Category: Israel and refugees

Prominent Muslim journalist calls for Palestinian refugees to be resettled in Arab countries

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a concept we have discussed on several previous occasions.   We believe that Arab countries have purposefully kept Palestinians from getting out of poverty by refusing to resettle them.   Such a move, as suggested by this journalist, would demonstrate true Muslim charity and go a long way to bringing peace to the Middle East.

Now a prominant member of the media has said just that.  From Memri:

Daoud Al-Shiryan, Al-Hayat columnist and deputy secretary-general of Al-Arabiya TV, recently published several articles criticizing how the Palestinian refugees have been treated by the Arab countries in which they live. He called on these countries to integrate the refugees into their societies and to resettle them before they are forced to do so by the international community.

I don’t know about that last phrase.  I can’t quite imagine Obama is going to tell his buddies in the Arab world to please take in the Palestinians.  But, that is what he should do!

The WSJ adds more information to Iraqi Palestinian resettlement plans

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Wall Street Journal today has followed up on the story first reported by the Christian Science Monitor, here, last week about the US resettlement plans for approximately 1350 Iraqi Palestinians.  We first got a hint of this plan here.

A few pieces of clarification that have added to the previous CSM story follow. 

 The WSJ confirms the resettlement is controversial.

The U.S. agreed to resettle 1,350 Palestinians displaced by fighting in Iraq, marking the largest resettlement ever of Palestinian refugees in the nation. 

The decision appears to signal a shift in Washington’s previous position against resettling Palestinians out of concern about the potential impact on U.S. relations with Israel and the Arab world. The resettlement, which is slated to begin this fall, is likely to illicit strong reactions from people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Here is a section I found troubling.  The reporter, Miriam Jordan, says that Arab countries see this initiative (resettling this group of Palestinians) as a sign of new openness toward the Muslim world in the wake of Obama’s Cairo speech, but she quotes no one actually saying that.   In fact, we know that at least one spokesman for the so-called Muslim world, the American Al-Shabaab, is saying that they (Muslims) will not be suckered by Obama’s charismatic words, here.

Many Arab countries interpreted President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo last month as an attempt to put U.S. relations with Islamic nations on a new course and dissipate the strain that characterized ties during the Bush administration. They see the offer of accepting Palestinian refugees as an early sign of a new openness.  [who is “they?”]

The following information confirms what I believe may well be the case, that Arab countries are not happy with this turn of events.  As we have reported many times at RRW, the refugees are needed to keep the sword over Israel’s head, the more poor and angry Palestinians in the world the better.

However, Mr. Asali [American Task Force on Palestine] cautioned that it is bound to irk Palestinian and Arab leaders who interpret U.S. willingness to resettle Palestinians — which comes with full rights such as citizenship down the road — as “a conspiracy to liquidate the Palestinian refugee issue.” With the exception of Jordan, no country in the Middle East has granted citizenship to Palestinian refugees. Many Arab countries believe that fully integrating large numbers of Palestinian refugees would undercut their demand for an independent state.

One American Jewish organization doesn’t like this plan either, but for completely differant reasons.

At least one pro-Israel group in the U.S. deems it a mistake to absorb the Palestinian Iraqis, who were welcomed by Saddam Hussein and regarded as loyal supporters of his regime. “We don’t think that Washington should be bringing in a group of people who we know were publicly and consistently hostile to the United States and its closest ally, Israel,” said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.

The WSJ article then gives us more background then we ever knew previously about how these Palestinians came to be in Iraq and why they were so hated.  And, once again confirms my contention that Muslim charity toward fellow Muslims is a myth.  These Iraqi Palestinians knew it was a myth too, here.

Palestinians moved to Iraq after Arab-Israeli conflicts in 1948 and 1967, and following the Gulf War in 1991. The community grew to nearly 35,000. “Saddam Hussein made a point of using Palestinian refugees to show solidarity with the Palestinian cause,” said Bill Frelick, refugee-policy director at Human Rights Watch in Washington.

The preferential treatment bred resentment among many Iraqis. After Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces in 2003, Palestinians became a target for harassment and violence, including bombings and murder. A particular point of contention had been the government’s provision of subsidized housing for Palestinians, often at the expense of mostly Shiite landlords who received little rent from the government in return.

After Mr. Hussein was deposed, many landlords evicted their Palestinian tenants, who are mainly Sunni Muslims. Driven out of Baghdad and other cities, the Palestinians tried to flee to neighboring Syria and Jordan, which already host hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. When those countries blocked their entry, the displaced Palestinians sought refuge in camps that lack basic infrastructure and jeopardize their health and safety, said Mr. Frelick.

Read the whole article at the WSJ, and for more background use our search function for “Iraqi Palestinians.”  We have written a whole slew of posts on the subject.

And, by the way, these Palestinians will come to the US as Iraqis, in the Iraqi refugee category.

Israel swamped with asylum-seeking Africans, government takes responsibility from UNHCR

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know exactly what the significance of this is, and the article doesn’t fully explain it, but apparently the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had a role in determining refugee and asylee status in Israel and as of July 2nd, the government of Israel has taken on that role.

From Human Rights Tribune:

The Israeli Interior Ministry is taking over the process of Refugee Status Determination (RSD) from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on 2 July.

I can only guess that Israel wants a more determinitive role in the process as the country is flooded by mostly Africans seeking asylum.  I am guessing they are mostly Muslim Africans.

Some 15,000 mainly African asylum-seekers in Israel have put the regulatory, security and welfare response under strain, according to the Interior Ministry and UNHCR.

Israel does not have a refugee law, despite being a signatory to the 1951 refugee Convention.

However, regulations can allow asylum-seekers to work, and grant temporary protection and non-refoulement (a commitment not to force people back to where they came from).

About 200-300 asylum-seekers arrive each month, mainly overland from Egypt, according to the Immigration Authority and NGOs.

The UNHCR local office reports 14,766 asylum-seekers in Israel, while the Refugee Rights Forum (RRF – eight NGOs active in promoting the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers in Israel) suggests a number over 17,000.

Although Israel has been very good to refugees, it looks like there are some questioning Israel’s motivation.

UNHCR’s Tall said: “We must recognize the positive steps of the government of Israel regarding asylum-seekers. The ’open’ border allowing asylum-seekers to enter and the fact that the government of Israel allows them to stay are, in fact, positive measures that must be noted.”

Yaccov Ganot, head of the Immigration Authority, however told local media his aim was to reduce the number of “infiltrators”, by enhancing residential restrictions and making greater use of detention.

Egypt on the other hand shoots illegal aliens.

Nearly all asylum-seekers come from Egypt at night. Israel’s southern border is over 230km long and porous; only a low fence separates the two states.

Asylum-seekers pay Bedouin guides hundreds of US dollars to get them to the frontier where they risk getting shot at by Egyptian border guards.

In recent years hundreds have been wounded and detained while attempting to cross the border, and several have been deported to their countries of birth, according to UNHCR and NGOs in Cairo.

Others have been shot dead. In November 2008, Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleged 33 deaths of asylum-seekers at the hands of Egyptian soldiers.

Whatever happens this is Israel’s business and I sure hope that no one gets the idea to follow Malta (Tea party) Molly’s move of transforming Israel’s asylum-seeking aliens into refugees for the United States as she did in Malta.

Iraqi Palestinians set to arrive in the US: when and how many?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From time to time I’ve written about the Palestinians who originally went to Iraq at Saddam Hussein’s invitation, but when Saddam met his end, they became targets of Iraqis who hated Saddam.   So they fled, but no Muslim country would take them and they live in camps along the Iraq-Syria border.   A few have gone to Chile and Iceland, other places in Europe too.

These Palestinians have not been shy in speaking out about the hypocrisy of the Arab world—the mythical Muslim charity has not been offered to them.   And, by the way, the reason Palestinian “refugees” continue to live in Gaza after decades is that no Muslim country wants them either.  Those countries need the refugee hammer (sword!) over Israel.

Well, now it appears thousands of Iraqi Palestinians will come to the US.  Exactly how many and when seems to be up in the air.   Or better still, it probably isn’t up in the air as far as the State Department goes, it’s just that we don’t know.   Note this comment thread on the post I wrote the other day about Palestinians going  to Canada.

Kristen:

the US will also be taking 5000 of these Palestinians this Fiscal Year, i think they are scheduled to start coming in July.

Me:

Kristen, are you speculating that we are taking 5000, or do you know something we don’t know yet! 

Timisoara:

Kristen, as far as I know, the US will also be taking about 1200 (not 5000) of these Palestinians, and most will arrive in the next US government fiscal year (e.g. in the Fall). They’re coming from the Al Waleed refugee camp, near the Iraq-Syrian border. There are discussions about accepting Palestinians from the Al Tanaf and Al Hol refugee camps, but both camps have problems with access, and they’re fewer than 500 individuals each.

Kristen:

Sorry for the late response. Until Friday, I was working for an affiliate of ECDC [Ethiopian Community Development Council, one of the Top Ten government contractors], and we had started to receive assurance forms for a few of these Palestinian cases. According to ECDC, the US will be taking 5,000 of these cases on an “emergency” basis before this fiscal year ends. I am not working there, but that was the last that I had heard.

The US doesn’t normally take Palestinians.  We  have taken less than a dozen Palestinians in FY2008 and about the same number this fiscal year so far.  I wonder if the Iraqi Palestinians will be listed as Palestinians or hidden in the Iraqi refugee data?

Searching around just now to see if I could find any confirmation of what our commenters are saying, I did find this at Relief Web:

The Iraqi Palestinian population is fairly small – only a few thousand. So far the U.S. has not taken in any of the refugees from Al-Tanf. To its credit, it has agreed to take in many of the Palestinian Iraqis staying in Al-Waleed camp, another of the three similar border camps. But the US can do more.

Wonder when the mainstream media will notice this story, probably only when they are moving in next door.

U.S. taxpayers are enriching Palestinian terrorists

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Joel Mowbray has a terrific op-ed piece in the Washington Times today on how the State Department is allowing U.S. funds to go to UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of the Palestinian “refugees,” without proper oversight to make sure the money doesn’t end up in terrorists’ pockets (or Swiss bank accounts).

In U.S. foots the bill for terrorists, Mowbray says:

Through either deliberate neglect or simple ineptitude, the State Department has made U.S. taxpayers complicit in perpetuating the single greatest impediment to Middle East peace: an increasingly radical Palestinian society that despises Israel and embraces terrorism.

Despite multiple government audits and several changes enacted in the law over the past few years, the department still cannot ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not enriching terrorists or underwriting terrorist propaganda in schools across the West Bank and Gaza….

This means in practical terms that many of the Palestinians who are consuming a steady diet of Islamist indoctrination and glorification of violence receive this brainwashing courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. It doesn’t require high-level deductions to predict how badly this wounds – if not kills – any hope for Palestinian society to embrace peaceful coexistence with a Jewish state of Israel.

The State Department has been pushed to change through audits and changes in the law, but is still failing in its duty. Last week the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, issued a report confirming this and recommending changes. Some are so basic that it’s unbelievable they are not already in place, such as “screening the names of UNRWA contractors against lists of individuals and entities of concern to the United States.”

Mowbray reports on some congressional efforts to improve matters. One I didn’t know about is a resolution by Rep. Steven R. Rothman, (D-NJ),

calling for UNRWA to put its textbooks on the Internet for public inspection and for the United States to screen the agency’s payroll for terrorists.

His ultimate goal, he explains, is simple: “Not one penny of U.S. taxpayer dollars should go either directly or indirectly to anyone associated with Hamas or any other terrorist organization. Nor should any go to terrorist propaganda in classrooms.”

Further, a recent “spending bill requires the State Department to propose a plan to increase the transparency and accountability of UNRWA” and sets aside money for an audit of USAID, the foreign aid agency.  But, Mowbray says, the State Department “seems intent on not enforcing the laws passed by Congress.”

The State Department has a long history of favoring Arabs over Jews, and Arab countries over Israel. A couple of days ago I attended a discussion at the Hudson Institute on a newly released book by Ron and Allis Radosh, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel. The authors related how the State Department again and again sabotaged Truman’s pro-Israel policies during the founding of Israel, even directly embarrassing the president by announcing their own policies as if they were his. They were blatantly on the side of the Arabs, and this bias has continued from that day until this.

Joel Mowbray’s investigative reporting on the issue of the State Department’s failure regarding UNRWA is one reason Congress is now acting on the matter. It will make a big difference to the future of the Middle East if the “cultural swamp,” as Mowbray puts it, can be drained.  Our defunding of radical Islamist, anti-Semitic propaganda would be a good start.