The Arab countries, except Jordan in a small way, do not wish to settle the Palestinians in their respective countries as not to set a precedent and give the Israelis an out for the refugees right of return as prescribed by International Law (for what that is worth at times).
First, Jordan did not accept the refugees "in a small way", len. They gave them citizenship, considering that the whole Mandate of Palestine (both east and west) was one country. 3 out of 4 million Jordanians today are Palestinian in origin.
Second, it's one thing to promote a policy of return. It's another to try to enforce it with a kind of moral blackmail by deliberately keeping the refugees penned up in squalid camps for fifty years.
Those Mizrhai Jews had lived in those Arab countries for centuries and prospered there. Some, with little doubt, left voluntarily to go to the State of Israel now that it existed.
Both the prosperity and the degree of voluntariness varied widely. For instance, no one has ever called the Yemeni Jews 'prosperous' -- they were oppressed and dirt poor. The one thing everyone remembers about them is that their boys could read Hebrew from any angle since ten boys would have to share one book in their little dirt-floored classrooms.
Some Mizrahi Jews did undoubtedly leave voluntarily -- and the Zionists wanted them -- but you would do better to argue this case for Egypt, where the community diminished gradually, than Iraq, where the whole community ran for their lives, leaving all their property behind, the minute the government allowed them to go. Thus ended a Jewish community of 120,000, whose roots stretched back 2500 years to the Babylonian Captivity.
Did you know that in the 1950's Iraq suffered from underpopulation, and started a program to advertise for immigrants? All Arabs were invited -- with one exception. Arab refugees from Palestine were not permitted to join the program.
BTW, len, Iraq is hundreds of miles away from Palestine. It's one thing to support Palestinian Arabs in their struggle against Zionism, but why do you think that Iraq should be allowed a veto over what happens in Palestine? Why should the creation of Israel -- at the time, tiny and completely non-threatening -- seem so intolerable to them, and why should you agree with them? |
