Middle East Refugees: Cause/Effect

So now that Palestinian Gazans have their very own representative protectors whom they have themselves, in a democratic show-down voted into power, are they out of their minds with satisfaction and happiness?

Hamas, after all, counts its strong-hold in the area of public opinion in the Gaza Strip. Support also in the West Bank, but more as a back-lash to the abject tradition of failure through Fatah. Fed up with corruption among their legislative body, Hamas seemed like the answer; unswervingly straight-up, supportive of the needs of the Palestinians.

They say what they mean and they mean what they say. And when the Hamas hierarchy declares unequivocally that their first order of business is the restoration of Palestinian land from the illegal occupiers through the destruction of the State of Israel, they mean it.

And this, most Palestinians seem more than a little comfortable with. Of course, even the Palestinian Authority's ruling Fatah have pledged themselves similarly, albeit covertly. For Palestinian indulgence, not to be divulged internationally. It is too, too inconvenient, and would portray the Palestinians and their cause in a manner other than what they continually seek to construe it as.

The Palestinians as pitiable victims of brutal Jewish conquest in a land that Islam has dedicated to Muslims, where interlopers, foreign "others", infidels and Crusaders and friends of Crusaders have no legal place other than as a fractured and slighted minority.

So, if Palestinian Gazans are so comforted by the presence of Hamas why is it that they are leaving in virtual droves? Some 50,000, confirmed by the PA prime minister, since Hamas took possession of the Gaza Strip.

Estimating also that far greater numbers would eagerly join them if they had but the required financial wherewithal. The sharp drop in international aid to Gaza as a response to the Hamas take-over has had its unfortunate impact on an already economically-marginalized population.

The religious ruling issued by the Mufti of Jerusalem for the PA, banning emigration from "the land of Palestine" has done nothing whatever to dissuade Gazans who can, from emigrating. The ruling was brought down in an attempt to hold back the flood of young Palestinians converging on foreign embassies in their desperate bid to escape the dire conditions brought upon Gaza by their Hamas saviours.

There is an odd air of familiarity about this. History re-visited. While there remains a great deal of disagreement with respect to the original flight of Palestinians from the land in 1948 after Israel's declaration of statehood, members of the Palestinian Authority have begun themselves to look history straight in the eye, rather than resorting as they've always done to the claim that they were forced out of the region, as refugees.

Refugees they did indeed become, but when they fled they harboured the belief that it would be for a brief interregnum, before returning to a liberated Palestine; the fledgling State of Israel reduced to simmering ruins, and its people dispersed. A senior PA journalist whose article was published in the PA daily Al-Ayyam has written:

"The Arabs who became refugees in 1948 were not expelled by Israel but left on their own to facilitate the destruction of Israel. This plan to leave Israel was initiated by the Arab states fighting Israel, who promised the people they would be able to return to their homes in a few days once Israel was defeated."

By no means was Israel entirely innocent of taking its own steps to persuade Palestinians to leave their land, for in some instances this was done. Sometimes by force, and sometimes by insinuating life would be very difficult for them if they remained. Yet many Palestinians, despite the severely unsettled atmosphere, stood their ground, stayed with their land, and became citizens of Israel.

Those who maintain a keen eye on the Arab media have noted, however, an increasing move on the part of Palestinians to openly recognize the part that Arab states and not Israel, played in fomenting fear, and encouraging the Palestinians to leave. The refugees who for so long remained a useful propaganda tool against Israel have outlived their usefulness, as the claims that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 belies historical reality.

Newly-recognized and -published witness accounts brought to the PA media in support of these claims of Arab conspiracy to displace the Palestinians and leave them as abject refugees, a seeping wound with which to denounce Israel in the world at large, have been emerging. As with the statement by a PA journalist in Jordan, Jawad al Bashiti, writing in Al-Ayyam on 13 May, 2008:

"Remind me of one real cause from all the factors that have caused the Palestinian Catastrophe [the establishment of Israel and the creation of the refugee problem], and I will remind you that it still exists... The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our catastrophes today.

"During the Little Catastrophe, meaning the Palestinian Catastrophe, the following happened: the first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the "Arab Salvation Army" came and told the Palestinians: 'We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission in the best way and so you won't be hurt."

And wrote Mahmoud al-Habbash, another PA journalist, in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: "...The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the Catastrophe in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events..."

And this description from a woman, Asmaa Jabir Balasimah, who also fled in 1948: "We heard sounds of explosions and of gunfire at the beginning of the summer in the year of the Catastrophe. They told us: The Jews attacked our region and it is better to evacuate the village and return, after the battle is over. And indeed there were among us those who left a fire burning under the pot, those who left their flock and those who left their money and gold behind, based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours."

Again, a Palestinian viewer contacted PA Television, to say his father had told him that in 1948 the Arab district officer ordered all Arabs to leave Palestine or be labeled traitors. An Arab Member of the Knesset, hearing this, cursed those leaders.

To which the viewer continued: "Mr. Ibrahim Sarsur, I address you as a Muslim. My father and grandfather told me that during the Catastrophe our district officer issued an order that whoever stays in Palestine is a traitor, he is a traitor."

To which MK Ibrahim Sarsur (then head of the Islamic Movement in Israel) responded: "The one who gave the order forbidding them to stay there bears guilt for this, in this life and the afterlife, throughout history until Resurrection Day."

That was then, this is now. The seven hundred thousand refugees from 1948, now numbering in the millions insist on the right of return to a land they dispossessed themselves of under utterly false pretences. Joining them today are hundreds of thousands more.

The Arab countries that convinced them through whatever means to flee, had no intention of aiding and assisting them beyond the failure of their initial, then period onslaughts of Israel. Nor had they any intention at any time of absorbing them, settling them within the confines of their own borders, having implemented a failed strategy that made hapless refugees of the Palestinians.

Added to that perfidy was the brutal ouster of 900,000 Jews from Arab lands where they had resided for millennia. The once-tolerated Jews had become the 'enemy', ensuring their homes and belongings were forfeit, and they made homeless. Those Jews made their way to Israel, where they were absorbed and became Israeli citizens. They have never been acknowledged, never recompensed.

So where lies the moral responsibility of re-settlement and making amends?