jan 30, 1923, Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations (Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs): "The Government of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the Greek Government have agreed upon the following provisions: Article 1 As from the 1st May, 1923, there shall take place a compulsory exchange of Turkish nationals of the Greek Orthodox religion established in Turkish territory, and of Greek nationals of the Moslem religion established in Greek territory. These persons shall not return to live in Turkey or Greece respectively without the authorisation of the Turkish Government or of the Greek Government respectively."

Forced Population Transfers: Institutionalised Ethnic Cleansing as the Road to New (In-) Stability? The European Experience (Stefan Wolff, Department of European Studies, University of Bath/UK)

Iraq's last Jews wait in fear for war (Times Online, Oct 18, 2002): "Protected from prying eyes by a 10ft wall and padlocked steel gates plastered with Saddam Hussein posters is Bataween Synagogue, an anonymous brown-brick building, with no nameplate or symbols to betray its purpose, where the handful of Jews who remain in the city gather discreetly to worship each week. Fifty years ago there were about 350,000 Jewish people in Iraq. When the British marched into Baghdad at the end of the First World War a fifth of its citizens were estimated to be Jewish. Today 38 remain in the capital. In Basra, the once prosperous port in the south, there is just one old woman. In Mosul and Amarah, and other Iraqi cities where Jews had lived for more than two millennia, their communities have vanished without trace."

The Middle East's other refugees (National Post): “Sadly, the 20th century was an era of involuntary migration. Ottoman Turkey ejected two million Armenians during the First World War. Czech authorities expelled three million ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland after the Second World War. When the British partitioned India and Pakistan in 1948, a total of 10 million moved between the two countries, with fearful Hindus fleeing for their lives one way, Muslims the other. And yet none of these refugee movements gave rise to the festering conflict caused by a smaller refugee migration -- the flight of about 800,000 Palestinian Arabs from Israel. Why?”

The Last Jews of Libya

The Scribe, Journal of Babylonian Jewry

American Sefardi Federation

Historical Society of Jews from Egypt

Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries

In the Middle East, black means white (Robert Fulford, National Post, Canada, Jul 5, 2003)

Ten Tips on How to Be an Arafat Apologist (Jamie Glazov, Frontpage Magazin, Apr 11, 2002)

Hatred of Israel is a crutch Arab states have to give up (Ruth Wisse, Wall Street Journal, Jun 16, 2003): "At any point during the past 55 years, Arab governments could have helped the Palestinian Arabs settle down to a decent life. They could have created the infrastructure of an autonomous Palestine on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza territory that Egypt controlled until 1967, or encouraged the resettlement of Palestinians in Jordan, which constitutes the lion's share of the original mandate of Palestine. Rather than fund the Palestine Liberation Organization to foment terror against Israel they could have endowed Palestinian schools of architecture, engineering, medicine and law. What Israel did for its refugees from Arab lands, Arabs could have done much more sumptuously for the Palestinians displaced by the same conflict. Instead, Arab rulers cultivated generations of refugees in order to justify their ongoing campaign against the 'usurper' ... In almost identical ways [to the Nazis], the autocrats who govern Arab societies have used the "Zionist entity" to deflect attention from the worst aspects of their rule. The unwanted presence of the Jews became the rallying point for internal dissatisfaction with the mounting problems of Arab regimes. The drumbeat against Israel invited the world to debate the iniquities of the Jews rather than question the legitimacy of the attacks against them. This comparison is not intended to equate the Germans with the Arabs, except in the ways that both exploited anti-Semitism to achieve broader political goals. Both used the alleged threat of "the Jews" to excuse their own failures. Anti-Semitism in both situations linked otherwise warring groups of the Left and Right. The problem with anti-Semitism in its older and newer varieties is that it seems to serve its patrons so well. Without question, Arab rulers successfully deflected attention from their offenses by their decades of war and propaganda against Israel. Even the liberal Western media that might have been expected to support a besieged fellow democracy have long since focused on alleged Israeli abuses instead of on the abuses of their Arab accusers."

UNRWA official website: "UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. The number of registered Palestine refugees has subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than four million in 2002, and continues to rise due to natural population growth."

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