3 min read
“The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem.”
–- Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph September 6, 1948. (same appeared in The London Telegraph, August 1948);
“It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem”.
-- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949.
“The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees.”
-– The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, February 19, 1949.
“The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, 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 to stay temporarily In neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of invading Arab armies mow them down.”
--Al Hoda, a New York-based Lebanese daily, June 8, 1951.
“Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now from the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honour nor conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their honor? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it.”
-- The Beirut Muslim weekly Kul-Shay, August 19, 1951
“The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”
-- A refugee quoted in Al Difaa (Jordan) September 6, 1954.
“The wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states, and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and re-take possession of their country”.
-- Edward Atiyah (Secretary of the Arab League, London, The Arabs, 1955, p. 183)
“The 15th May, 1948, arrived ... On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead.”
-- The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, October 12, 1963.
In listing the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948, Khaled al-Azm (Syrian Prime Minister) notes that “…the fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it (Palestine) and leave for the bordering Arab countries. Since 1948, it is we who have demanded the return of the refugees, while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon a million Arab refugees by inviting them and bringing pressure on them to leave. We have accustomed them to begging...we have participated in lowering their morale and social level...Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson and throwing stones upon men, women and children...all this in the service of political purposes...”
-- Khaled el-Azm, Syrian prime minister after the 1948 War, in his 1972 memoirs, published in 1973.
“The Arab states succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the states of the world did so, and this is regrettable. 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, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.”
-- Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), from the official journal of the PLO, Falastin el-Thawra (“What We Have Learned and What We Should Do”), Beirut, March 1976.
Yes! The "Abu Mazen", PA's own Dictator-President, knows perfectly well that it was Arabs who asked 'Palestinians' to go away. And guesss what was that for? To be able for the to bomb Jews indiscriminately in one of the worst genocide in history. But people with nothing else to lose but life made bad victims and it did not happen. 'Palestinian' refugees, who knew that the Jews would not welcome back those who abandoned them to their fate, prefered to stay under their Arab brothers' iron fist and discrimination, in order to serve the old-time Arab greedy dictators and their present successors.