U.S. govt: Palestinian population exceeds Jewish population

The population of Palestinians living in Israel, the Occupied Gaza Strip, Occupied East Jerusalem and rest of the Occupied West Bank combined now exceeds the number of Israeli Jews, a U.S. government report has revealed.

The Palestinian population stands at over 5.3 million while the Jewish population stands at 5.2 million.

The figures come from the U.S. State Department's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004. The report provided population figures for each of these territorial units separately but failed to connect all the dots to arrive at the explosive new demographic reality that an Israeli Jewish minority now rules over a larger number of Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

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Various denominations of Christians - and various nationalities and denominations of Muslims.

Once the Israelis pull out and "give"-"return" Gaza and the West Bank to the Palestinians, within a short time we will see a replay of the Balkans and Lebanon.

I think the smaller Christian Palestinian communities are on the "Endangered Species" List - just like the Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq.

Are you saying it is better to live as a refugee with no civil rights than as part of a minority?

has become -- where everybody has used their "client" to fight "their" conflict--- and where family, tribe, and clan all seem to trump "nation" --- with a dash of dhimmi thrown in -- and a pinch of hyper-nationalism, I would not be surprised to see inter-ethnic, intra-Palestinian warfare break out within the "Palestinian" community.

I will give Arafat credit -- he kept a lid on intra-Palestinian conflicts to some extent.

I don't know if that "lid" can survive actual nationhood, or if it will degenerate into Balkanization or Lenbanonization.

This is just the situation where the Neo-Cons and the Likud may part company--

1. Likud knows that this will spill over into Israel (especially the Galilee) and that innocent Israelis will get bloodied by this warfare.

2. The PNAC-Neo Con crowd might view this as a theater for some kind of hegemonic wet dream to "stamp out terror and insurgency" and "bring democracy" (we've been there before).

This is will be a tough balancing act for Abbas.

It would be like the United States then, and yes, there would be a constant struggle for minority rights and so forth. We've been doing it for going on our third century now and have hopes of continuing.

I hope the Palestinians get that chance soon.

so are Turkey and Lebanon by statute or Constitution.. But, I think that a "secular" state with a Muslim plurality is an oxymoron in today's world.

and that is all we can do, even here in the U.S. This process is a continuing march on a rocky road.

Hizb'Allah basically took over Lebanon during the civil war by providing services usually supplied by the government. Similarly, Hamas is so popular in palestine because it is the main provider of services, not the PA. When Palestine is independent, Hamas will probably win in an election or two, and they have proven themselves to be less intelligent than Hizb'Allah. So they'll model the Lebanese system, but will probably be a bit more religious if they can get away with it and less intelligent in how it deals with Israel and maybe the other Arab states.

He fed off playing them against each other. Nobody betrayed those people as much as he did. Nobody.

Refugees? Sweetie, most refugees settle someplace and build their lives. They don't run a 57-year pity party. They should have been citizens of other nations by now with those precious civil rights. How come they aren't? WHO was stopping them?

They aren't refugees. They're pawns.

Israel has stopped them from returning to their homes. That's what matters. If you got kicked out of yr home and was refused the right to return, I hope you don't encounter someone so lacking in basic compassion and empathy that they insist some other country should just put you up so you can stop yr whining...

They're refugees. And they're pawns. That's reality. Anyone who claims they aren't refugees needs to extract their head from their arse. What disgusts me about attitudes like the one I've just seen is if it was any other group but Palestinians being talked about, the whole attitude would do a swift turnabout...

Violet...

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when the Pakistanis deported the Sikhs and Hindus?

when the British deported "petty criminals" and Irish Catholics to Australia?

If the Israelis were Anglicans or Presbyterians or had OIL ----

Britain was at that time facing a crisis over how to deal with overcrowding of its prison population. Debate raged on everything from where to send convicts, to whether or not transportation was the answer to the overcrowding problem. Just to clear one thing up - the British didn't deport Irish Catholics for being Irish Catholics. And there's no need to put the words petty criminals in dit-dits, because the vast majority of convicts were petty criminals...

But as the British were transporting criminals to other parts of the British Empire, and the Palestinian people aren't criminals, and what was done to them was done decades rather than centuries ago, there's really no comparison at all...

I hold a universal view on the displacement of civilian populations during war. They should at the cessation of hostilities be allowed to return to their homes. If that's impossible, the state that is refusing to allow them to return should compensate them for their homes and lost livelihoods. Even if you showed me other examples that are comparable to what happened to the Palestinians and showed there was no protest, all that would show is that just as in the case of the Palestinians, you've shown another example of something that was wrong and needs to be redressed...

Violet...

You stated "the state that is refusing to allow them to return should compensate them for their homes and lost livelihoods."

This has been always been on the table. The compensation and livelihoods are there for West Bank and Gaza Palestinians pending the cessation of hostilities and some degree of safety, and to some extent for Palestinians who have relocated to Egypt, Qatar, India, and the US.

If you want to see what Palestinian-American engineers and Iraqi-American engineers are capable of --- click here -- a masterful piece of Islamic-American engineering. Ford Motor Company has led the way in "affirmative action" for Islamic Americans - and for Palestinians and Iraqis ==> http://www.fordvehicles.com/escapehybrid/home/


I spent the entire 3rd and 4th quarter of 2003 working on a similar program for a major American multi-national. This was not charity. In fact - some Americans would perceive it as an "out sourcing of good jobs" to "Arabs" in the "West Bank."

The only way that there will be peace is to give a person a career - not a make work welfare job - but a career - and the means to own a home and raise a family and look forward to a future. I think the average Israeli in the street realizes this even more then many "friends" of the Palestinians.

Not until Taba has there been anything resembling a desire to address the issue of the refugees and repatriation/compensation. To claim compensation has been addressed by Israel prior to that is totally incorrect...

Of course employment helps, but that's a completely separate issue from compensation for losing homes in 1948. I doubt any refugee who's got a career thinks that it somehow wipes out Israels obligation to address the refugee issue by acknowledgement/repatriation/compensation (obviously a mix of all three is the ideal solution)..

Violet...

Suffice it to say that there are combinations of jobs and housing on the table.

By the way - I did learn how Islamic electronic fund transfer is effected. Very clever - and traditional (there's a great big hint).

so sorry if I wasn't around then to protest it :eyes:

the Arab autocrats who neither want nor "need" an articulate, political Palestinian minority - who might just challenge the status quo in, say, Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Syria or Egypt.

Consider it a "population exchange" - "Spehardis for Palestinians" - the numbers in 1948 were about equal -- like between India and Pakistan.

You do realise that the numbers of displaced Palestinians were approx. 750,000? That's an incredibly huge number of people. Which is why I'm going to ask you to provide some proof of this claim that the numbers of Sephardis in 1948 were about equal. Even if the numbers were about the same, I would not consider a "population exchange" to be in any way an accurate description. If people leave one country willingly for another that's willing to take them, that's fine, but when they're displaced from their homes because of war and then the state refuses to take them back because of their ethnicity, then that's pretty disgusting and shouldn't be justified by anyone with any sort of interest in human rights...

Violet...

You asked:

"You do realise that the numbers of displaced Palestinians were approx. 750,000? That's an incredibly huge number of people. Which is why I'm going to ask you to provide some proof of this claim that the numbers of Sephardis in 1948 were about equal.'

I did some research, and most of the number converge around 800,000 Sephardis (with another large migration from Iran in 1980). Here is a "typical" quote

"Most important to Israel's future, however, was the arrival of the Sephardic Jews. In 1945 there were more than 870,000 of them living in the Arab world; some of their communities had existed for 2,500 years. For them life in harmony with their Arab neighbors ended with Israel's independence, because the Arabs now saw them as enemy agents. In 1947 and 1948 there were anti-Jewish riots in Aden (where 82 Jews were killed), in Egypt (where 150 Jews were killed), in Libya (where 14 Jews were killed as a follow-up to a savage 1945 pogrom), in Syria (where Jewish emigration was forbidden), and in Iraq (where "Zionism" became a capital crime). Fleeing their persecutors, the Jews were forced to abandon their property and possessions, and most of them escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs. About two thirds of them became Israeli citizens, while the other 260,000 found refuge in Europe and the Americas.

The transfer of populations on a massive scale, either by war or by state policy, is a distinctive feature of twentieth century history. In almost every case, those uprooted from one place found a new home in the country that took them in. The movement of more than 580,000 Jews from the Arab lands to Israel, and of a similar number of Palestinian Arabs out of Israel, was typical of such movements, though it was far from being the largest (e.g., compare it with the exchange of 8.8 million Hindus for 8.5 million Moslems that took place between India and Pakistan at the same time). Still, the uprooted Jews became an integral part of Israeli life, while the Palestinian Arabs remained, often as a deliberate act by their host countries, isolated, neglected, and bitter."
-http://www.mideastnewswire.com/archive/me_israel_1948.html
-Mideast Newswire

As to your statement that

"Even if the numbers were about the same, I would not consider a "population exchange" to be in any way an accurate description. If people leave one country willingly for another that's willing to take them, that's fine, but when they're displaced from their homes because of war and then the state refuses to take them back because of their ethnicity, then that's pretty disgusting and shouldn't be justified by anyone with any sort of interest in human rights...

is incorrect as a matter of fact and of law.

I will not respond to the penultimate clause.

I took a look. There's no author listed for it and no footnotes as to where those figures were found. From what I've read, most of the movement of Arab Jews to Israel happened after 1948, not at the same time. Of those, some appear to have been pushed by the states they were living in in some sort of reprisal for the expulsion of Palestinians from what was now Israel, some were pulled by the Zionists who of course wanted and needed more Jewish immigration to Israel, and the rest went willingly out of a desire to migrate and start a new life. Unlike the Palestinians, they did not express a desire to return to their former homes, though I believe that any who left unwillingly and wanted to return should be compensated for the loss of their homes and livelihoods, just the same as the Palestinians should be. But nonsense about 'population exchange' in a clumsy attempt to wipe the slate clean is apart from clumsy, clearly unfair to those individuals affected. Would you agree with that or not?

I think if you take a look at international law, you'll find that the FACT is that there is no law that says it's acceptable for civilians to be refused the right to return to their homes after a conflict based on their ethnicity. There is nothing progressive or showing the slightest hint of empathy when people say that the Palestinians (unlike other refugees who they of course hypocritically claim the exact opposite about) should just bugger off and be quiet because we shouldn't give a shit about people who lose their homes and livelihoods in conflict...

Violet...

to show facts - not opinions - to the contrary. Attacking credibility is an old lawyer game. ;)

You are conflating "after a conflict" which has no meaning in a jurisprudential sense, with "armistice" and "peace treaty."

"We have reached an issue."

You were asked for facts. You haven't supplied facts, but unsubstantiated internet opinion where the author isn't even attributed to it and there are no footnotes at all to substantiate any figures given. Sheez. What is so difficult about actually supplying some credible documentation?? There is no burden on me to prove the negative in anything. If you haven't got any credible documentation to answer my question with, so be it. Just say so and I can go away knowing that I've been greeted with unsubstantiated opinion...

When I say after a conflict, I mean at the cessation of hostilities. Is there something confusing in that somewhere? Does it actually have anything at all to do with what was being discussed? Does it in any way justify the refusal of Israel to allow the refugees to return to their homes? I thought not...

ps - You claimed in yr original post that the number of Palestinian and Sephardic refugees were around the same. The accepted approximate number for Palestinian refugees was 750,000, so therefore the numbers weren't even in the same ballpark. In case there's any confusion over what is considered credible when it comes to information on population numbers, here's a link to somewhere where there are facts, not unsubstantiated opinion. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Communiques/1998/POPULATION%20OF%20ISRAEL-%20GENERAL%20TRENDS%20AND%20INDICATOR

According to the chart on that page, there were 101,828 immigrants who arrived in Israel in 1948. In fact, between 1948 and 1951, population growth (a mix of immigration and natural increase) accounted for around 680,000 new Israelis for that period. I think it's pretty safe to assume that immigrants arriving from Europe would have made up a sizeable chunk of that number. What I'm seeing on that site is pretty much what I've read elsewhere, btw. What you posted was not...
Violet...

http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/archive/peace+process/1992/the+middle+east+refugees+-+jan-92.htm">MFA site, there were approximately 590,000 Palestinian refugees (see comments below) who fled the territory that would become Israel (I'm not going to type this every time, so I'll just refer to it as "Israel" below). There were 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, approximately 590,000 of which came to Israel.

I'm aware that this estimate of Palestinian refugees is lower than the number you cite. However, I consider it more reliable. The 700,000-1,000,000 estimates seem to be based on UNWRA estimates of refugees for which they were providing services at the end of the war. However, those numbers are prone to inflation, for several reasons:

1) The UNWRA has its own definition of refugee. It includes descendents of refugees, and, more importantly for this discussion, any Arab who lived in Israel starting from sometime in 1946 (I don't recall the precise cut-off date). Neither of those would be considered refugees bu the UNHCR.
2) The Arab leadership had an interest in inflating the refugee numbers.
3) It seems there was number inflation going on among the refugees themselves. Remember that the support given by UNWRA would have been substantial by the standards of the local (i.e. were the camps ended up) population, which was fairly poor. People would register as refugees even though they hadn't actually lived in Israel (given the general chaos, and the exapnsive deifinition of "refugee" used, it couldn't have been to hard). In addition, deaths often went unreported, so the family would keep getting the deceased member's allocation.

Terence Prittie used a different approach to estimate the refugee population*. There were approximately 1,200,000 Arabs (possibly somewhat less) in Palestine before the outbreak of the war. At least 450,000 of these lived in areas which did not end up in Israel. In addition, 160,000 Palestinians remained in Israel or were allowed to return. That makes the maximum possible number of refugees is 590,000.

Regarding compensation, Israel made several overtures to solve the refugee problem; all were refused (same source, page 66)

*Middle East Refugees, in The Palestinians: People, History, Politics, edited by Curtis et al.

You claim you find the estimate of the Israeli govt on the number of refugees more reliable. That's not surprising and not convincing, considering the bias and the interest Israel had in deflating the figures of Palestinian refugees...

UNWRA deals solely with Palestinian refugees. The approximate number of 750,000 at the end of hostilities does not include descendants, unless you want to get into what I hope you would agree is a petty quibble over whether babies born even a day after their parents were forced/fled from their homes are refugees or not. Considering things were quite chaotic after the war, it appears to me that it would be just as likely that people weren't counted as well as those that were and shouldn't have been...

We've already discussed this claim of yr Prittie guy in another thread, and I recall pointing out that the offer that was made wasn't a genuine one (I reacall using Benny Morris as a source for that), and making an insincere offer to a small number of refugees and then saying that solves the problem shouldn't fool anyone, even though it seems to have done the job on this obscure Prittie guy...

Violet...

why I thought it more reliable. Care to explain which of my assumptions is wrong? (one possibility is that the estimate of the total Arab population is two low; OTOH, I've seen estimates as high as 1.4 million and some as low as 1 million, so the vlaue he uses seems to be the median).

My comment regarding descendents was a tangential note; since I was describing the difference between the UNHCR and the UNWRA definition, I mentioned it for the sake of completeness. I noted the second difference was the important one.

I'm not sure what your comment that the UNWRA deals only with Palestinian refugees is related to. The definition used by the UNWRA is not based on ethnicity, but on place of domicile during a specific time frame. Any Arab who lived in Israel since June 1946 and left (for whatever reason) during the war is considered a Palestinian refugee. As I pointed out before, there was apparently a substantial inflation of the number of refugees due to fraudulent registration - andsuch fraudulent registration would have been made easier by the definition - and non-reporting of deaths. Whether or not the UNWRA is intended to deal with those is irrelevent to whther it ended up doing so. I'd say overcounting is more likely than undercounting, since people had a vested interest in registrating.

As for Prittie: I think you're mixing up threads. I only referenced him once, and you didn't reply to that post (other than the one point you addressed by PM, which wasn't this one). I discussed the offer of repatriation two posts up from that (and that's the only place I recall discussing the repatriation offer). You didn't mention Morris there, just noted you had read it was withdrawn.

I'm not familiar enough with the field of the study of history to determine whether Prittie is obscure or not (note that he didn't focus just on the Israeli-Arab conflict, so not all his writings appear in that field). He mentioned specific events, however, most of them public (UN fora, etc.); if they didn't occur, it shouldn't be that hard to prove.

The San Francisco Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/06/INGM2BJH7U1.DTL) has a signed article by Semha Alwaya, a Sephardi attorney in the Bay Area and a founding member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (www.jimena-justice.org). Alwaya writes:

"In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.

This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.

<snip><

I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.

There once was a vibrant presence of nearly 1 million Jews residing in 10 Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- almost none in Iraq.

What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150, 000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were an additional 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?
<snip><

Follow the link.

Your link only provides statistics the Sephardis who went to Israel. I do not know how many went to Australia, and I will leave that to you.

A substantial number came to the US and Canada. reports that:

"Of the 900,000 Jewish refugees, approximately 600,000 were absorbed by Israel, where today almost half of Israel's Jewish citizens are the original refugees and their descendants. The remainder went to Europe and the Americas."
---http://www.jimena-justice.org/

I shall respond to you later on the Fifth Geneva Convention.

You originally said: 'Consider it a "population exchange" - "Spehardis for Palestinians" - the numbers in 1948 were about equal" which I took to mean that you were claiming the numbers of refugees were equal in 1948. Have I got that right? It's just that you then go on to quote things that are talking about immigration to Israel in later years. btw, the figures I quoted from the Israeli govt website included natural births and immigration. That figure alone puts to rest any claims that approximately 600,000 Arab-Jews went to Israel in the late 40's - very early '50's. If that was the case, Israel would have taken in very few Europeans and we know that's not the case...

Just curious as to what yr opinion is on Sephardic Jews who were forced to flee from their homes. Do you agree with me that they like all refugees, including Palestinians, are entitled to repatriation and/or compensation from the state they fled from? Because that's where I see a hell of a lot of hypocrisy. People will argue that Jewish refugees must get compensation from the states they fled from, but then turn around and argue that Israel has no responsibility to compensate Palestinian refugees. Something else that I was thinking about too - I suspect strongly that there's no genuine concern for any legitimate Sephardic refugees on the part of those who peddle the stance I just talked about, but a very strong wish to attempt to 'wipe out' the claim of Palestinian refugees by producing a bunch of other refugees. One problem I see in this is that while some Sephardic Jews were clearly forced to flee from their homes, others left of their own free will as Zionists openly tried to encourage Jews in Arab states to move to Israel. And a lot of this movement didn't happen during hostilities between states as it did with the Palestinians. Another thing is that a great many Palestinian refugees are stateless. How many Sephardic Jews are stateless? Don't know about you, but those who are stateless and suffering because of it are the ones who should be dealt with as a matter of urgency as far as I'm concerned...

Bottom line is that the issue of repatriation/compensation for Palestinian and Sephardic Jews who were refugees needs to be addressed, but to claim that the issue of Palestinian refugees vanishes because they wipe each other out is not logical, fair, and not even attempting to think about the fact that human beings who lost their homes and their livelihoods are being talked about, not numbers...

Violet...

ancient Sepahdri communities.

I know from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE - my wife's uncle is married to a Syrian Sephardi who fled Syria. My son's Solomon Schechter teacher was a Yemeni Sephardi (as were about a third of his teachers), my best friend is married to an Iraqi Sephardi, my nephew is married into a Sephardi family from Los Angeles, two of the docs at the clinic we go to are Iraqi Sephardis.

I talk to all of them.

Also, "Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa" (www.jimena-justice.org ) is very large in California -- and very active

And, there are large Sephardi refugee temples - in Silicon Valley and in Los Angeles. Very traditional Orthodox Service (but with mixed seating), and some Shiia type customs.

Also, a Sephardi Seder - the food is much healthier then Ashkenazic Seders.

As to your comment

One problem I see in this is that while some Sephardic Jews were clearly forced to flee from their homes, others left of their own free will as Zionists openly tried to encourage Jews in Arab states to move to Israel.

we can have a corn beef sandwich at Zack's in Melbourne and talk to my cousins about how my maternal grandmother's family left Galicia of their own free will as the Australian Jewish Community in Melbourne openly tried to encourage Jews in Europe states to move to Australia during the Holocaust. Yeah.

to respond to your question:

"When I say after a conflict, I mean at the cessation of hostilities. Is there something confusing in that somewhere? Does it actually have anything at all to do with what was being discussed? Does it in any way justify the refusal of Israel to allow the refugees to return to their homes? I thought not..."

Be a good preparation for a MCLE course taught by the ICRC in International Humanitarian Law.

Haven't really done the "Law School" 135 hour study of International Law for more years then I like to recall.

It's been a few months since I last read it, but I remember it saying that the right of return comes from four separate bits of international law. After that, the endofsemestermemorydump kicked in and I'd have to read it again to give a decent run-down on what else is said. But I highly recommend you have a read of it, because it was a good analysis...

The 1948 Palestinian Refugees and the Individual Right of Return: An International Law Analysis

Violet...

It is a well written advocacy brief on an open and unsettled question.

It is what we are "trained" (brain washed) to do. It is what we get paid to do. Gail Bolling has done a good job as an advocate- That what she is trained, brainwashed (in law school), and paid to do. You think we really believe all of the criminals we defend are innocent - NO. Our mission is to force the State, Commonwealth, Dominion, etc to prove its case "beyond a reasonable doubt." You think insurance company lawyers really believe that anesthesiologists who leave a brain dead mom and baby in the delivery room used the best care -- no. They are just doing their job of making the survivors prove that there was actionable negligence and that the negligence was the proximate cause of the loss.

Individual rights of return and individual reparations (absent specific tort like acts on named individuals) are an unsettled issue of international law -- and you can find compelling legal arguments on both side.

The reading I have done - mostly by Columbia Law School and Harvard Law School and Georgetown Law School professors is that ABSENT A SIGNED "PEACE TREATY" WITH MUTUAL DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION AND MUTUALLY AGREED TO NATIONAL BOUNDARIES -- THERE IS NO "RIGHT OF INDIVIDUAL RETURN" - AND "INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS OF RETURN" AND "REPARATIONS" ARE DEFINED IN AND GOVERNED BY THE SIGNED "PEACE TREATY" - I realize that is legal gobble-degook and shilly-shallying -- but that's what I am trained, brain washed, socialized to the norm, and paid to do. You advocate for your client - and hopefully in the reasoned debate that is our Anglo-Saxon system of adversary litigation - the truth outs and justice is done.

As to individual rights of return - 3/4's of my maternal grandmother's family were wiped out in the Holocaust - and we have no desire to leave the US or Australia (Zack's Deli) to go back to Galicia -- and we have not received our individual BMW's from Germany.

Even Nazi era reparations are not a matter of "settled law." Germany gave them as a matter of "foreign policy and good will" and pursuant to its Peace Treaty with the Allies, and not as a matter of international law. Swiss banks have fought reparations in court.

I am waiting for my Instructors Kit from the ICRC for the "Basic International Humanitarian Law" course, and my students Continuing Legal Education kit for "Advanced International Humanitarian Law" course -- another respected opinion.

No-one would be talking to them at all, and they wouldn't be refugees any longer. Very few large-scale refugee problems have been solved by repatriation rather than resettlement. The Palestinians atill are because the Arab states deliberately kept them in the camps.

Many of the states responsible for large-scale refugee problems are undemocratic regimes that have a reputation for brutality. That's why people tend to be resettled elsewhere - because it's impossible for them to return to their homes. Israel, on the other hand, was and still is a liberal democracy, and if you want to try to argue that it's on a par with other states responsible for large-scale displacement, where the return of refugees to their homes would involve a significant risk to the lives of those returning, then you'll have a fight on yr hands. Let's get one thing straight here. The Palestinian refugees are still refugees because Israel has consistantly refused to address the problem in a realistic and fair way. Taba was where the issue where Israel finally sat down with Palestinian negotiators and went a long way towards a reasonable and fair solution. Do you have a problem with what was agreed to at Taba?

Yes, the refugees are pawns, but anyone who refuses to recognise that they're being used as pawns by Israel as well as Arab states needs a reality check, because just the same as there are probably some folk who blame Israel for everything, there's just as many who blame the Arabs for everything...

Violet...

-- that "control" the US and the UK and the Arabs.

Follow the Money -- Quo Bono and read-->
1. "House of Bush, House of Saud : The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties" by Craig Unger
2. "A Century Of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order" by F. William Engdahl

And check out three web sites-->
1. http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/eng/ -- this is the Bush family's investment vehicle --- munitions, armaments, war, energy.
2. http://www.forbes.com/home/2002/03/11/0311alwaleed.html -- Prince Talal's "Kingdom Holdings" took down their web site.
3. http://www.bakerbotts.com/Home.aspx -- Jim Baker - the "Consigliere".

BTW - Royal Dutch Shell (originally an Australian company) is reported in US Securities and Exchange Commission filings and in a Dutch law suit to have "funded" or paid blackmail/protection money to Indonesian and Filipino terrorist groups.

You may also want to do a thorough Google Search (not one or two hits - but thorough - as in PhD research level) on the

"SYKES-PICOT AGREEMENT"

to see the games that the big powers were playing with oil against the little people -- even before the Balfour Agreement - or the carving up of the ME after the fall of the Ottoman Empire - or the installation of Hashemite Kings around the ME - and 35 years before Mossadegh was ousted by the CIA.

Collect lots of data. Connect lots of dots. Follow the money (lots of it). Ask yourself "Who Benefits"

Israel was founded upon that so called "pity party" (a revolting expression btw) why do you feel Jews who's families have not lived in the area for GENERATIONS should be able to "return" to Israel but people who fled in fear for their lives during the Nakba should not?

it is better to live as part of a minority with protected and enforceable civil rights then either as a refugee or as a minority with only hollow "paper rights".

Even in the US - in my lifetime - protected and enforceable civil rights for minority populations was (and still is) a cruel hoax.

When Bush can say that the present Social Security system is "unfair to African Americans" - that is NOT a selling point for private accounts. It is an INDICTMENT of our failure to provide the full spectrum of protected and enforceable civil rights, including access to adequate and reasonably affordable health care and to gainful employment.

That's why, in some political systems, it is sometimes better to have several small countries (where everybody is a "majority") then one large country where minority rights are a fiction.

I am not saying Palestine will degenerate into that - Arafat did forge a "National Identity" (he did some good things - an identity, a sense of purpose and mission - at some point he will be universally recognized and universally praised as the father of the Palestinian nation and people)

The demographic time bomb has exploded.

The problem is that if Israel swallows the West Bank and Gaza into a Greater Israel, it will be Jews who are the minority. Either Palestinians in this Greater Israel will have equal rights, in which case Israel ceases to be a Jewish state, or they will be somehow subordinated to a Jewish minority, in which case Israel ceases to be a democracy.

There's no in between. In democracy, there can be no split-level citizenship. If some people have more rights than others, it isn't democracy. The only way for a Jewish democracy to survive is to limit its territory to land where Jews are a majority.

Israel's only choice is prepare for the birth of a Palestinian state. That will mean settling borders and evacuating settlements that fall beyond those boundaries.

It was a grave error on Israel's part to declare the West Bank and Gaza to be "integral parts of Israel" (Prime Minister Begin's words from 1977) that could be settled by Israelis. Until then, the occupation was about security and security only. After that, it became about territorial expansion into land that where other people were already living.

The conflict has for too long been driven by ultras who will fight for the last acre of land with the last drop of blood. We shouldn't pretend that had there been no settlements there would have been no conflict; there were Palestinians who stubbornly reject the reality of Israel. Nevertheless, the settlements were the Israeli face of the conflict, just as terrorism became the Palestinian face. Both were expressions of a creed that said all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belonged to one people. That is obviously not the case.

If the Israelis were the ones standing in the way of a Palestinian state, they will now make way. They now need that state as badly as the Palestinians do. Israel's survival as a Jewish democracy depends on it. Sharon may have taken a lifetime to realize that, but if he now indeed realizes it, that is a good sign.

We don't know what kind of a state Palestine will be. That will be up to Palestinians. Nevertheless, when the Palestinian Parliament last month forced Prime Minister Qurei, himself a remnant of the Arafat era, to accept a cabinet of technocrats rather than old guard Arafat cronies, we should feel we have cause for optimism. Those are the people who will build socio-political infrastructure rather than milk it for personal use. That, too, is a good sign.

There is no way Israel can retain its Jewish character or its democratic character while retaining the PA territories.

I also think it is absolutely imperative that

1. The Diaspora and the Arab States (i.e., the Oil States) pump Marshall Plan type investment into Palestine - and make it a Qatar or a Bangalore;

And I think that western countries - read the US and England - that have ripped off the bottom 99% of the Arabs - and the industries - read the mineral extraction industries - that have also ripped off the bottom 99% of the Arabs - should be major contributors to this effort- as reparations for ripping off the Arabs - they can afford it, and they have a responsibility here.


2. Israel leave the settlement infrastructure (including the agricultural infrastructure and the irrigation infrastructure and the electrical infrastructure and the transportation) intact for a turnover to the Palestinians. Any Israeli (I had Haredi-Likudnik in the unedited draft) should be imprisoned for willful damage to infrastructure upon turnover.

It is absolutely essential that Palestine be "jump started" into economic and political viability.

That is a good point that is not often brought up. It will be imperative that Palestine have a shot at prosperity. The chances of a lasting peace are much better if both nations have better things to do than go to war against each other.

or gainful employment. The guiding principle in either case should be to proceed in a way that will not economically marginalize people, whether as minorities within a unified country or as separate states.

Rights are not fictional, but they are an ideal. In any type of self-government, we have to work both as individuals and together toward equality among all the diverse groups. After all, is there a state that is truly homogenous?

Subject: I am a Liberal Progressive Democrat - have been for 44 years

I posted

When Bush can say that the present Social Security system is "unfair to African Americans" - that is NOT a selling point for private accounts. It is an INDICTMENT of our failure to provide the full spectrum of protected and enforceable civil rights, including access to adequate and reasonably affordable health care and to gainful employment.

You responded

"I don't see sovereignty as guaranteeing affordable health care" or gainful employment. The guiding principle in either case should be to proceed in a way that will not economically marginalize people, whether as minorities within a unified country or as separate states."

I grew up in an AFL-CIO household in an AFL-CIO town - where my grand parents actually sat Shiva when FDR died (not exaggerating - Grandma put sheets over the mirror, and Granddad said Kaddish for FDR.

One of the MANY differentiating items between Democrats (and Christian Democrats of Europe and Avodah in Israel) and the right wing parties is ACCESS to adequate and reasonably affordable health care and to gainful employment.

As FDR said in his Four Freedoms speech:

The basic things expected by our people of their political
and economic systems are simple. They are :

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.

Jobs for those who can work.

Security for those who need it.

The ending of special privilege for the few.

The preservation of civil liberties for all.

The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a
wider and constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, the basic things that must never be
lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of
our modern world. The inner and abiding straight of our
economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree
to which they fulfill these expectations."

<snip><

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human
freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression --everywhere
in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way-- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world
terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
--everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into
world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to
such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of physical
aggression against any neighbor --anywhere in the wold.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite
basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and
generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of
the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators
seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

-----http://www.libertynet.org/~edcivic/fdr.html

That is a goal for a just society. I agree it is not a sine qua non for juristic sovereignty. But, as a Progressive Liberal Democratic - it is a goal for a just society (even more then the Theocratic "Ten Commandments")

As to your question "is there a state that is truly homogenous?" The answer is No. That is why a just society requires pressure groups like Amnesty International and the ACLU that function without fear of imprisonment -- and tough (ruthless?) protectors of minority rights (through the instrumentalities of government and the courts) - I am thinking of an AG like Robert Kennedy or Ramsey Clark or NYAG Eliot Spitzer.

It's the other 1% of Issues that keep the I/P forum lively. ;)

Sovereignty doesn't guarantee anything except that a nation's political leadership have the right to make their own mistakes in the nation's name.

Nor for that matter are the Jewish people

Or the Christian, or the American, or French, or British, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccan.

:) We humans are just too difficult to categorize :)

living on the green line are talking about being included on the Israeli side.

connect the dots. They are more comfortable talking about tangential issues.

The report provided population figures for each of these territorial units separately but failed to connect all the dots to arrive at the explosive new demographic reality that an Israeli Jewish minority now rules over a larger number of Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

Demographics brought to you by bigoil. :eyes:

I assume you are referring to

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=87417&mesg_id=87530

which is from actual, real life experience.

contributed to that demographic, is astroglide.

The cites are all over the threads in the P/I forum.

"Follow The Money" and "Quo Bono" (or "Qui Bono").

And the money is a lot bigger then Sharon's and Arafat"s piddling little graft added together.

Let's see. You have two separate peoples of roughly the same size. They both have valid or at least semi-valid claims to the same land. (Here is where I will undoubtedly get shrill, self-righteous responses from both sides claiming that the OTHER side does not have a valid claim of any kind. Since neither side plans to oblige the other by marching into the sea, I don't feel that type of response is particularly constructive or meaningful.) Both peoples are refugees who have been terribly victimized in the recent past (and in the case of the Palestinians also in the present). For good or ill, right or wrong, both peoples now hate each others guts. (of course there are exceptions, perhaps many on both sides, but I think hatred describes the zeitgeist of both groups better than any other word.)

For the same exact reason that India and Pakistan had to split apart, (i.e. otherwise there would have been civil war between Hindus and Muslims) there must be two, roughly co-equal states living side by side.

Most unrealistic people of ill will would disagree. (I think the number of people of ill will is smaller then evidenced by the media).

India-Pakistan is a good illustration.

If it bleeds, it leads.

;)

no governments based on religious discrimination !!!

Wasn't there some estimate that this wouldn't happen until 2020?

with Israels continuous land grabbing and the reluctance to leave the WB, the demographic predictions are accelerating.

shifting the fence, right? Not taking the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and Golan in the first place, right? They didn't have much of a choice at the time.

I don't want to debate the past. I'm talking about recent events for the most part. The refusal to quit the WB in particular.

The population for the Palestinians has been over-estimated. Here is a report about the most recent statistics:

Study shows Palestinian "baby boom" has been grossly overstated
By israelinsider staff January 16, 2005


A landmark demographic study presented last week at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Heritage Foundation in Washington contends that the Palestinian population has been tendentiously overstated by as much as 1.5 million and that dire predictions of the Jewish population majority west of the Jordan River being overtaken in the near future has no merit. On the contrary, the study indicates that a solid Jewish majority is expected for decades.

The study contends that today the Palestinian-Arab population of the West Bank (1.4 million) and Gaza (1 million) totals 2.4 million, rather than the 3.8 million reported by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). A Jewish majority of 60% has been sustained -- between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean -- since 1967. A solid 80% Jewish majority has been maintained within the "Green Line".

In recent years, the Conventional demographic wisdom (as expressed in March 2003 and Oct. 2004 publications by Prof. Arnon Sofer of Haifa University) has contended that: "In all of Western Israel Jews constitute 49% of the population; in another 18 years, this percentage is expected to amount to 40%...."

However, the new study points out that the PCBS figures and projections have been refuted every year since 1997. A systematic reliance on erroneous data produces exponential errors. PCBS figures have been at gross variance with those produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health (PMOH), by the Palestinian Election Commissions of 1996 and 2005, by Jordan (a twin demographic sister of the West Bank), by the Muslim and Arab blocks, by Third World countries, by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics and by the Trend Impact Analysis, which factors the relative demographic impact of unpredictable military, terrorist, economic, diplomatic and social developments.


http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/4819.htm#loginPostForm

Jews into Israel:

http://countrystudies.us/israel/22.htm

The numbers add up to around 700,000 - 800,000 any way you slice it. These numbers are similar to others I've uncovered in previous studies on the matter; actually they're on the low side. No reparations have been offered as far as I know. Departure was not an option in many, perhaps most, cases. I don't think one can realistically make the claim that a mere handful of Jewish people entered Israel from the Middle Eastern region. It is beyond laughable to suggest that they would be allowed to return to their homes in Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Iran -

As far as allowing people to go to homes vacated 48 years ago, I don't care what strict legality says - it simply isn't practical or even ethical. What about the people who live there NOW, generations later? What about the hardship on THEM? They weren't even there, perhaps weren't even born yet. Who will repay them, where will they live?

We have to be realistic about this, about the idea of Palestinians recovering property they left in 1948. No way, for example, would people forced to flee Russia to avoid war and pogrom be allowed to take back their farms after decades of absence - otherwise millions of people in the US, myself included, would be landowners in Russia or Germany or Poland, in China, Vietnam, France, Africa, around the globe. I would be a rich woman in Ireland - had a grandmother from there. My stepfather's people are from there. One grandparent on the father's side was a dispossessed German aristocrat. Maybe I could reclaim the family castle?

It doesn't make sense! And it argues against the dynamics of history, of time itself. No amount of legal wrangling can turn back the clock. Moreover, how, realistically, could one reintroduce people into Israel who would possibly like to destroy her?

Ethics, law, these are fine things. But right and wrong are concepts that only work if ALL aspects of a question are considered and even then ambiguities will persist. Ultimately, regardless of what did or did not happen in 1948, we have a situation NOW. And now we must deal with the challenges of creating a new state, in which the Palestinian people will make a homeland, hopefully with the goodwill of the people in surrounding states. That goodwill has NOT always been in evidence and personally I worry about what Josie mentions, the possibility of Lebanonization; more I worry about extremists outside making trouble for their own gains. This includes extreme rightwing Israelis and it also includes terrorists in Lebanon, Syria, and within the Palestinian territories. It most certainly includes Rapture freaks and rich, fundamentalist Saudis - many groups have an interest in keeping the I/P pot on the boil.

It is going to be a challenge. But the time is past when Israel can be expected to open her arms to people who left in 1948.

As far as the camps in Lebanon and elsewhere: WHY didn't people there, or throughout the Arab world - which is HUGE - if they were concerned about the plight of the Palestinians - if they were concerned about the plight of THOSE ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS - why didn't they offer them dignity, space, jobs and land? Why weren't reparations accepted and lives resumed?