Murphy’s Law: No Good Deed Goes Unexploited
11th May 2016
Among the many minority groups to suffer heavy losses in the Syrian civil war are the Palestinians. Nearly one percent of the Syrian Palestinians have been killed so far, most of them civilians. Overall nearly two percent of all Syrians have died in the war so far. What is odd about this is that the Syrian Palestinians are not citizens of Syria but long-term refugees. Many of these Palestinian families have been in Syria since the 1950s. This is the result of an odd aspect of UN rules concerning refugees that only applies to Palestinians. This began in 1949 when Arab nations refused to accept and absorb Moslems who fled (mostly) from what is now Israel on the promise of the Arab nations would soon mobilize sufficient military strength to destroy Israel, drive the Jews out and allow the refugees to return home. That never happened and it was quickly recognized that there was a serious refugee problem. The UN established a program to take care of these refugees but in a very unusual move the 750,000 original Palestinian refugees were allowed to pass on their refugee status to their children. No other refugee group was allowed to do that by the UN. About the same number of Jews were driven out of Moslem countries after 1948 and they were all accepted and absorbed by other nations, mainly Israel and the U.S. Since 1947 the number of “Palestinian refugees” has grown to five million and Arab states continue to refuse to absorb them. A nasty side effect of this UN policy was to make Palestinian refugees unwelcome and untrusted in the countries they did settle in. Many Moslem nations have had serious problems in the past with Moslem refugees that were given sanctuary, but not citizenship.