Who is responsible for the Palestinian refugees?

Question

FOLLOWING a visit to refugees in Gaza, a British diplomat reported the following: 'But while they express no bitterness against the Jews...they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states: 'We know who our enemies are,' they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes."

British Foreign Office Document #371/75342/XC/A/4991 [From "Revising or Devising Israel's History" by Prof. Shlomo Slonim in Jewish Action, Summer 5760/2000, Vol. 60 #4]

Answer 1

A collection of historical quotations relating to the Arab refugees:
Collected by Moshe Kohn:

ON APRIL 23, 1948 Jamal Husseini, acting chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee (AHC), told the UN Security Council: "The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce ... They preferred to abandon their homes,belongings and everything they possessed."

ON SEPTEMBER 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, secretary of the AHC, as saying: "The fact that there are those refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously..."

ON JUNE 8, 1951, Habib Issa, secretary-general of the Arab League, wrote in the New York Lebanese daily al-Hoda that in 1948, Azzam Pasha, then League secretary, had "assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade ... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property, and to stay temporarily in neighbouring fraternal states."

IN THE MARCH 1976 issue of Falastin a-Thaura, then the official journal of the Beirut-based PLO, Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen"), PLO spokesman, wrote: "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."

ON APRIL 9, 1953, the Jordanian daily al-Urdun quoted a refugee, Yunes Ahmed Assad, formerly of Deir Yassin, as saying: "For the flight and fall of the other villages, it is our leaders who are responsible, because of the dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... they instilled fear and terror into the hearts of the Arabs of Palestine until they fled, leaving their homes and property to the enemy."

ANOTHER refugee told the Jordanian daily a-Difaa on September 6, 1954: "The Arab governments told us, 'Get out so that we can get in.' So we got out, but they did not get in."

THE JORDANIAN daily Falastin wrote on February 19, 1949: "The Arab states... encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies."

ON OCTOBER 2, 1948, the London Economist reported, in an eyewitness account of the flight of Haifa's Arabs: "There is little doubt that the most potent of the factors [in the flight] were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit ... And it was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."

THE PRIME Minister of Syria in 1948, Khaled al-Azem, in his memoirs, published in 1973, listed what he thought were the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948: " ... the fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and leave for the bordering Arab countries ... We brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees by calling on them and pleading with them to leave their land."

Answer 2

Other ARab countries. As a Palestinian Refugee myslef, I can aonly enter Jordan for a month and then if I dnt leave I get fined and thrown in prison. If I go to Egypt, same thing, If i go to Lebanon, I cant leave the refugee camp no matter what. DOes that sound fair? Poeple keep saying "hey move on" but WHERE? No country wants us there and we are being treated horribly in our own home country. We would be better off if at least the other countries would accept us in their countries. BUT I agree with Yazan, if it wasnt for ISRAEL we wouldnt even be in this mess. I dont hate Jews I hate the ISRAELI government.

Answer 3

Yazan may actually believe his own propaganda.

But the facts show otherwise.

As of May 1948 Israel had population of 600,000 (including women, children and the elderly) leaving a small percentage of fighting age men. 6,000 of the fighters, both men and women, were killed in the War of Independence. Many of the fighters were malnourished prisoners just released from the Holocaust death camps and the concentration camps on Cyprus set up by the British. They had few arms because the British Mandate soldiers had confiscated and embargoed Jewish arms but, as they left, the British gave their major arms supplies as well as their Taggart Forts to the Arabs.

The Arabs had 7 armies from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen dedicated to wiping out all the Jews in a bloody Jihad. Does Yazan claim that it was unfair for the Jews to win the battle?

Hadn't the British trained the armies of Egypt, Jordan, while Syria also participated in the attacks.

Hadn't Harry Truman embargoed all arms shipments to Israel?

Didn't the Jews have to scavenge the junk yards of Europe to find World War II weapons at prices that gouged the Jewish buyers?

But even more important, another answerer here gives quotations from newspaper stories at the time of the war of independence that make Yazan's stories sound like fantasy.

Answer 4

this might below no circumstances end. did you comprehend? The Jews moved to Canaan(Now Israel) in approximately 1250 B.C. the theory of an Arab Palestine is all that has ever existed. The Brittish did tell the Arabs at one component they have been going to create one. Romans did create a territory mentioned as Syria Palestine extra proper than 129 years interior the previous Christ. That section grew to alter into into freed via the Hebrews indoors the Hebrew Roman wars. The Jews have been mentioned as Palestinians via the Romans throughout that conflict. Even Syria grew to alter into into now not controlled via the Arabs on the time the two. Arabs did now not triumph over Syria until the seventh century. there have been no Arab international places bordering on Israel until then. it somewhat is what existence grew to alter into into like there 1185 years interior the previous Christ. "The Philistines occupied the 5 cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath, alongside the coastal strip of southwestern Israel. This effective association of tribes made typical incursions against the Hebrews. there grew to alter into into fairly approximately perpetual conflict between the two peoples." The Palestinians could desire to bypass to a united states with a destiny. This conflict has been happening for hundreds of years in uncomplicated words broken via the 4 training wherein the two have been occupied. they are fairly approximately thoroughly good kin people who deserve a much extra useful existence than they are going to ever get in that component to the international. i could be chuffed to have them as acquaintances. Even the terrorists between them could be style voters have been their circumstances different. The Philistines via how have disappeared from the face of the earth. The Arab tribe that have been mentioned because of the fact the Arub returned then did now not stay indoors the area, and actually had different non Arub international places in between that had to be conquered interior the previous they might bypass there.

Answer 5

After reading many answers, I have found many misunderstandings in the answers. Israel is the only one who should take responsiblity or rather let's call them Zionist gangs who used to kill and terrorize the coastal Palestinians especially in1948. Therefore, the Palestinians who survived fled to another Arab countries; Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. It's true that Arabs promised Palestinians that they will give them their lands back after 2 weeks, after they beat the Zionists! They have been waiting for 60 years!

We Palestinians, see that Arabs have left us to suffer alone. We think that they should help us, that's why we've got some hatred towards them ( I mean Arabian learders not people). But we all know that these leaders are ruling now because U.S and Israel want them to be here. It's true that Egyptians don't treat Palestinians well ( I mean the government).
So, it's not the UN, the West or Arabs fault. It's Israel's fault. I don't know what we should call (killing people and terrorizing them to force them to leave)??

Answer 6

Wow! Not in a million years would I have thought to agree with an anti-Semite such as Tinkerbel. I think playing with Christian wording that, "Hell must have frozen by now."
But if I had to place the blame I would have done this way:
1. Arab nations for forcing the Arabs to flee while they tried to wipe out Israelis. Did you know that the first Intifiada was against Egypt in 1950’s? The Egyptians did not give them equal rights and justice that they demanded and should have received. Furthermore, many of the Arab countries keep their Palestinian citizen in what can be classified as ghettos (but they call it refugee camps). Common what is the reason for keeping them there? The Israelis between 1949-1953 accepted 950,000 people but the last refugee camp closed its doors in 1955. The Palestinians have been at their camps for the last 58 years. Lets not forget to mention that the Egyptian had refugee camps in Gaza. Why do they need refugee camps in Gaza? If the Egyptians captured Gaza as a land for the Palestinians, then why keep them in camps like cows? Furthermore, the Palestinians were expelled from couple of Arab nations during the Gulf War (Kuwait comes to mind). If the Palestinians are the brothers to the Arab world then why would you kick your brother out?
2. The UN for bending over all the time to the Muslim demands and for hosting all the time bigotry against Israel. It seems that every day the world is trying to pass some kind of resolution that would to blame Israel for evils in the Middle East. Thankfully, America clearly sees through the Arab and the world’s bigotry against Isarel and vetoes any resolutions that are completely biased. However, most of the Arab/Muslims countries never seem to care about other nations. Why is that there are so many attempted resolutions submitted by some European countries and Arab/Muslim countries aimed against Israel but not against Rwanda during their genocide, or against Sudan, or against Semolina Muslims who are killing people who do not agree with their fanatical laws?
3. The world is also to blame especially the British for their policy of divide and conquer. Why is it that most of the troubled spots in Africa and Middle East were once part of the British Empire or other European Empires? Furthermore, it seems that the world cares deeply about Palestinians only as political pawns to spread hatred against, dare I say Israel. It appears to me that they care more about wiping Israel of the map then freeing Palestinians from Lebanese, Syrian, Saudi, and all other Muslim areas where Palestinians live from biased laws passed against them or from refugee camps.
4. Israel. As far as it pains me to say it, being a Zionist and all is Israel too is guilty for the current situations. They had plenty of opportunities to end with radical and socialist Islam especially since the Six Day War. If they would have listened to radical right instead of radical left we would not be in this predicament that we are right now. The right wanted to expel those Arabs that did not want to live under Israeli democracy and in peace with the Jews into Jordan, since most of the Palestinians then as do now reside under Jordanian flag. The radical right wanted to create a two state solution Israel for the Jews, Muslims who wanted to live under democracy and enjoy equal rights and Jordan for all of the Palestinians that were captured in 1967 and moved there because they wanted to kill and drive all the Jews into the sea. Also, why did Moshe Dayan gave back to the Arabs the Dome of the Rock after the Six Day War? Many Muslims if you read their accounts were shocked by this noble gesture to them it also showed weakness on the Israeli part.

These are just my opinions on the matter.

Answer 7

Wow,do you think it's something new?No,Ivri,there are so many Palestinians more angry at their fellows Arabs,then at Israel...
As for who is responsible for the Palestinian refugees...everyone shares their part of the guilt...Israel,the Arab states,the West ,the UN...

Answer 8

Our own Arab leaders told our people to flee and then come back later as the "victors."

That was rather a tactical error.

Answer 9

the arab league

Answer 10

The Palestinian people/their leadership and the muslim leadership and culture.