Khalil Shikaki Quotes
The Arab countries … did little or nothing about the terrible refugee suffering of more than 50 years.
Most Arabs blamed only the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel and ignored what they did or did not do since 1949.
Khalil Shikaki, Director, Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Quoted in El-Ahram, Egypt, August 14-20, 2003
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
When the United Nations partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and a Palestinian State the Arab Countries all jointly attacked the fledgling Jewish State of Israel. Despite the Israeli’s being overwhelmingly out numbered in man and weapons, they beat back the invaders. However while many Arabs stayed on their Israeli land and some helped the Jews defend against the Arab Armies some abandoned their homes and land and went to neighboring Arab Counties. This is what they had been asked to do by the Arab governments who wanted to be able to attack communities without worrying about killing Arabs. To spur the evacuation the spread false propaganda about Israeli atrocities and frightened them into leaving. As a motivation to leave they were told that they could move into the Jewish lands and property when the Jews had been driven out. To make matters worse, some Israeli radicals repeated the lies to induce the Arabs to abandon their lands. In at least one case Arabs who stayed were subjected to violence. After the defeat of the Arabs, the Israelis had a dilemma in that they could not tell which Arabs were residents who had just been frightened and which had fought on the Arab side or helped the invaders. The result was that with few exceptions, the Arab refugees were not allowed back. Meanwhile, the Arab countries would not allow the refugees to settle and become citizens of the Arab countries (except for Jordan). The Palestinian refugees were a particularly fertile population and were cared for by the United Nations and have multiplied to many times their original size maintaining a continuous festering problem.
When the United Nations partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and a Palestinian State the Arab Countries all jointly militarily attacked the fledgling Jewish State of Israel. Despite the Israeli’s being overwhelmingly outnumbered they beat back the invaders. However while many Arabs stayed on their Israeli land and some helped the Jews defend against the Arab Armies, some others abandoned their homes and land and went to neighboring Arab Counties. This is what they had been asked to do by the Arab governments who wanted to be able to militarily attack communities without worrying about killing Arabs. To spur the evacuation the Arab leadership spread false propaganda about Israeli atrocities and frightened them into leaving. As a motivation to leave they were told that they could move into the Jewish lands and property when the Jews had been driven out. To make matters worse, some Israeli radicals repeated the lies to induce the Arabs to abandon their lands. In at least one case, Arabs who stayed were subjected to Jewish violence. Each side has since railed about what the other side did at that point in time and each fails to mention how they contributed to the refugee problem.
The strategy was to have Arab refugees, who had been trained to not only hate the Israelis but also in military and terrorist techniques, to return to israel and foment an insurgency. Ironically, this quotation was cited at the time as one of the few statements upon which the Israeli and Egyptian governments could agree.
This quote is very important historically as it bears on the two different narratives of the creation of Israel given by the Jews and the Arabs. The Arabs claim that in the 1948 partition of Palestine, the Jew attacked the Arabs and drove them out of the areas in which they had lived for years, The Israelis claim that they urged the Arabs to stay and that all those who did, received full citizenship in the new state of Israel. The Arab leaders pressured and in some cases even forced the Arabs to leave so that the Arab armies could use artillery and other war weapons and not have to worry about hitting Arabs. They promised the Arabs who left that they could return in a few days when the Jews were defeated and pushed into the sea, and the Arabs could have the Jewish property. This report of an impartial actor, tends to support the Jewish view of the happening in so far as the behavior of the Jews was concerned. There was no pressure placed on Arabs by Jews to leave. It was actually, the reverse. There were however, two small rural areas where Jewish radicals did try and drive the Arabs out, but in general the Haifa experience was the norm.
DPs were “displaced persons” -- the euphemism for people who were no longer welcome in their country of birth. Congress, made up mostly of immigrants or the children of immigrants who were poor and downtrodden, were not enthusiastic about the United States absorbing many of the world’s DPs resulting from WWII.
