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An intriguing quote
The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single one – Eric Hoffer
Offered without comment.
Published in General
I didn’t look very hard, but here is a link to some general info on how difficult it is for Palestinians to travel, even to other Arab Countries.
I originally learned this from a Kuwaiti Arab girlfriend I had in the middle 1990’s, though I later told Daniel Pipes what I had heard and he confirmed it. She said that Egyptian President Nasser in the 1950’s espoused the idea of “Pan Arabism.” Part of that included the right for citizens of any Arab Country to travel freely throughout other Arab Countries as they wished. The only exception was the Palestinians, whom she said most Arabs did not like.
It is not surprising because the Palestinian Liberation Army has started wars in Jordan, Lebanon, and Gaza against other Arabs. Before the Kuwaiti War, Kuwait had previously broken the restrictions against Palestinians by importing half-a-million of them to do menial labor. Of course, after the war, Kuwait kicked out the whole lot of them (at least the ones they didn’t kill) for supporting Saddam.
I think the ban against Palestinians by Arab Countries is partly due to their distrust and dislike of them and partly due to the convenient political victory they win against Israel by saddling them with Arab “refugees” that have nowhere else to go.
To answer why Syrians don’t flee to other Arab Countries – There is a difference between “traveling” and “staying.” Arab Countries in general do not take in refugees. They are either struggling to feed their own people or too rich to care about peasants.
Even when they are given a wholly functioning, economically self reliant area like the Gaza strip. Not that any evidence shows up on a Google search, Scary.
@stevenseward, you beat me to it.
If the Palestinians in Gaza are so oppressed, so controlled, so robbed of agency in their own land (whether it’s a state or not), where do all the rockets come from? Where does the freedom to move launch sites into schools and hospitals come from? Where does their “right” to blind-launch rockets into populated civilian areas come from?
You said it!
Avi Shlaim on Oslo:
You’ll find a fair amount of polarised blaming re the failure of Oslo (it was Israel, it was the Palestinians, it was so vaguely written….) but Avi Shlaim went from a supporter to a critic, so his view may be interesting.
I’m pretty sure that Arabs from different countries mostly need visas to visit other Arab countries. (With a few exceptions like Lebanon/Syria or the GCC).
Re Palestinians, and where to find them:
Wiki kindly provides a list of countries and numbers.
Yeah, why are they doing this rocket stuff anyway?
How come Hamas is in power instead of Fatah?
??
Settlements in Gaza, like the other settlements, relied on funds from Israel and access to Israeli markets. They were never economically self reliant.
Even at the hight of settlements in Gaza a significant % of the whole population of Gaza was dependent on aid – basically it was and still is a ghetto with few options to earn a living within its borders and access to earn a living outside its borders severely curtailed.
See, that’s what I’m asking!
Don’t bring the “why are they” argument up. It doesn’t help the discussion.
The Palestinians of Gaza should, when they fall to their knees at the call of the muezzin (and I’m doubtful that very many do, but I’m open to being dissuaded) be thankful that the Israelis have a higher standard of basic human conduct than the Palestinians do.
Otherwise the Palestinians would have already been…let’s see?…what’s the term of art?…Oh, yeah: Pushed out into the sea.
Hey, but you said that this was what you were asking!!
And the “why” is sort of is at the heart of the discussion, don’t you think?
Unless we don’t want to talk about the “why”, in which case of course I must ask: why not?
And that does bring us back to the OP.
Are there different rules for different peoples? And what drives that?
I was being droll. Rhetorical. Mebbe a little too cute by half.
OK. Send them to Germany. They “need workers” and they have a moral debt.
You’ve thrown a lot of stuff out there, but I’ll address this one for now.
Why can’t the Gazans be self reliant? Is there something wrong with them? Other people in the World make a go of it in inhospitable places like the Kalahari desert, the Peruvian Desert, Siberia. There are countries in the World that have very few natural resources, like Japan and Singapore, yet they are economic powerhouses. For that matter, Israel itself has no more natural resources than Gaza and the Jews made a modern Western country out of it.
If you took out the 2 million Gazans and replaced them with 2 million Japanese or Singaporans, they would transform that place into a paradise in five years. The same goes for Americans, Norwegians, Brazilians, or Eskimos. I don’t know if you could find any other group of people in the World that would spend so much time firing rockets into their neighbors instead of cultivating the land and making a living.
When Israel left Gaza in 2005, a number of Greenhouses originally built by the Jews were left behind for the Gazans to grow food, and some American philanthropists donated millions to Gaza to get the greenhouses up and running. Trouble is, lawless Gazan barbarians ransacked and looted most of the greenhouses rendering them useless. Would Norwegians have done that? Of course not, but they are not obsessed with wiping out whole ethnic populations.
I once read the entire Hamas Charter. It is like reading a medieval declaration of genocide against Jews, Americans, and Infidels. It goes on and on about how they are going to wipe out this and that people, and how they are going to be victorious. It makes little mention of human rights for their own or anybody else’s people.
Among other reasons (certainly) because it’s a very small place with a very high population which is essentially penned in: kept from coming, going, trading freely and using its maritime resources. It’s kept in a state of dependence in order to extract submission, or at least an adequate level of acquiescence.
Which brings us back to: why?
I’m not saying there are no reasons – obviously there are – but refusing to consider either Israeli or Gazan issues and motivations beyond rhetorically useful racist caricatures of these is part of the problem, not the solution. imho.
The rules are de facto different for how Israeli and Palestinian actions are reported and responded to – in the West (and also in the not West) – because perceptions of the situation (history, people) is grounded in different contexts.
In the West the cultural context is centuries of antisemitism, the Holocaust, severe [understandable] trauma and guilt, a history of colonialism.
In the not West by a history of colonisation, and so its own set of anger, trauma and [or course] guilt.
That’s what it seems like to me. And of course the West and not West aren’t internally homogenous on this (or any other issue) either.
??
I don’t buy the small space argument. True, they have one of the highest population densities in the World, but Singapore has twice the population density as Gaza and they are a first-world country. In fact all the countries with the highest population densities are rich countries – Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Bahrain, Jersey, San Marino, and Taiwan are all at the top of the list. The only dense countries that are poor are Malta and Bangladesh.
https://www.infoplease.com/world/population-statistics/population-density-square-mile-countries
While Israel may keep their border with Gaza closed, what about Egypt? They are Arab brothers, no? If Gaza had anything worth trading, or even a reliable labor force, surely Egypt would welcome them with open arms. Gaza also has the entire Mediterranean Sea and all of Europe at their disposal. Surely nobody is preventing them from having an honest maritime trade. Israel may be checking boats for weapons, but I’m sure they are not preventing any exports or imports of goods coming from Gaza. And if they didn’t fire rockets at their neighbors, everybody would leave them alone!
Actually Malta is quite prosperous.
Er…actually Egypt did open the border the last time it had an elected Government. Since then, of course, General Sisi’s famously independent and unsullied by inducements foreign policy….anyway, you get the point.
Steven, you truly amaze me. From B’Tselem:
So, not to be unpleasant, but a lot of your points seem to be unsupported by facts.
(Perhaps reconsider your conclusions, if they are indeed based on facts?)
You say:
Which goes back to:
Why are they firing those rockets? In fact
Why are all those people crowded into Gaza instead of (for eg) still living in Lydda?
And why (one rule for some, another rule for others) do the Geneva Conventions apply to some States but apparently not to others?
The first act of empowerment by the Arabs after being given control of Gaza, was to destroy all of the previous infrastructure left by the Israelis, including their cemeteries. Gaza was a thriving economic center when it was run by the Israelis. Now it is poverty stricken. Except for the terror industry, the arabs have created nothing.
Not to be too pedantic, but the Romans renamed Israel “Palaestina” after the Bar Kokhba revolt…
Of course, that does not change the fact that “Palestinians” are just “Canaanites” (i.e., people from the land of Canaan).
Seems hard to believe it was better than before 1947. Are you sure?
The Palestinians will never thrive as long as they continue to blame Jews for all their problems. Playing the victim is toxic to human development.
I find Michael Medved’s Why They Fight: The Story of the Arab/Israeli Conflict to be a credible historical overview.
Okay, you got me there. I was doing this off the top of my head. But it just bolster’s my argument further that population density does not hinder any country’s economic progress.
If they can trade, no, it doesn’t.
As part of the blockade, Israel prohibited travel in and out of Gaza, the import of goods into Gaza – including restrictions on food items, toys and paper – and export to Israel, the West Bank or foreign countries….
One aspect of the blockade is the reduction of the area where fishing is allowed in Gaza. The Oslo Accords stipulate a range of 20 nautical miles (about 37 km) off the Gaza shoreline, but Israel has never allowed fishing farther than 12 nautical miles out to sea. Over the years, Israel has gradually narrowed the fishing zone, sometimes to three nautical miles only, and currently between six and nine…In so doing, Israel prevents Gaza fishermen from reaching the rich fishing grounds located further out to sea, impedes the ability of thousands of fishermen and people working in related sectors to provide for themselves and their families, and denies Gaza residents an essential source of food.
The blockade has driven Gaza’s economy into collapse. In the second quarter of 2017, unemployment reached 44%. Among women, the rate was 71.5%; in the under 29 age bracket, it was 61.9%. Some 80% of Gaza’s residents depend on humanitarian aid, and about 60% suffer from food insecurity. In the year 2000, before the blockade was imposed, Gaza’s unemployment rate was 18.9%.
I made a speculative comment that I didn’t think Israel would block normal trading goods going to or from Gaza, but I did not really know. I did a little checking and found that you are completely right!
I also learned a bunch of other stuff.
Apparently this blockade is the result of a battle in 2007 between Gazans where 120 people were killed and the terrorist group Hamas took over the territory and expelled the previous government officials. These new leaders renounced demands from the “Quartet on the Middle-East,” a group involved in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that consists of The United Nations, The United States, The European Union, and Russia. The demands were simple:
Since Gaza had already been firing rockets into Israel for the last six years, and now they refused to abide by these principles, Israel decided to inspect every item that came and left the territory, and severely restrict anything that could be made into weapons or rockets. Here’s the surprising part. The other Arabs involved, both Egypt and the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas completely agreed and helped to enforce the blockade!
(Continued)
(Continued, same bat time, same bat station)
The Palestinian Authority even implemented their own sanctions against Gaza! Why do you blame only Israel for this blockade? The Egyptians and the Palestinians must know something about Gaza that you do not. At one point Israel was considering opening a land passage so that Gazans abroad could return home, but Hamas threatened to open fire on the returning refugees so Israel scrapped the idea. These are not nice people. Donald Trump coined a very effective term for these kinds of places.
In 2008, the Gazans blew up a barrier on the Egyptian border and nearly half of the entire Gazan population spilled into Egypt. Egyptian forces were eventually able to round up the invaders and reseal their border, but other attacks have been made against the barriers and their guards.
The sanctions have been eased in the last five years by Israel, Egypt and the P.A., but it has done nothing to stem the tide of rocket attacks.
In 1918, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of WWI, England and France took possession of over 5 million square miles of territory in the Middle East. More than 99% of this territory was eventually divided into Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yeman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrein. Less than 1% of the total went into creation of the territory that included present day Israel and Jordan. In 1921, however, three quarters of that less than 1% was given to a place dubbed Trans-Jordan, known today as Jordan. Other than what was to become the country of Israel, none of these new territorial entities had any historical precedent or significance. So-called Palestine got its name from the Philistine people who once inhabited parts of the Land of Israel. Around 600 B.C.E., the Philistines were either killed or exiled by Nebuchadnezzar II, a Babylonian king, along with the Jews, when the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Unlike the Jews, however, who returned to the Land of Israel seventy years later and rebuilt the Temple, there is no evidence that the Philistines ever returned. In the manner of other ancient peoples, excepting the Jews, the Philistines disappeared from the annals of history.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9331863/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/looters-strip-gaza-greenhouses/#.XLJT7-hKiUm
From this NBC News article in September of 2005:
“
American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for $14 million last month and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up $500,000 of his own cash.
Palestinian police stood by helplessly Tuesday as looters carted off materials from greenhouses in several settlements, and commanders complained they did not have enough manpower to protect the prized assets. In some instances, there was no security and in others, police even joined the looters, witnesses said.
“We need at least another 70 soldiers. This is just a joke,” said Taysir Haddad, one of 22 security guards assigned to Neve Dekalim, formerly the largest Jewish settlement in Gaza. “We’ve tried to stop as many people as we can, but they’re like locusts.”
The failure of the security forces to prevent scavenging and looting in the settlements after Israel’s troop pullout Monday raised new concerns about Gaza’s future.”
These arabs are the world’s greatest freeloaders and the world’s worst community. For 60 years money has been thrown at them from the USA, the U.N., their arab neighbors, and the Europeans. All they have done is raise children taught to hate and to kill, from pre school forward. If they had a State of their own, the first and only thing they would do is to buy more lethal weapons to kill more Jews. Israelis would have no choice, if they wished to survive, but to obliterate them. It’s a harsh thing to say and I hate to sound uncaring, but I have been watching this nightmare for 45 years…all of my adult life. Nothing ever changes with this group of arabs.
In my searches I’ve actually seen an Internet article blaming the Jews for the loss of the greenhouses. But of course!
Yes, of course. Lucky to find any mention of it at all.
Wiki has a fairly thorough write up here, from which some chronology:
This more or less escalated until by mid June 2007 when
?
The problem has always been that Arab society is so damned diseased that Palestinian leaders rightly evaluate conflict and destabilization to be in their immediate interest.