Whatever was or was not accomplished during last month\'s Taba talks, Israeli negotiators learned one thing: the intensity of Palestinian feeling about the refugee issue. HaModia newspaper reports that the Israelis came away with the feeling that there could be no Palestinian compromise on the demand for both repatriation and compensation.
To put the matter in perspective, Arutz-7\'s Yosef Zalmanson notes that the Arab refugee problem was both caused and perpetuated by the Arab nations. The Arab nations, in the weeks preceding and following their declaration of war on the fledgling State of Israel in May 1948, encouraged the Arab inhabitants to leave, saying it would ease the victory which they guaranteed would not be long in coming. After Israel\'s victory, however, the Arab countries made sure to keep the problem alive. As Joan Peters, author of From Time Immemorial, recently told WorldNetDaily.com,
\"The Palestinians who fled or were ordered [by the Arab countries] to run from Israel - many of them recently-arrived nomads who had come for a job - those people could have taken over the positions that were left by the Jews in those Arab countries. It could have been solved and it could have been one of the more humane solutions to the refugee problem anywhere in the world. There were many international boards of inquiry. There were many recommendations by American and foreign presidents and prime ministers to solve the Arab refugee problem. [But as] the Arabs said in the Arab League at that time, \"We want to keep this as an open sore and use these people as a pawn against Israel.\"
To put the matter in perspective, Arutz-7\'s Yosef Zalmanson notes that the Arab refugee problem was both caused and perpetuated by the Arab nations. The Arab nations, in the weeks preceding and following their declaration of war on the fledgling State of Israel in May 1948, encouraged the Arab inhabitants to leave, saying it would ease the victory which they guaranteed would not be long in coming. After Israel\'s victory, however, the Arab countries made sure to keep the problem alive. As Joan Peters, author of From Time Immemorial, recently told WorldNetDaily.com,
\"The Palestinians who fled or were ordered [by the Arab countries] to run from Israel - many of them recently-arrived nomads who had come for a job - those people could have taken over the positions that were left by the Jews in those Arab countries. It could have been solved and it could have been one of the more humane solutions to the refugee problem anywhere in the world. There were many international boards of inquiry. There were many recommendations by American and foreign presidents and prime ministers to solve the Arab refugee problem. [But as] the Arabs said in the Arab League at that time, \"We want to keep this as an open sore and use these people as a pawn against Israel.\"