Peloni: Facilitated emigration has always been the only real solution to resolve the Pal cleft which has been weaponized against Israel. Of course this weaponization was the very basis for the Arabs and collective West to refuse to consider any Pal emigration as viable. For Israel, it was the dependency on the Hashemites as some form of necessary ally to their survival which held them addicted to maintaining the Cleft in place, even though the Hashemites were neither necessary nor even a reliable ally to Israel. For these reasons, the Cleft has been maintained in place over the decades where the Pals have themselves become the victims of this cruel game, and whereby their well trained savagery brought about attack after attack on innocent Jews, and the response was consistently and inexplicably leveraged by Israel’s allies and enemies alike towards demands of greater and greater concessions from Israel without any beneficial effect. It is time to exercise the legitimate option of facilitated emigration to resolve this conflict, and a rational and efficient plan has in fact already been formulated and proposed towards this goal. It is the Jordan Option as described by Ted in his The Ultimate Alternate Israel-Palestine Solution (Jordan Option), Memo To Kushner, and other essays listed at the top of the main page of this site. We will hopefully see this plan come to fruition in the not too distant future. In fact, the description of the creation of a city for the Pals in Jordan, as mentioned by Trump, was one of the many elements which was described by Ted and Mudar in the Jordan Option.
Meanwhile, Egypt proposes to continue keeping the weaponized Cleft in place, as if doubling down on maintaining the existential threat against Israel were the ultimate goal, which of course, for Egypt and many others, it is.
An Israeli APC entering the Philadelphi corridor near Rafah during the Israel-Palestine warGalei Tsahal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In the wake of the horrific condition of the last three Israelis released by Hamas from captivity in Gaza, U.S. President Donald Trump has stirred the pot again. He and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have ratcheted up the pressure on the terrorists with Israel taking clear steps toward the resumption of military operations in the Gaza Strip should the president’s conditions not be met.
Egypt announced that it might suspend the Camp David Accords, which provide billions to Cairo in U.S. military aid and cooperation, and has already violated the accords by moving military capabilities close to the Philadelphi Corridor. Jordan is considering, well, considering.
Hamas fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip toward Israel Thursday. The rocket, as many have, fell back into Gaza, killing a 14-year-old Palestinian boy. This followed consultations with Egypt and Qatar, both of which are terrified that fighting will resume, in which Hamas announced that it would adhere to the ceasefire agreement it has previously announced it would suspend.
There is a lot of posturing going on. They’re all nervous—and they should be. The president’s position on the ceasefire, the hostages and thoughts about moving civilians for the reconstruction of the Strip threaten long-held and expensive-but-useless platitudes about Palestinians, Arab states, Israel and history.
The glib shorthand of a “two-state solution,” for example, evolved from the notion that the problem of Palestinian refugees dates from Israel’s acquisition of Gaza, and Judea and Samara in 1967. Thus, they say, getting Israel out of those territories and making “Palestine” there would fix matters.
Trump has made it clear that he isn’t falling for it.
In his 2020 “Peace to Prosperity” Mideast plan event with Netanyahu and three Arab ambassadors, which presaged the Abraham Accords, he said: “It is time for the Muslim world to fix the mistake it made in 1948, when it chose to attack instead of to recognize the new state of Israel. The Palestinians are the primary pawn in this adventurism, and it is time for this sad chapter in history to end.”
The chapter could use a review.
In 1948, Israel was attacked by the combined forces of Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen—plus the Holy War Army of local irregular forces and an army of mixed Arab volunteers called ALA. To get the Arab civilians—more than 600,000—out of the way, they pushed them into third countries, promising that when Israel was destroyed, they could come back.
There is irony in that as well as misery.
They lost the war they started, and not one Arab country made permanent citizens of the Arab refugees. The population grew, penned in camps and living off the international dole. They were oppressed, repressed and angry in every one of those places—and for decent reason. (For an in-depth understanding, see The War For Return by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz.)
The Arabs lost the wars of 1967, 1973, plus the terror wars in Lebanon, the “intifadas” and the rocket wars. Egypt used Gaza as a duty-free station for its military from 1948 to 1967. Jordan illegally annexed Judea and Samaria in 1950, renaming it the West Bank, and making temporary citizens of many refugees. But in 1988, after the bloody Black September War of 1970 and decades of Palestinian terror against Hashemite rule, King Hussein renounced Jordan’s claim and withdrew citizenship from the Palestinian residents there. The king was known to call Israel’s then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin “Jordan’s Security Minister for the West Bank.”
In later years, thousands of West Bank-origin Palestinians residing in Jordan proper had their citizenship revoked as well. According to Human Rights Watch, “Jordanian officials have defended the practice, as a means to counter any future Israeli plans to transfer the Palestinian population of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Jordan.”
In the wider region, Lebanon expelled thousands of Palestinians in 1982; Kuwait expelled 287,000 Palestinian supporters of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after the 1990 Gulf War; Syria kept them in camps, where they underwent what Amnesty International called a “surrender or starve” campaign in 2017. Iraq, also in 2017, revoked their refugee “rights.”
Trump’s announcement about Gaza reconstruction forces Arab states to face the fact that they never resettled Palestinians or wanted anyone else to do so either. It’s a bitter reminder that they have failed their Arab brothers since before Israel’s independence.
The good news is that not everyone is stuck.
Yousef al-Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to Washington, termed the U.S. position “difficult,” but said, “We’re all in a solution-seeking business, we just don’t know where it’s going to land yet. I don’t see an alternative to what’s being proposed. I really don’t.”
He added, “If someone has one, we’re happy to discuss it, we’re happy to explore it, but it hasn’t surfaced yet.”
No one knows where it is “going to land.” But “solution-seeking” beats ignoring more than 80 years of Arab rejection and oppression of Palestinians, as well as the Palestinian terror-seeking, perpetual bloodletting response.
For everyone.
Many of those Refugee camps, after 75 years, are no longer”Camps” they are more like settled towns and cities, with the appurtenances needed for each. Not all, but most., and have been for quite a few years. I recall seeing videos of several of them not different from any other towns.
Either the Videos were real or fakes -don’t know, but I saw them.
Their status of “refugee” should have ended with the first ones to run; the figure of 600-700,000 has been proven by Ettinger to be highly inflated, but the UN wild and very flawed assessments have carried the day.,
His research found a total of 328,000 refugees, mostly immigrants snd descendants of immigrants from about 14 countries, who arrived from the mid 19th cent, right up to 1947.. Particularly when they found that the UNWRA totally ignorant of the situation, with virtually NO Arab speakers egregiously handing out cards entitling to free food education, medical, homes etc, almost “no questions asked”. Many were getting multiple “refugee” cards, under several different names, Total anarchy prevailed with UNWRA wildly incompetent. .Many had moved not more than a mile or two from their homes.
Living in Canada, I found fromma Chinese friend, that they, on arrival in Canada used the same means, registering as e.g. “Mee Ling Po , then Ling Po M…and so on.etc.{ Like Tammany Hall “getting out the vote”}…
The ridiculous situation has only become outrageous over time, where we have “refugees” who went abroad, settled and prospered, with the 3-4th generation, still classed as “refugees”.
I vividly recall driving East, to an Arab town and entering a small store. It was piled high with sacks of staples , the sacks all stenciled UN (UNWRA, can’t now recall) freely for sale to any customer.
On emerging I was assailed with literally a horde of Arabs with “ration cards” for sale, bunches of them held in both hands between fingers…..Like ticket scalpers before a big game.”” I could see it was a very big business and there must have been hundreds of cards. with that one small group.
But I believe Ettinger rather than the corrupt UN- and equally coeeupsArab figures.
Still just talk talk………………
NEVER ACTION……………
Years and years of talk taquia talk taquia talk taquia
Eddie…..aka…..tzvi