Ze’ev Schiff writes this in HaAretz today about expectations in the Israeli security forces:
- … The security forces have no knowledge of any plans by [Israeli] extremists to use weapons, but they believe it is possible that such an incident could occur due to an impulsive decision or spontaneous response to a situation.
Regarding the Palestinians, the calculations are different. Palestinian Authority officials have told the Americans and Israelis they have convinced Hamas not to open fire during the disengagement, and the PA is committed to deploying forces on the ground to back them up. So far, the PA has enlisted about 1,500 troops, including police officers (not 5,000, as the authority’s interior minister, Nasser Yusuf, has promised), some of whom are on leave at any given time…
The assumption is that Hamas, the Palestinians’ leading and largest terror organization, will avoid firing while Israeli citizens are being evacuated from the Gaza Strip. But as soon as Israel Defense Forces troops are the only ones left in the area – soldiers are expected to remain in the Gaza Strip for about a month after civilian evacuations are completed to demolish the abandoned homes and other structures – the group is expected to change its policy. Hamas plans on using arms against the IDF to emphasize that Israel is withdrawing from Gaza under fire, and underline the Palestinian victory achieved by Hamas.
Israel’s policy as outlined by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is to suspend the disengagement if civilians are fired upon during the evacuation and allow the army to respond. The question is whether this policy also applies to the use of arms against the IDF once the civilians have been removed.
Interesting. However, I’m not sure I agree with the assessment that once the settlers are gone Hamas will start firing against the remaining IDF troops. Firstly, the Israeli security forces have very often misread Hamas in the past, so let’s not take their word as Torah this time round?
Secondly, Hamas seems to be positioning itself for broad political influence in Gaza after the IDF withdrawal… getting into a firefight with the IDF could well be judged as likely to undermine that goal.
(But I still do worry that– once the settlers are all gone– the IDF might be tempted to launch its own round of punitive actions inside Gaza, anyway? Remember: there is no third-party monitoring force present in Gaza that could necessarily record which side started or escalated any incident.)
Thirdly, regarding Israelis present inside occupied Palestine, I’m not sure that Hamas makes much of an operational distinction between civilians (i.e. settlers) and security-force personnel: for them, it’s not that military operations against one of those groups is more or less legitimate than against another.
But anyway, Schiff’s piece is interesting because he is, as always, a savvy and very well-informed observer of the thinking of the Israeli security chiefs.
For a savvy and very well-informed Israeli view of Palestinian thinking, it’s always worth reading HaAretz’s Danny Rubinstein. He writes today:
- According to the UNRWA figures, there are more than 4 million descendants of refugees registered at its institutions. The Palestinians say that another 1.5 million refugees are not registered with UNRWA, so that their total number comes to 5.5 million. As is known, the largest concentration of refugees is in the Gaza Strip, about 950,000 (out of about 1.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip). About half a million of the Gaza refugees live in UNRWA camps, from Jabalya in the north (105,000 people) to Rafah in the south (91,000).
It is important to note these figures because the experience of loss is still burning in these refugees’ bones. And not just theirs. The Palestinian people as a whole is living the uprooting suffered by about half of its members. In every corner of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, paintings and sculptures in the shape of keys can be found. A statue of a woman carrying a large key in her hand stands, for example, in the center of the plaza near the entrance to the home of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in Ramallah.
In this context it was possible to see the outburst of anger among Palestinians who were asked whether they didn’t have even a little bit of sympathy for the Jewish settlers in Gush Katif and northern Samaria (West Bank) who are losing their homes. No. They don’t have any sympathy or any understanding. All of the requests for forgiveness from the settlers, like that of President Moshe Katsav, and all the sympathy with their terrible pain and their distress from Israeli politicians look to Palestinians like egotism and hypocrisy.
In the context of what has been happening in Gaza recently, an Israeli observer can also see it this way. During the course of the bloody conflicts of recent years, approximately 30,000 inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have been uprooted from their homes. Entire Palestinian neighborhoods along the Philadelphi route in Rafah, at the edges of the Khan Yunis refugee camp, along the route to Netzarim and in the north on the edges of Beit Hanun have been turned into heaps of ruins by the Israel Defense Forces. The reason was an Israeli security need.
Thousands of Palestinian refugees, with only a few days’ warning, and in some cases only a few hours, have had to evacuate their homes, which were demolished, and their fields and orchards, which have been razed. In at least two cases that were publicized, an Israeli bulldozer demolished a house with its tenants inside, two old people to whom no one had paid any attention, and they were buried under the ruins.
On a number of occasions, UNRWA workers have taken Israeli and foreign journalists to see the piles of ruins and the temporary accommodations (tents) they prepared for these families. On this day when the families of the Israeli settlers in Gaza are receiving the notifications about losing their homes, it is permissible to remember their neighbors’ loss as well.
Nicely put, Danny. Thanks for holding up a lamp of humanity to the world.
What about the Jewish refugees thrown out of all the Arab countries in 1948? Any sympathy for them, Helena? Note how these Jews were resettled immediately and not left by their co-relgionists to fester for three generations like you know who.
Funny how the “Palestinians” are the only refugees in the world whose offspring are counted as refugees. Interesting that they’re the only refugees that have a UN organization (UNRWA) solely devoted to them. Israel should allow the true Palestinian refugees, but not their offspring (who after all, aren’t refugees), to return to Israel to live out their retirement years, notwithstanding the fact that they left on the mistaken belief that their Arab bretheren would drive the Jews into the sea in an illegal war of genocidal agression.
And finally, Helena, you’ve misread Israel’s intentions so often we won’t take your word as Koran this time around.
Shalom,
Mike
Mike, well stated. It is interesting to read the “1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” (http://www.ufsia.ac.be/~dvanheul/migration/genconv.html) to get an idea of what the situation and legal status is for every other refugee in the world. The Palestinians are treated differently simply due to the technicality of UNRWA having predated the convention. Perhaps it’s time for this profligate and corrupt organization to be disbanded, and for the normal rules to apply.
You are also quite correct that the “Torah” reference is rather insulting (even for a non-religious Jews such as myself).
Mike, Shalom–
Funny how the “Palestinians” are the only refugees in the world whose offspring are counted as refugees.
They’re not, as I’ve explained on an earlier comment. ALL refugees have their offspring inherit their status until it’s resolved. I’m surprised that, given your tone of such certitide, you did not know this?
Interesting that they’re the only refugees that have a UN organization (UNRWA) solely devoted to them
Actually, at the beginning, it wasn’t– it was a branch of UNRRA, which did a lot of great relief work in Europe during that same period. The UNHCR wasn’t established till a few years later and has a slightly different (because more politically developed) mandate. For example, one of UNHCR’s tasks is to promote and aid repatriation.
JES:
Can you back up your accusation that UNRWA is “profligate and corrput” with any evidence at all? I have followed its doing for many years and have never heard any credible reports about such things, though in the US and Israel plenty of totally ill-informed and libellous smears have been expressed against it, as against all other parts of the UN.
If you can’t back up your accusation with one well documented report of profligacy or corruption, then please apologize.
Mike, you guys need to learn a new song. The old ones stopped being interesting a long time ago.
“Note how these Jews were resettled immediately and not left by their co-relgionists to fester for three generations like you know who.”
Note that these Jews were “resettled” in a country whose raison d’etre was explicity the “ingathering” of the Jews of the world, and that needed a large influx of Jews to justify its existence. Note also that the “flight” of many of those Jews was instigated and orchestrated not by the Arab countries, but by Israelis.
Note that there was no country whose raison d’etre – or whose responsibility – was to accommodate a sudden influx of nearly a million refugees, and that Arab countries were hardly in a position to accommodate or absorb huge numbers of penniless, desperate, destitute refugees.
Note that responsibility for the refugess lies with those who intentionally forced them out of their homes and land and prevented their return, not with the surrounding countries most of whom were barely able to provide for their own citizenry.
“they left on the mistaken belief that their Arab bretheren would drive the Jews into the sea in an illegal war of genocidal agression.”
You also need to update your propaganda collection. This pile of processed bull food was thoroughly debunked a couple of decades ago at least.
Well Helena, for starters, here’s a quote from the online Wikipedia:
“Palestinian refugees from 1948 and their descendants do not come under the 1951 convention or UNHCR, but under the earlier UNRWA agency. As such they are the only refugee population legally defined to include descendants of refugees, although many other refugee populations (notably the Biharis) have remained in refugee camps for more than a generation, making their children effectively if not legally refugees”
I also suggest that you read the previously cited convention which clearly states that refugee status is clearly not passed on to another generation.
Proof that UNRWA is profligate and corrupt? Well, the fact that they employ members of a terrorist organization, and that, in fact, this organization has even been elected as the labor representative of UNRWA employees and that they openly use employment at UNRWA as a means of recruitment is, I would say, indication of profligacy and corruption.
ma’a salami.
Shirin,
I suggest you also learn a less worn out tune.
Sure, Israel did expell some of the refugees. No one in Israel denies that today. But there is clear evidence that some left at the behest of the AHC and others out of fear (perhaps that the Jews would do to them what their brethern intended to do to the Jews?)
Efraim Karsh has clearly documented cases, particularly in Haifa, where what you claim (according to your own propaganistic “tune”) simply did not happen.
You also neglect the fact that Israel, following the armistice repatriated some 80,000 of those refugees, despite the fact that the Israeli economy at the time was not in much better shape than those of the surrounding countries, and that Israel was in the process of absorbing, as you say, nearly a million holocaust survivers and a similar number of refugees from Arab countries. (Yes, Shirin, most were refugees. Israel did not start the farhud in Iraq in 1941. Amin al-Husayni, the Palestinian head of the AHC indicted for war crimes did. Israel did not foster years of discrimination and humiliation in the Yemen.)
As to the absorptive capabilities of the Arab countries, well perhaps the Arab League should have thought of than in May 1948.
JES, I’, still waiting for one or more, “well documented report of profligacy or corruption” in UNRWA. Your presentation of a bunch of quite unattributed and possibly libelous accusations does not fit the bill.
Helena,
If it’s libelous, then sue me!
Why don’t you go look up some evidence. It is quite public information that Hamas has been the representative of UNRWA employees for some time now, and that they hold sway over jobs with the agency. Further, it has been well documented that Hamas and other combatants have used UNRWA institutions as firing positions and UNRWA vehicles under UN flags to transport combatatants and equipment. (And please spare me the “stretcher” story. There was ample additional footage that shows otherwise.) During all of this, the feckless former head of the agency, Peter Hansen, defended these combatants and even appeared on television immediately repeating PA claims that there had been a “massacre” of “hundreds” of civilians in Jenin. (You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding documentation of this. It was on all the major networks.)
Perhaps it is time that this agency – today the largest single employer in the Palestinian territories of Palestinians – should be disbanded and the Palestinian refugees should begin living under the same rules as all other refugees in the world. Maybe then the PA would start investing the billions (that’s right BILLIONS) it has received from the world community in economic infrastructure and welfare of its own people instead of on the salaries of terrorists and weapons of aggression.
You are presumably a pacifict. Why not start acting like one. (But then I could be mistaken. Richard Nixon was a Quaker too!)
The expulsion of Jews by Arab states in protest against the division of Palestine was egregious and deserves resolution. The Palestinians, however, are not responsible for those actions, and those actions have nothing to do with Israel oppression of Palestinians.
People who leave voluntarily do not apply for refugee status. Just ask any refugee how much they like the status and you will come to understand why. It is therefore a very safe bet that all but a tiny, tiny fraction of the Palestinians on the UNRWA lists are legit.
As for the eligibility of the children of original refugees, I can only say that it is a good thing that they are eligible, even if that is anomalous, given that no other country besides Israel has forced refugees to live as refugees shorn of their property for so many generations! How about that Israel!? Talk about taking exceptional liberties!!
What the hell justification is there for that??
Charles,
There are millions of former refugees in the world who have not been repatriated, and who probably never will be repatriated to their original homes. I would venture to guess that the majority of refugees have not been repatriated, and that they never will be, and this is precisely the reason that the “right of return” of Palestinians will never come to pass. It is simply too dangerous a precendent for numerous countries such as, for example: India, Pakistan, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and large parts of Africa.