A Palestinian Authority committee recommends depriving an entire population sector - the "refugees" from 1948 - of its basic democratic right to vote in the upcoming local elections. The reason? Their situation provides the PA with major political capital.
The refugees have been living in UN-maintained refugee camps since the creation of the State of Israel. Efforts by Israel to upgrade their status have often been foiled by the Arab countries. The PA committee feels that to grant them democratic rights would water down their status as "testimony" to the Israeli "crimes."
The Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) organization, which monitors the PA media, reports that the PA's official Al-Hayat Al-Jadida newspaper published a statement this week by an official PA body to this effect. The recommendation, writes PMW, is "another step in the long history of Arab leaders abusing camp residents as pawns for political gain."
The newspaper reported that the Supreme National Committee for the Protection of the Right of Return announced that it "opposes the participation of the refugee camps in the local elections that are expected to take place in the Palestinian territories. The committee justified its objection as protecting the unique status of the refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, considering them testimony to the crime that the occupation state made against our nation for 56 years."
The Supreme National Committee for the Protection of the Right of Return also reiterates the PA policy of preventing the integration of the refugee camps into urban housing units, calling it a "danger."
PMW notes that since Israel's creation, the Arab world has actively prevented a humanitarian solution for Arab refugees who left Israel during the War of Independence: "For example, Lebanon still prohibits camp residents from owning homes or businesses outside the camps, condemning them to perpetual economic and social hardship."
President Moshe Katzav, during his visit earlier this year in France, condemned "rich" Arab countries for not being "able to build a town or a village for Arab refugees. Where is their sensitivity?" he said.
Arutz-7's Yosef Meiri notes that despite the Arabs' continuing efforts to portray the refugee problem as Israel's fault, it was actually the Arab leaders themselves who cajoled their brethren to leave their homes. "As early as the first months of 1948," according to The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957, "the Arab League issued orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes ... and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property."
Joan Peters, in "From Time Immemorial" (p. 13), quotes a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut finding that "the majority" of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, and that 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier.
The numbers of refugees living in camps have also been exploited - and artificially increased - for political purposes. Peters writes that in 1982, close to 240,000 refugees were reported living in camps in Lebanon - while in March 1983, after Israel's Peace for Galilee war and the accompanying unrest, the reported figure had suddenly and inexplicably shot up to 300,000. Peters writes (p. 400),
"Over 61,000 had been added, against all logic and feasibility, to the UNRWA overall totals... with hundreds of top-notch reporters looking on, and nobody but the Arab UNRWA staff allowed to verify. That was an apt modern example of the continuing escalation, resulting in ever-larger 'Palestinian diaspora' figures, and the somewhat helpless attempts to explain the 'incredible' or 'unprecedented' numbers."
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The refugees have been living in UN-maintained refugee camps since the creation of the State of Israel. Efforts by Israel to upgrade their status have often been foiled by the Arab countries. The PA committee feels that to grant them democratic rights would water down their status as "testimony" to the Israeli "crimes."
The Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) organization, which monitors the PA media, reports that the PA's official Al-Hayat Al-Jadida newspaper published a statement this week by an official PA body to this effect. The recommendation, writes PMW, is "another step in the long history of Arab leaders abusing camp residents as pawns for political gain."
The newspaper reported that the Supreme National Committee for the Protection of the Right of Return announced that it "opposes the participation of the refugee camps in the local elections that are expected to take place in the Palestinian territories. The committee justified its objection as protecting the unique status of the refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, considering them testimony to the crime that the occupation state made against our nation for 56 years."
The Supreme National Committee for the Protection of the Right of Return also reiterates the PA policy of preventing the integration of the refugee camps into urban housing units, calling it a "danger."
PMW notes that since Israel's creation, the Arab world has actively prevented a humanitarian solution for Arab refugees who left Israel during the War of Independence: "For example, Lebanon still prohibits camp residents from owning homes or businesses outside the camps, condemning them to perpetual economic and social hardship."
President Moshe Katzav, during his visit earlier this year in France, condemned "rich" Arab countries for not being "able to build a town or a village for Arab refugees. Where is their sensitivity?" he said.
Arutz-7's Yosef Meiri notes that despite the Arabs' continuing efforts to portray the refugee problem as Israel's fault, it was actually the Arab leaders themselves who cajoled their brethren to leave their homes. "As early as the first months of 1948," according to The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957, "the Arab League issued orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes ... and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property."
Joan Peters, in "From Time Immemorial" (p. 13), quotes a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut finding that "the majority" of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, and that 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier.
The numbers of refugees living in camps have also been exploited - and artificially increased - for political purposes. Peters writes that in 1982, close to 240,000 refugees were reported living in camps in Lebanon - while in March 1983, after Israel's Peace for Galilee war and the accompanying unrest, the reported figure had suddenly and inexplicably shot up to 300,000. Peters writes (p. 400),
"Over 61,000 had been added, against all logic and feasibility, to the UNRWA overall totals... with hundreds of top-notch reporters looking on, and nobody but the Arab UNRWA staff allowed to verify. That was an apt modern example of the continuing escalation, resulting in ever-larger 'Palestinian diaspora' figures, and the somewhat helpless attempts to explain the 'incredible' or 'unprecedented' numbers."
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