Another day, another anti-Israel canard.
[See Update below, Wednesday, 4.14]
The latest one claims that new Israeli regulations could lead to the "deportation of thousands of West Bank Palestinians." The Arab League is apoplectic. Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed that it's a step by Israel toward "ethnic cleansing" of the West Bank. But, those tents in the picture do not house Palestinians forced out of the West Bank. Continue reading to see what Arab country expelled them.
Actually, the new Israeli regulation updates laws that have been in place in Judea and Samaria for years. Illegal residents may be deported -- not an unheard of concept. Illegal immigrants are deported from countries all over the world.
According to the Israeli Army, which has jurisdiction in the West Bank, "The purpose of the order which was signed by the ... central command and which is scheduled to become effective on April 14th is the extradition of those residing illegally in Judea and Samaria. This is a preexisting order which has no change with regard to who is illegal or illegal. This is a correction to ensure judicial oversight of the extradition process." [Emphasis added. Can it be that the change actually serves to provide more legal rights to the illegal resident?]
Such regulations actually serve the Palestinian Authority purposes, as well, by allowing for deportation of Hamas-supporters from Gaza or foreign anarchist rabble-rousers who travel from one anti-Israel hotspot to the next. The Palestinian Ma'an news agency carries a headline today: "Hamas: PA responsible for Israeli expulsion orders."
[Update, 4.14.10: The Jerusalem Post provides more information today:
“The purpose of the [amended] orders is to IMPROVE [capital letters in the original] the current situation rather than worsen it,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor wrote. “Pursuant to the recommendations of the High Court, a joint judicial committee of Jewish and Arab judges will deliberate on each case of potential repatriation. The committee will make a decision within eight days of having a case brought before it.”
Maj. Peter Lerner, IDF Central Command spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post that the only change created by the new orders was the establishment of a clear legal procedure that gave the subject of the order the chance to appeal before a tribunal instead of, as until now, the military commander who issued the order. Lerner said that over the past three years, there had been only 30-60 expulsions per year. "There will not be an increase in the volume as a result of the new orders,” he added.]
But, meanwhile, what happens to Palestinians in the Arab world?In recent years, Jordan began a process of revoking Jordanian citizenship from Palestinians. In a February 2010 report, Human Rights Watch said that 2,700 people in Jordan had their citizenship revoked from 2004 to 2008, and that at least another 200,000 remained vulnerable, largely those who moved abroad at some point in search of work.
According to the New York Times, the Jordanian government "says it is trying to help [sic] by requiring Jordanians of Palestinian descent who fled the West Bank or Jerusalem after the war in 1967 to keep their Israeli documents valid."
The 60-page HRW report, "Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality", details "the arbitrary manner, with no clear basis in law, in which Jordan deprives its citizens who were originally from the West Bank of their nationality, thereby denying them basic citizenship rights such as access to education and health care."
In Iraq, tens of thousands of Palestinians, once the favorites of Saddam Hussein, now find themselves living in squalor or endangered by sectarian violence. Some 400,000 Palestinians were evicted from Kuwait after the 1990 Gulf War and many settled in Iraq. Some 3,000 Palestinians are stuck in make-shift camps along the Iraqi-Syrian border, where the picture above was taken. Hundreds of Palestinians are being resettled by the UNHCR (unlike UNRWA, the UNHCR resettles refugees and doesn't perpetuate their status and squalor for three or four generations) in Romania, Scandinavia, Chile and the United States.
Human Rights Watch described the Iraqi's terrible plight several years ago: "The Iraqi government bears considerable responsibility for the plight of the country's Palestinians. Elements of the Ministry of Interior have been implicated in the arbitrary detention, torture, killing, and 'disappearance' of Palestinians. Despite their status as refugees, Iraqi Palestinians have been subjected to new and extremely burdensome registration requirements, providing a venue for bureaucratic hostility."
So Arab countries and the Arab League will continue to bray at Israel in order to mask the cries of Palestinians in their own back yards. The Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas was right in his statement to the Washington Post last year: "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." Sphere: Related Content
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