Refugees as pawns

 

The Jewish Press recently dug out a talk by Abba Eban (a"h), Israel's Foreign Minister following Independence. Eban died November 17, 2002.

In the speech to the UN General Assembly's Special Political Committee on November 17, 1958 Eban points out that:

(a) the Arab refugees from the war against Israel are refugees mainly of their own choosing; they were told to get out of the way of the glorious invading Arab armies;

(b) Arab states, save for Jordan, have refused to absorb the refugees, preferring to keep them in camps the condition of which that might be called "cruel and inhuman" in some countries;

(c) other refugees from other political changes have been absorbed successfully by other nations, including hundreds of thousands of Jews from Islamic states accepted and integrated into Israel (albeit not without some prejudice by the Europeans already in the land).

With "Palestinian" Arabs clamoring for repatriation, it seems a good time to review Eban's reasoning against it.

"Repatriation would mean that hundreds of thousands of people would be introduced into a state whose existence they oppose, whose flag they despise and whose destruction they are resolved to seek. The refugees are all Arabs and the countries in which they find themselves are Arab countries. Yet the advocates of repatriation contend that these Arab refugees should be settled in a non-Arab country, in the only social and cultural environment alien to their background and tradition.

"The Arab refugees are to be uprooted from the soil of nations to which they are akin and loyal and placed in a state to which they are alien and hostile. Israel, whose sovereignty and safety are already assailed by the states surrounding her, is invited to add to her perils by the influx from hostile territories of masses of people steeped in the hatred of her existence. All this is to happen in a region where the Arab nations possess unlimited opportunities for resettling their kinsmen, and in which Israel has already contributed to a solution of the refugee problems of Asia and Africa by receiving 450,000 refugees from Arab lands among its immigrants.

"There are three other considerations which must be placed on the scale against repatriation.

"First, the word itself is not accurately used in this context. Transplanting an Arab refugee from an Arab land to a non-Arab land is not really "repatriation." "Patria" is not a mere geographical concept. Resettlement of a refugee in Israel would be not repatriation, but alienation from Arab society; a true repatriation of an Arab refugee would be a process which brought him into union with people who share his conditions of language and heritage, his impulses of national loyalty and cultural identity.

"Secondly, the validity of the "repatriation" concept is further undermined when we examine the structure of the refugee population. More than 50 percent of the Arab refugees are under 15 years of age. This means that at the time of Israel's establishment many of those, if born at all at that time, were under 5 years of age. We thus reach the striking fact that a majority of the refugee population can have no conscious memory of Israel at all.

"Thirdly, those who speak of repatriation to Israel might not always be aware of the measure of existing integration of refugees into countries of their present residence. In the Kingdom of Jordan, refugees have full citizenship and participate fully in the government of the country. They are entitled to vote and be elected to the Jordanian parliament. Indeed, many of them hold high rank in the government of the kingdom.

"Thousands of refugees are enrolled in the Jordanian army and its National Guard. It is, to say the least, eccentric to suggest that people who are citizens of another land and are actually or potentially enrolled in the armed forces of a country at war with Israel are simultaneously endowed with an optional right of Israel citizenship.

"Every condition which has ever contributed to a solution of refugee problems by integration is present in this case. With its expanse of territory, its great rivers, its resources of mineral wealth, and its accessibility to international aid, the Arab world is easily capable of absorbing an additional population, not only without danger to itself, but with actual reinforcement of its security and welfare."

The entire article appears at http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/43324.

Yohanon
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com