We are witnessing another attempt at trying to find viable solution for the troubles in the Middle East. Whether it will be more successful than previous ones is yet to be seen.
Sifting through the blogosphere to see the general pulse of the reactions to today's events I found an interesting link on The Washington Note, a link to a letter that was addressed to President Bush and Secretary Rice, and is signed by an impressive list of heavyweight politicians, academicians, and other important personages. They present there a list od recommendations, like the creation of the two states, the redivision of Jerusalem, and so on. But one item in particular caught my attention:
* A solution to the refugee problem that is consistent with the two-state solution, addresses the Palestinian refugees' deep sense of injustice, as well as provides them with meaningful financial compensation and resettlement assistance."
I was always puzzled by this issue in the past. How can it be possible that there are Palestinian refugees, even actual refugee camps, still in existence 60 years after the creation of Israel and the flight of the original refugees? The majority of those people are not even alive any more, we are talking about second and third generation "refugees" - and I won't even get here into the issue of having people there from other Middle Eastern countries who voluntarily joined these refugees, to live with them and support them in their goals, whatever those may be. This happens to be a unique phenomenon in the world, and it would be a worthwhile project to thoroughly analyze it and look for the reasons behind it.
I cannot help comparing these Palestinians refugee issues to all the others I have observed throughout my life. I also consider myself a (former) refugee. My grandparents and parents in Eastern Europe were stripped of their wealth by the Communist regime, my grandparents actually physically deported one night with only the clothes on their backs, and so we, the younger ones, fled at the first opportunity to North America where we resettled and built a new life for ourselves. Over the decades I saw similar fates unfold, from Korea, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, Somalia. My mother for years volunteered to help these newcomers to Canada resettle, sharing with them her experiences and expertise in coping with the new life. I remember our former Prime Minister Jean Chretien publicly announcing on TV that Canada will open its gates to such and such number of Palestinian refugees. Why did so few of them answer that call? I always wondered...
I always wondered why Jordan failed to resettle those who initially took refuge within its borders in 1948, after all roughly 50% of the Jordanian population is considered to be "Palestinians" with close family ties to people west of the Jordan river. What is more, I still cannot fully understand the reasons behind the events of "Black September", and the expulsion of said refugees from Jordan. Or the inability of Lebanon to accept and absorb some of those refugees, instead having massive refugee camps to this day, way up in the north of the country, like the Nahr el-Bared camp where those intense fights occurred earlier this year between the refugees and the Lebanese army. And why is it that all over in the rich Arab world, instead of taking these Palestinian refugees in, absorb them and resettle them, they exploit them, using them as cheap labour, making them live in squalor amidst the sparkle and abundance, and then send them back into those artificially maintained "refugee camps" when they tire of them.
And finally, how can you call people "refugees", whose parents already were born where they are now? It would not even occur to me to consider my children or my grandchildren who were born here in Canada "refugees". What an odd situation where second and third generations of people still need to be considered for resettlement.
But let us return to this issue that was touched upon in the open letter:
* A solution to the refugee problem that is consistent with the two-state solution, addresses the Palestinian refugees' deep sense of injustice, as well as provides them with meaningful financial compensation and resettlement assistance."
Refugees in all corners of the world feel a "deep sense of injustice", including myself. Yet I made sure that I did not poison my children's soul with it. The world has seen much worse tragedies than my family's or of those Palestinians fleeing out of possible harm's way in 1948. What about the refugees of Rwanda or present day's Darfur, who not only lost everything but also witnessed their families being butchered? Rest assured, they were and will be taken care of, resettled, building a new life for themselves somewhere, while the Palestinian refugee camps will see a fourth generation being born and raised as "refugees". I wonder why...?
The above excerpt from the open letter asks for both financial compensation and resettlement assistance. It is not clear who does it mean to be targeted for this task. Should it be entirely the responsibility of Israel to step up to it? Then what about the Jewish refugees, and I don't mean the victims of the European Holocaust, but the close to a million refugees who fled from their ancestral lands all over the Islamic Middle East, often literally fleeing for their lives? To quote: "As a matter of law and equity, no just, comprehensive Middle East peace can be reached without recognition of and redress for the uprooting, under Islamic regimes, of centuries-old Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa." Israel, having already the experience in absorbing and resettling the survivors of the Holocaust, absorbed and resettled these refugees from Arab lands in a matter of fact way, without much fanfare. Yet, aren't they entitled to redress and compensation the same way as the Palestinian refugees are? Why is there no mention of them in the open letter?
There are, of course, answers for the above questions, just that they are hidden in the murky cesspools of politics and ideological warfare. One thing is sure, blame lies somewhere for those still flourishing Palestinian refugee camps, for the generations of refugees kept in poverty by their fabulously rich brethren, raised on a steady diet of hatred, used as cannon fodder, or more accurately live bombs, in a blind war against "The Jews". When things will settle and the victims of this decades old injustice will recuperate their senses enough so they can look around, no longer blinded by the propaganda that keeps shaking the red flag of "Zionism" in front of them, they will realize that it is not "the Jews" who are the true cause of their plight. I wonder what social upheavals will ensue when that happens. I wonder...
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