Where I last left off, Abba Eban was speaking of the “vast opportunities in the Arab world for the Arab refugees to build new lives, but Arab governments have so far debarred refugees from these opportunities.”
Here’s something almost verbatim that I read today in the Los Angeles Times (July 14, 2008) about one of hundreds of similar projects currently being planned in the countries around Israel, this one happens to be in Saudi Arabia: “
Along the Saudi Arabian coast where boats carrying pilgrims bound for Mecca sailed for centuries, a thicket of cranes rises over whitewashed mosques along the Red Sea. Steel flashes and blowtorches glow as 20,000 workers build a $10-billion university ordered by a king who hopes Western ingenuity will revive the economy of this ultraconservative Muslim nation.”
This would be yet another perfect instance of a way to attract and integrate thousands more Palestinians into the Saudi economy and culture. But instead of using these perfect opportunities to integrate thousands of Palestinian refugees and many thousands more of their members into Saudi society, Saudi Arabia prefers to import temporary workers from the other side of the globe. Anything to avoid compying with United Nations resolutions that for over 50 years have tried to solve the problems that Saudi Arabia and all the other Arab countries created and have done their best to perpetuate.
But instead of weaning the Palestinians off of free handouts, today they are largely in the form of huge monetary bequests from America, and arms constantly being sent from neighboring Muslim countries, and instead of offering these people new lives elsewhere, the Muslims have fought every which way to maintain Palestinian “refugee” status as if it were something special, something the Muslims must hold onto for dear life.
For what possible reasons would the Palestinians be complicit in such a boondoggle? Might it be they like paying no rent? Could it be they love the hand-outs? Could it be they’re great at not working and living on the dole? Could it possibly be related to the fact that they are nursed on hating Jews and doing everything possible to take Jewish lives and land?
And for what possible reasons would the rest of the Muslim world be complicit in such a boondoggle? Might it be they are prisoners of their own rhetoric? That they are incapable of admitting they made a mistake? That they are incapable of doing the right thing? You tell me, because to me it seems obvious that the Arab and Muslim nations love the notion of maintaining the Palestinian refugees’ “special status,” as a smokescreen for the truth and a hotbed of anger and easily manipulated people trained from the cradle to hate Jews.
Speaking of the Palestinians on their own behalf, and of the rest of the Arabs, with regard to the Arab Refugee problem, Abba Eban said one and all, they have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to peacefully resolve the problem.
And why? Because they don’t want the problem to go away. Can’t anyone see that? Over 50 years ago Abba Eban was already convinced of this obvious conclusion.
Looks like Abba Eban knew what he was talking about.
Now, picking up where I left off: (more…)
