The Gaza Prison Camp

"Gaza conditions at '40-year low'" the BBC headlined last week. Rarely a week goes by without a politician or organization deploring the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. But I do not hear anyone describe its root cause: 60 years of Arab policy aimed at maintaining Palestinians as stateless refugees in order to pressure Israel.

I lived in Gaza as a child in the 1950s when Egypt conducted guerrilla-style operations against Israel from Gaza, then under Egyptian control. My father commanded these operations, carried out by "fedayeen," (which means, "self sacrifice"). This became the frontline of Arab Jihad against Israel. My father was killed by Israel in a targeted assassination in 1956.

Today the Gaza Strip, now under the control of Hamas, has become the Gaza prison camp for 1.5 million Palestinians and continues to serve as the launching pad for attacks against Israeli citizens.

This is the legacy of the Arab world's Palestinian refugee policy, started 60 years ago, when the Arab League implemented special laws regarding Palestinians that all Arab countries had to abide by. Arab countries could not absorb Palestinians. Even if a Palestinian married a citizen of an Arab country, that Palestinian could not become a citizen of his or her spouse's country. A Palestinian can be born, live and die in an Arab country, but never gain its citizenship. Even now I receive e-mails from Palestinians telling me they cannot have a Syrian passport, for example, and must remain Palestinian even though they have never set foot in the West Bank or Gaza. Forcing the Palestinian identity on them is designed to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee status. Palestinians have been used and abused by Arab nations, and by Palestinian terrorists, for the purpose of destroying Israel.

The 22 Arab states certainly do not have a shortage of land. Many surrounding Arab areas, such as the Sinai Peninsula, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, are very sparsely populated. But absorbing Palestinians would end their refugee status and their desire to harm Israel.

Arab wealth, which is increasing dramatically because of skyrocketing oil prices, is not used to improve the lives, infrastructure and economy of the people of the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, it supports terror groups who reject Israel's existence and oppose peace with Israel. The average Gaza man has a better employment opportunity if he joins Hamas.

Gazans' breach of their checkpoint with Egypt in January, orchestrated by Hamas, is a result of the Palestinian refugee policy. The checkpoints on the Arab side of Gaza could not keep the inmates inside. The Arab plan to overpopulate Gaza exploded in the wrong direction. After this explosion, Suleiman Awwad, an Egyptian administration spokesman, said, "Egypt is a respected state, its border cannot be breached and its soldiers should not be lobbed with stones." In other words, Egypt is not like Israel, which is a disrespected state. Gazans should not direct the violence at Egypt, only at Israel. This is Arab conventional wisdom.

Last month Hamas threatened to bring 40,000 Palestinians, primarily children and women, to the Gaza border with Israel to protest Israel's restrictions on Gaza. Some Hamas leaders hinted they would send these protestors to breach the border, once again demonstrating that the Palestinian terrorists have no qualms about endangering the lives of innocent people -- Israelis or Palestinians. Fortunately, only 5,000 showed up.

But Hamas did succeed two days later in killing an Israeli: a 47 year-old father of four during a rocket attack from Gaza while he was sitting in his car next to Sapir College near Sderot. Two weeks earlier, two Israeli brothers, Osher and Rami Twito, ages 8 and 19, were seriously injured by a rocket from Gaza while buying their father a birthday present. Osher's left leg had to be amputated.

Israel completely left Gaza in August 2005. In May and June 2007, Hamas waged war against its Palestinian brothers in Fatah to gain control of Gaza. Hamas intensified its rockets attacks on Israeli towns, compelling Israel to take economic and military measures against Gaza. Hamas has become a danger not only to Israel, but to Palestinians and to neighboring Arab countries, as well. Nevertheless, the Arab world still refuses to see its role in creating this monster. It is difficult to find a similar situation in human history: the intentional creation of a refugee status for a million and a half people, sustained for 60 years. The Arab world has cut its nose to spite its face.

The world needs to understand that this dangerous mess started when 22 Arab countries agreed to create a human prison called the Gaza Strip. Arabs claim they love the Palestinian people, but they seem more interested in sacrificing them. It is time for the Arab world to open their side of the borders and absorb the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza who wish to be absorbed. It is time for the Arab world to truly help the Palestinians, not use them.

Nonie Darwish, who grew up in Cairo and Gaza City, is the author of, "Now They Call me Infidel."

Comments

[Howard26]

Just a wonderful report. Should be on the front web-page of the Hutington Post ! Miss Darwish has the credentials and experience to explain the reality of the situation and the tragedy of Gaza. Add to that the teaching for years to the young Gazans of the wrong thing. How can they grow up and escape the utter hatred they are filled with. Their leaders and the Arab world have misled them on purpose.

I am going to buy her book. Such an outstanding writer.

[passingobserver]

Interesting column--but not really that accurate.

First of all, it should be noted that--with the exception of Lebanon, Palestinian refugees are fully absorbed into local economies, and have standard of livings equivalent to non-refugees in Syria, Jordan, and the occupied territories. (It might be noted, by contrast, that Israeli Jews from Arab countries have LOWER standards of living than other Jews--by this measure at least, Israel has been less successful in absorbing refugees.)

Of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees registered by UNRWA, 1.7 million live in the West Bank and Gaza. Of those that live outside Palestine, by far the largest share are in Jordan (1.9 million), where almost all ARE citizens, and have full rights. Those in Syria don't have the passport and voting rights of citizenship, but are otherwise treated as citizens in all other respects.

The column rather misses Israel's responsibility in forcibly displacing the vast bulk of the Palestinian population in 1948 (750,000), seizing their property, barring them from returning, and even shooting them if they attempted to cross the border. Its what we today term ethnic cleansing, and without it there wouldn't be a refugee problem.

Finally, citizenship has nothing to do with the refugees' desire to return to their native land--after all, the Jewish desire to return to Israel survived millennia, and the granting of citizenship by their resident countries. Public opinion survey after survey shows that Palestinian refugees with citizens cling to their rights just as strongly as those without.

As for this: "It is time for the Arab world to open their side of the borders and absorb the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza who wish to be absorbed."

So the proposed solution is to de-Palestinianize the Palestinian territories by "encouraging" them to leave through occupation and economic pressures? How is that not ethnic cleansing under another name?

[FreedomLoverX]

This is one of the most important and honest posts I've read on this topic. Thanks Nonie. It is also amazing that for one, this was posted in the wee hours and disappeared by morning. Next, the only two comments I see here are from Palestinian and Arab apologists, who bend over themselves to reverse the facts - for no apparent reason. These folks, like always, are dependant on the public being to lazy to look at the last century of history regarding the "Palestinians". The truth is, for anyone with the fortitude to actually look at the history, that to date, Arabs have killed many more "Palestinians" than Israel has. This can not be disputed - that's a fact. The other two comments here are typical of the type of anti-Israel propaganda that has been so popular as of late.

[Tankan]

Gaza is Israel's Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp!

As has been previously stated, Arab countries opening their borders to adsorb Palestinians is exactly what Israel wants to happen. The living conditions in Gaza are being kept to minimal levels as a strategy hoping to break the spirit of Palestinians in the vain hope that they will eventually say, enough is enough, we're off to Egypt to live. Gaza has evolved into a huge version of Guantanamo Bay Internment Camp where the human rights of the inmates are denied on a 24/7 basis.
Israel and America are right down there in the gutter as far as civilized standards of conduct are concerned, the moral high ground has been lost forever. They both need to change!

[LeoMarvin]

And if opening Arab borders to Palestinians is what Israel wants, then you can count on it not happening, right? Regardless of how much Palestinian suffering it causes. That's been the hateful credo from day one -- NOTHING that might benefit the Israelis, even if Palestinian lives depend on it.

Beautiful....

[SamSedaei - Huffpost Blogger]

It is really quite sad that you think Arabs should open their borders and "absorb" the Arabs in Gaza. That's exactly what Israel wants. Israel has been belligerent and unwilling to support the creation of a viable Palestinian state beyond words because they want the Arabs to just go away. Israelis quadrupled their land through preemptive invasion of three neighboring countries and have maintained a 4-decade-long occupation (including in Gaza) and settlement building in the Occupied Palestine in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. And now you want to make it sound like the prison camp in Gaza, which is a prison because of Israel's brutal blockade is Arabs' fault? It doesn't make any sense. Israel is the only country that's responsible for the miseries of Palestinians. Twisting it any other way would be scapegoating the Israelis, which is the last thing that we need to do.

[LeoMarvin]

Assuming everything you say about Israel is true, how does it let the Arab nations off the hook for their huge part in this mess, as you try to do? How does it account for the fact that there were roughly equal numbers of Arab refugees from Israel and Jewish refugees from Arab states, but every Jewish refugee was accepted and given citizenship by Israel, while not a single Arab refugee was given citizenship by Egypt, Jordon, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia or any of the other countries they moved to? If Israel had been the least bit expansionist, wouldn't it have likewise kept the status of all the Jewish refugees in limbo to strengthen claims on all the land and property they were forced to flee, most of which were places Jews had lived for thousands of years, but are now essentially Jew-free? How does it account for the fact that Palestinians, seduced by promises of the Arab States that they would get ALL of Israel when it had been destroyed and emptied of Jews refused multiple offers of statehood, including U.N. Partition plans that would have given it the West Bank, Gaza and large portions of pre-1967 Israel? How does it account for the fact that during the 20 years the West Bank, Gaza and Golan were under Arab control, Egypt, Jordon, Syria and the rest were unwilling to even consider a Palestinian State? How does it account for the fact that Israel is unique in the world in having been under constant attack by its neighbors since the day of its inception, while also being the party to whom terms for peace are dictated by the countries it has defeated?


To point out the Israeli wrongs, which are many and everyone takes for granted, but insistently refuse as you and so many others do to admit the at least equal part the Arabs have played in creating the misery of the Palestinians, prevents the kind of sane dialog any Israeli government must have to negotiate terms by which it will necessarily risk continued attacks by factions claiming the right to ignore any agreements made in their name. If some of the most obvious features of recent history are denied like this, why should Israel believe that once it has withdrawn from more of what is to be a Palestinian State, anyone charged with Palestinian responsibility will even admit rockets are continuing to fly across the border? This is the minimal sanity check anyone would expect to engage in serious discussions. Personally I've believed in and supported a two state solution per UN 242 since 1967. But the fact that intransigent Israel-bashing like yours has become so acceptable during that time has only recently caused me to wonder, sadly, if such a solution is even still possible.

[dairyair]

Since the Arabs goal is to have no Israel, has always been about no Israel, I don't believe there will ever be a solution. Even though Arabs and Jews are essentially brothers, from a biblical sense, they don't want Jews or a Jewish state. It is that simple.