Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: An Arab-Made Misery

International donors pledged almost $4.5 billion in aid for Gaza
earlier this month. It has been very painful for me to witness over
the past few years the deteriorating humanitarian situation in that
narrow strip where I lived as a child in the 1950s.
The media tend to attribute Gaza’s decline solely to Israeli military
and economic actions against Hamas. But such a myopic analysis ignores
the problem’s root cause: 60 years of Arab policy aimed at cementing
the Palestinian people’s status as stateless refugees in order to use
their suffering as a weapon against Israel.
As a child in Gaza in the 1950s, I experienced the early results of
this policy. Egypt, which then controlled the territory, conducted
guerrilla-style operations against Israel from Gaza. My father
commanded these operations, carried out by Palestinian fedayeen,
Arabic for “self-sacrifice.” Back then, Gaza was already the front
line of the Arab jihad against Israel. My father was assassinated by
Israeli forces in 1956.
It was in those years that the Arab League started its Palestinian
refugee policy. Arab countries implemented special laws designed to
make it impossible to integrate the Palestinian refugees from the 1948
Arab war against Israel. Even descendants of Palestinian refugees who
are born in another Arab country and live there their entire lives can
never gain that country’s passport. Even if they marry a citizen of an
Arab country, they cannot become citizens of their spouse’s country.
They must remain “Palestinian” even though they may have never set
foot in the West Bank or Gaza.
This policy of forcing a Palestinian identity on these people for
eternity and condemning them to a miserable life in a refugee camp was
designed to perpetuate and exacerbate the Palestinian refugee crisis.
So was the Arab policy of overpopulating Gaza. The United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, whose
main political support comes from Arab countries, encourages high
birth rates by rewarding families with many children. Yasser Arafat
said the Palestinian woman’s womb was his best weapon.
Arab countries always push for classifying as many Palestinians as
possible as “refugees.” As a result, about one-third of the
Palestinians in Gaza still live in refugee camps. For 60 years,
Palestinians have been used and abused by Arab regimes and Palestinian
terrorists in their fight against Israel.
Now it is Hamas, an Islamist terror organization supported by Iran,
which is using and abusing Palestinians for this purpose. While Hamas
leaders hid in the well-stocked bunkers and tunnels they prepared
before they provoked Israel into attacking them, Palestinian civilians
were exposed and caught in the deadly crossfire between Hamas and
Israeli soldiers.
As a result of 60 years of this Arab policy, Gaza has become a prison
camp for 1.5 million Palestinians. Both Israel and Egypt are fearful
of terrorist infiltration from Gaza — all the more so since Hamas took
over — and have always maintained tight controls over their borders
with Gaza. The Palestinians continue to endure hardships because Gaza
continues to serve as the launching pad for terror attacks against
Israeli citizens. Those attacks come in the form of Hamas missiles
that indiscriminately target Israeli kindergartens, homes and
businesses.
And Hamas continued these attacks more than two years after Israel
withdrew from Gaza in the hope that this step would begin the process
of building a Palestinian state, eventually leading to a peaceful, two-
state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was no
“cycle of violence” then, no justification for anything other than
peace and prosperity. But instead, Hamas chose Islamic jihad. Gazans’
and Israelis’ hopes have been met with misery for Palestinians and
missiles for Israelis.
Hamas, an Iran proxy, has become a danger not only to Israel, but also
to Palestinians as well as to neighboring Arab states, who fear the
spread of radical Islam could destabilize their countries.
Arabs claim they love the Palestinian people, but they seem more
interested in sacrificing them. If they really loved their Palestinian
brethren, they’d pressure Hamas to stop firing missiles at Israel. In
the longer term, the Arab world must end the Palestinians’ refugee
status and thereby their desire to harm Israel. It’s time for the 22
Arab countries to open their borders and absorb the Palestinians of
Gaza who wish to start a new life. It is time for the Arab world to
truly help the Palestinians, not use them.
Mrs. Darwish, who grew up in Gaza City and Cairo, is the author, most
recently, of “Cruel and Usual Punishment,” (Thomas Nelson, 2009).
http://rehovnahum.tumblr.com/post/87940290/an-arab-made-misery

toh, e vergognati:
http://www.thelancet.com/series/health-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory