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Mufti of Lebanon Calls Palestinian Refugees “Trash”
The Grand Mufti of Lebanon, Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani, held a meeting in Beirut last week with a delegation representing the 400,000 Palestinians living in Lebanese refugee camps. The meeting was called to address thefts of Islamic Wakf lands in Lebanon by Palestinians.
“We’ve hosted you and no longer want you,” Qabbani said. “I will defend Wakf lands, even if it costs me all I have.”
The Jerusalem Post describes the astonished delegation as attempting to “muzzle” Qabbani, sending him right over the edge. “You are trash!” he said to the Palestinians. “You will never be victorious. Nor will your cause. I’m no longer afraid of your weapons.” Then he threw them out of his office.
In Lebanon, as in most Arab countries, Palestinian refugees and their descendants are not allowed to become citizens of the host country. Until very recently, they were are barred from all but the most menial professions. Across the Arab world, they have been deliberately kept in refugee camps as a means of keeping the conflict with Israel an open wound, and they’ve now spent generations in squalor.
In many places, the Palestinians are loathed for their very hopelessness, as well as for the tendency of their advocates to come to town and completely destabilize the place. In 1970, the PLO tried to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, leading to the flight of Palestinians to Lebanon. Many of the refugees in Lebanon are thus descendants not of the exodus from Palestine in 1948, but the exodus from Jordan in 1970.
The Palestinian cause has long been trumpeted by Hezbollah as an excuse to pull Israel into war, so the Palestinians are firmly associated with the raining of destruction onto Lebanese heads. Hezbollah occupies the south of the country, has turned south Beirut into a desolate wasteland, and has wrested control over the government in a political coup, installing an Assad-approved Hezbollah puppet as prime minister. Hezbollah is stealing Lebanon from the Lebanese, and it is not only Westernized, secular Lebanese Muslims and Christians who are horrified by this.
Qabbani is on record as despising Hezbollah, perhaps even more than he despises Palestinians. “Sunni Muslims in Lebanon have had enough,” he said in 2008. He called Hezbollah “armed gangs of outlaws that have carried out the ugliest attacks against the citizens and their safety,” and even called out Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran: “[I]t is regrettable and sad that an Islamic state is funding such infringements that hurt the unity of Lebanese Muslims.”
Published in General
Wow. Might be a good time for him to double-check his security arrangements?
Among the interesting consequences of the “Arab Spring” has been the way some of these ever-present historic fault lines which often get glossed over, especially in the US domestic press, have been brought in foreground.
Judith — this is such an important story. As Crow’s Nest states, it’s an “ever-present historic fault line” which never is covered by the press. It reveals the falsehood of the tired old “Israel/Jews = bad, Arabs = good/noble/oppressed” narrative. Arabs from many nations have repeatedly rejected the Palestinians. They then demand Israel share their homeland with them.
Finally! Maybe this is the beginning of a wave of truth-telling in the Middle East.
Hey, here’s a wacky idea. Palestinians lose, move on to other pursuits. Sounds harsh, but it’s a lot more humane than the “Peace Process”, which involves eternal war and shattered dreams which get shattered because they’re not achievable.
Heck, I’ve lost a number of times. Getting to be a pattern. Inexplicably still alive though, and the earth still rotates.
As Grand Muftis go, Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani may be one of the best. But before we elevate him to hero status, let’s not forget that Qabbani’s gripe is the theft of Islamic Wakf lands by Palestinians, not that Palestinians in Lebanon are resisting the call to peace with Israel or the West.
I’m delighted that fissures with Palestinians and Hezbollah are surfacing in Lebanon, but this speech appears to have been motivated by nothing more lofty than the fact that Palestinians took something in which that the sheikh took a proprietary interest. He may be a mufti, but it’s too soon to say he’s grand.
Does anyone wonder what would have happend if the Baltic Germans,the Volga Germans in the USSR, the ethnic Germans in East Prussia, Slovakia etc had hung around in camps after WW2? Many had centuries of attachment to such places as Gdansk/Danzig, and other Hansa cities, not to mention the long complex and bloody history of East Prussia and Poland. Most moved on with the lives often tinged with regret, loss of their past, and no doubt, some with significant guilt for the evils of Nazi Germany.
Why can’t the Palestinians who lived outside of Israel for several generations just accept that they lost a war, and the best vengeance is to live well (in spite of Israel if required). A life hating is not a life well lived.
In many places, the Palestinians are loathed for their very hopelessness, as well as for the tendency of their advocates to come to town and completely destabilize the place. In 1970, the PLO tried to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, leading to the flight of Palestinians to Lebanon. Many of the refugees in Lebanon are thus descendants not of the exodus from Palestine in 1948, but the exodus from Jordan in 1970.
Jordan, being the Arab state created in the Trans-Jordan section of British Mandate Palestine. Palestine was thus already partitioned and a state created for its Arab population in 1921.
The 1970 PLO-led rebellion not only gave the world a wave of Palestinian refugees from Jordan, it gave the world first the phrase “Black September” for the Jordanian crackdown on the rebels and then the terror group named for that event, which went on to take revenge on King Hussein by murdering Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.
The wave of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon, including the instigators and organizers of the Jordanian rebellion, directly catalyzed the Lebanese Civil War that cost 100,000 Lebanese lives and permanently warped that country.
Indeed, WWII was partly driven by Germany’s argument that ethnic Germans ought to be reincorporated into the Reich by territorial conquest to reverse Germany’s territorial losses in WWI.
Sometimes it requires a really sound thrashing to convince a person that his quest for (what he thinks of as) justice is futile and even suicidal.