Israel's Right to Be Israel - Ayalon (DUPE, Sorry)

Today's (Sunday) op-ed in the Washington Post. (sorry, something's wrong with my address bar this morning. If someone could post the link, I'd appreciate it)

" In the turbulent years following World War II, millions of people across the globe became refugees. In Europe the new postwar borders turned millions of Poles and Germans into refugees. In South Asia the partition of the Indian subcontinent displaced millions. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, including my own family, fled their homes in the Arab world leaving behind their property and belongings.

Today Europe does not have a German or Polish refugee problem, and the Indian subcontinent is not plagued with a refugee issue. Israel has successfully integrated more than 2 million refugees. Why has the same process of healing not occurred with Palestinian refugees? Why today in the Middle East do the descendants of the people who fled their homes in 1948 still suffer in refugee camps?

The unfortunate truth is that over the past 50 years, the Arab governments and the Palestinian leadership have acted to thwart efforts to resettle the refugees, leaving them to suffer in miserable conditions. Even the Palestinian Authority has been unwilling to eliminate the refugee camps in the areas under its control in the West Bank and Gaza and resettle their residents. Obviously, this has been part of a deliberate policy to keep the refugee issue alive as a political weapon against Israel. "

This raises a good question. Why are some Palestinians still treated as refugees by the PA in their own territory?

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