Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at
Lewis writes that the UN’s inconsistent handling of the refugees resulting from the 1948 war is a large part of the problem in the
At the end of the initial struggle in
Palestine, part of the country was under the rule of the newly created Jewish state, part under the rule of neighboring Arab governments. A significant number of Arabs remained in the territories under Jewish rule.
It was taken then as axiomatic, and has never been challenged since, that no Jews could remain in the areas of Palestine under Arab rule, so that as well as Arab refugees from the Jewish-controlled areas, there were Jewish refugees from the Arab-controlled areas of mandatory Palestine, not just settlers, but old, established groups, notably the ancient Jewish community in East Jerusalem, which was totally evicted and its monuments desecrated or destroyed. . . .
[There were also] Jewish refugees . . . from Arab countries, where the Jewish communities either fled or were driven out, in numbers roughly equal to those of the Arab refugees from
Israel. . .
For Arab refugees in
Palestine, very elaborate arrangements were made and very extensive financing provided. This contrasts not only with the treatment of Jews from Arab countries, but with the treatment of all the other refugees at the time.
The partition of
Palestine in 1948 was a trivial affair compared with the partition of India in the previous year, which resulted in millions of refugees — Hindus who fled or were driven from Pakistan into India, and Muslims who fled or were driven from India into Pakistan. This occurred entirely without any help from the United Nations, and perhaps for that reason the refugees were all resettled.
One could go back a little further and talk about the millions of refugees in Central and Eastern Europe — Poles fleeing from the Eastern Polish areas annexed to the Soviet Union and Germans fleeing from the East German areas annexed to Poland. Millions of them, of both nationalities, were left entirely to their own people and their own resources.
Only the Palestinians have had an entire UN agency for nearly 60 years, which has resettled none of them but instead kept them festering in camps. Nearly 60 years after all the refugee groups from World War II were resettled, as well as all the Jewish refugees from the numerous Arab countries that expelled them, the Palestinian refugees remain completely — and intentionally — unsettled by both the UN and the Arab countries that controlled the West Bank in 1948.
(Hat tip: Mal, who also forwarded this interesting 2004 critique of Bernard Lewis).