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Palestinians: Eight Million Refugees Must Return to Israel
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
February 21, 2014 at 5:00 am
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Many Palestinians said that Abbas was
not authorized to make any concessions or speak on behalf of the refugees.
"Our refugees will not accept
any alternative to their right to return to their homeland and we do not care
what Abbas's position is." — Ali Huwaidi, expert on Palestinian affairs.
The reactions to Abbas's statements
concerning the issue of refugees show that any agreement that Abbas reaches
with Israel under U.S. pressure will not signal the end of the conflict.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is facing criticism from
Palestinian refugees for saying that he does not want to "flood"
Israel with millions of refugees.Abbas made his statement during a meeting in his Ramallah office earlier this week with dozens of Israeli students – the first direct encounter of its kind between the Palestinian Authority president and Israeli youths. Abbas has also come under criticism for breaking a ban by Palestinian activists on meetings with Israelis. The ban has been imposed over the past few years by "anti-normalization" activists who oppose such meetings between Israelis and Palestinians.
Abbas told the Israeli students that the claim that he was seeking to "flood" Israel with five million refugees was nonsense. "There is propaganda saying that Abu Mazen [Abbas] wants the return of five million refugees to destroy the state of Israel," he said. "This is not true at all. All what we said was: Let's place the issue of the refugees on the table because it's a sensitive case which needs to be solved in order to end the conflict and so that the refugees would be satisfied with a peace agreement. But we are not seeking to drown Israel with millions in order to change its demography. This is nonsense." Representatives of Palestinian refugees rushed to issue condemnations of Abbas, accusing him of relinquishing the "right of return" of millions of Palestinians to their former villages and towns inside Israel. In Lebanon, where some 450,000 Palestinians live in several refugee camps and are exposed to Apartheid Laws that deny them access to many jobs and economic, health and educations services, Abbas's comments were received with deep resentment. During an emergency meeting in one of the refugee camps in Lebanon, Abbas was accused of "abandoning the right of return and harming Palestinian rights." The refugees said they were particularly enraged over the fact that protest letters they sent to the Palestinian Authority embassy in Beirut were totally ignored. Dr. Esam Udwan, an expert on refugee affairs, was quoted as saying that "Abbas's statements have caused damage to Palestinian rights." Accusing Abbas of providing Israel with concessions in return for nothing, Udwan said, "These remarks reflect Abbas's conviction that the issue of the refugees is ineffective and they have no right to return because this would mean drowning Israel. This is completely unacceptable. Who said that there are only five million refugees? The real number is eight million. Abbas mentioned the five million who are registered with UNRWA and benefit from its services. But there are millions of others who do not receive services from UNRWA and are not registered with it. This does not mean that they should be denied the right of return." Ali Huwaidi, another expert on refugee affairs, also lashed out at Abbas: "Regardless of Abbas's statements, the right of return is guaranteed, individually and collectively, through UN resolutions. The refugees will not give up their right no matter where they are living today. Abbas is worried about flooding Israel with five million refugees while Israel has brought one million people from the former Soviet Union and no one complained about this. Our refugees will not accept any alternative to their right to return to their homeland and we do not care what Abbas's position is." Many Palestinians said that Abbas was not authorized to make any concessions or speak on behalf of the refugees. This was not the first time that Abbas had come under attack on the issue of the refugees. Last year, Abbas told an Israeli TV station that he personally does not want to return to his former hometown of Safed in northern Israel. That comment too was seen by his critics as a sign that he was wiling to "surrender" the "right of return" for millions of refugees. Referring to Abbas's stance on the refugees, the Palestinian online newspaper Rai al Youm wrote, "President Abbas has given up his personal right to return to his hometown of Safed. He said he does not want to return to his home and will live in Ramallah. This concession, in our view, is a big sin because President Abbas should set an example for his people and not make concessions on their rights. We call upon President Abbas to stop speaking about the issue of the refugees because they haven't authorized him to make any concessions on their right of return." The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also joined the chorus of Abbas critics. The group said in a statement that Abbas's comment about the refugees was a "dangerous concession" which reflected only his personal position. "The Palestinians are not bound by these statements," the PFLP said. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups have also strongly condemned Abbas's statements as "dangerous," adding that he does not have the authority to speak on behalf of all refugees. The groups also attacked Abbas for holding "warm" meetings with the Israeli "enemy." The reactions to Abbas's statements concerning the issue of the refugees show that any agreement that Abbas reaches with Israel under U.S. pressure will not signal the end of the conflict with Israel. They also show that millions of Palestinians continue to believe that one day they will be allowed to move to Israel, regardless of whether a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem or not.
Related Topics: Khaled Abu
Toameh
Muslims Demand "Right of Return" to Spain
by Soeren Kern
February 21, 2014 at 12:15 am
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friends to like this.
Observers say that by granting
citizenship to all descendants of expelled Muslims, Spain, virtually
overnight, would end up with the largest Muslim population in the European
Union.
"Is Spain aware of what might be
assumed when it makes peace with some but not with others? Is Spain aware of
what this decision [not to include Muslims in the return] could cost?... Does
Spain have alternatives to the foreign investment from Muslims?" — Ahmed
Bensalh, Morisco-Moroccan journalist.
"Persecution of Jews was just
that, while what happened with the Arabs was part of a conflict. There is no
basis for comparison." — Jose Ribeiro e Castro, Portuguese lawmaker who
drafted Portuguese law of return.
Muslim groups are demanding Spanish citizenship for potentially millions
of descendants of Muslims who were expelled from Spain during the Middle
Ages.The growing clamor for "historical justice" comes after the recent approval of a law that would grant Spanish citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Muslim supporters say they are entitled to the same rights and privileges as Jews because both groups were expelled from Spain under similar historical circumstances. But historians point out that the Jewish presence in Spain predates the arrival of Christianity in the country and that their expulsion was a matter of bigotry. By contrast, the Muslims in Spain were colonial occupiers who called the territory Al-Andalus and imposed Arabic as the official language. Historians say their expulsion was a matter of decolonization.
Much of the Iberian Peninsula was occupied by Muslim conquerors known as the Moors from 711 until 1492, when the Moorish Kingdom of Granada surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon), in what is known as the Christian Reconquest. But the final Muslim expulsion from Granada did not take place until over a century later, beginning in 1609, when King Philip III decreed the expulsion of the Moriscos. The Moriscos—Moors who decided to convert to Catholicism after the Reconquest rather than leave Spain—were suspected of being nominal Catholics who continued to practice Islam in secret. From 1609 through 1614, the Spanish monarchy forced an estimated 350,000 Moriscos to leave Spain for Muslim North Africa. Today, up to five million descendants of the Moriscos are living in Morocco alone; there are millions more living in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Tunisia and Turkey. In a recent essay published by the Morocco-based newspaper Correo Diplomático, the Morisco-Moroccan journalist Ahmed Bensalh wrote that the "decision to grant Spanish citizenship to the grandchildren of the Hebrews in Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while ignoring the Moriscos, the grandsons of the Muslims, is without doubt, flagrant segregation and unquestionable discrimination, as both communities suffered equally in Spain at that time. The decision could also be considered by the international community to be an historic act of absolute immorality and injustice...This decision is absolutely disgraceful and dishonorable." Bensalh then went on to threaten Spain: "Is Spain aware of what might be assumed when it makes peace with some and not with others? Is Spain aware of what this decision could cost? Has Spain considered that it could jeopardize the massive investments that Muslims have made on its territory? Does Spain have alternatives to the foreign investment from Muslims if they ever decide to move that capital to other destinations due to the discrimination against Muslims?" Bensalh is one of many Muslim journalists, historians and academics who are demanding that Spain treat Moriscos the same way it treats Sephardic Jews. Consider Jamal Bin Ammar al-Ahmar, an "Andalus-Algerian" university professor at the Ferhat Abbas University in Sétif in northeastern Algeria. Al-Ahmar has been engaged in a six-year campaign to persuade Spanish King Juan Carlos to identify and condemn those who expelled the Muslims from Al-Andalus in the fifteenth century. Al-Ahmar is also demanding that millions of descendants of the Moriscos expelled from Spain be allowed to return there. In a letter addressed to the Spanish monarch, Al-Ahmar calls for a "full legal and historical investigation of the war crimes that were perpetrated on the Muslim population of Andalusia by the French, English, European and papal crusaders, whose victims were our poor miserable people, after the collapse of Islamic rule in Andalusia." The letter speaks of "the injustice inflicted on the Muslim population of Andalusia who are still suffering in the diaspora in exile since 1492." Al-Ahmar wants the Spanish monarch to apologize "on behalf of his ancestors" and to assume "responsibility for the consequences" this would entail. He says it is necessary "to identify criminals, to convict retroactively, while at the same time to identify and compensate victims for their calamities and restore their titles." This process would culminate with "a decree that allows immigrants to return to their homes in Andalusia, and grant them full citizenship rights and restoration of all their properties." The Moroccan historian Hasan Aourid believes Spain has a policy of "double standards" vis-à-vis the Moriscos. Aourid—who recently wrote a novel, entitled "The Moriscos," to "remember the tragedy of those expelled from Al-Andalus"—told an audience at the Casablanca International Book Fair that Spain cannot become "reconciled with itself without recognizing its Moorish dimension" and asked if "the suffering was lower for Muslims than for Jews." The Association for the Historical Legacy of Al-Andalus, a group dedicated to reviving the memory of the Muslim presence in Spain, says the Spanish government should treat Muslims and Jews the same way. By failing to offer Spanish citizenship to both groups, Muslims would become victims of "selective racism," said the president of the association, Bayib Loubaris. Spain is unlikely to concede to these demands anytime soon. While few deny there are potentially millions of descendants of Moriscos living in North Africa today, the challenge lies in reconstructing reliable genealogies to determine legitimate heirs. The issue of who is a Morisco and who is not will be a topic for discussion at a major international conference—"The Descendants of the Andalusian Moriscos in Morocco, Spain and Portugal"—to be held in Tangier from April 4-6, 2014. But even if such genealogies could be compiled, calls to naturalize the descendants of expelled Muslims are sure to be opposed for another reason: the fact that the expulsion of the Muslims was part of a war to end the occupation of Spain by North African invaders. Jose Ribeiro e Castro, a Portuguese lawmaker who drafted Portugal's law of return for Sephardic Jews, puts it this way: "Persecution of Jews was just that, while what happened with the Arabs was part of a conflict. There is no basis for comparison." Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Related Topics: Spain
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