No Palestinians, Ever!!!

 

When I was a boy, my mother married a career American Foreign Service Officer, and we were posted to Beirut. It was a beautiful city, straddling the Mediterranean, replete with a synagogue, an Anglican church, tons of Maronite Catholic churches, mosques of every description (from Sunni and Druze to Shiite) and a very strange form of government, one that would eventually prove its undoing. According to a census taken in the early 1940s and never taken again, specific political elective offices were allocated to different religious groups. The President had to be a Maronite, the PM a Sunni, the speaker of the Assembly a Shiite, the Minister of Justice, Druze, etc. yet back in the 1960s, everyone living there got along; tones of Arabic and French (it was a French protectorate until 1943) abounded.

The radio waves carried the Hitler-like visceral speeches from regional Egyptian dictator, Gamel Abul Nasser, a Sunni who merged Egypt and Syria into a short-lived country (the United Arab Republic). Nasser used Palestinians expelled in what was to become Israel to create a pattern of “blame and hate Israel” to distract local Arabs from his corrupt and failed leadership. His demand was for regional Arab nations to keep these Palestinians in “refugee camps” (see above picture), making sure they were never assimilated into the countries that accepted them. Barbed wire, open sewers, powdered milk for the children and loudspeakers blaring anti-Zionist hatred. Young boys were raised in those camps with one directive from parents and Nasser: your life mission is to retake Israel and reclaim your homes. In Arabic, “Nakba” (catastrophe) is the word for the 1948 taking of Palestine by Israeli forces. Even after the 1948 takeover settled, Israel refused to repatriate the Palestinians they had displaced.

Except for these horrible “refugee camps,” the local religions in Lebanon mingled well. Sure, the small Jewish community longed to move to Israel, but they worked alongside Muslims and Christians alike. A lot has changed since then. A protracted civil war carved up Lebanon into religious communities, well-armed and filled with hatred. Palestinians were uniformly disliked, having never been allowed to assimilate.

By the early 1980s, with so many successful Lebanese fleeing to other countries, the resentment of angry local Palestinians, now concentrated on the southern border with Israel, grew to the point where the Lebanese hoped Israel would aid in a solution to this unwanted cadre of now-militant Palestinians. Instead, in 1982, Israel attacked Lebanon and shelled their neighbor, killing everyone in what Lebanese thought was completely indiscriminate.

Of course, superior IDF forces put down the Palestinians (and lots of non-Palestinians as well), but the Lebanese quickly realized that they needed a strong nation to support them in the future. With Christians solidified in their northern and urban strongholds, at least the ones that were left, and the diminished Sunni population now dug in, the balance of Lebanon, now with a rising Shiite population, found that support in the Iranian theocracy. The blowback for Israel, in seeking to decimate these Lebanese Palestinians, was the empowerment of Iran and the establishment of a Hezbollah state on their border. Is this a lesson for Israel’s similar commitment to root out all Hamas fighters and leaders in Gaza?

Hezbollah slowly took over the politics of this small former French colony. Over the years, with massive civil strife, the huge migration of embattled Syrians seeking safety from the litany of conflicts in that neighboring country (which was closely allied with Iran), Lebanon became a staging ground for Iranian surrogates (Hezbollah) challenging Israel. Iran now has Israel covered with two hostile fronts, both with Iran’s control and support, Syria and Lebanon.

Lebanon can best be described as dramatically failed state. Struggling to elect a President, uncollected garbage lined streets and highways, a massive explosion in the once-premiere harbor from unattended ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and poverty, food shortages and resumed violence define modern Lebanon. It is a story I know well, though I have not revisited Lebanon for decades. But it does give me insight into the deep psychological traumas that remain among Palestinians… and the equally deep resentment of regional Arab states against accepting new Palestinian refugees.

Gaza has been described as an open-air prison from which escape is well-nigh impossible. The last election there, in 2006, resulted in military Hamas generating about 27% of the vote, but ultimately able to push more moderate Palestinians entirely out of the country by military force. There have been no elections since, and since half of Gaza’s people are under 18, none ever could exercise any democratic choice in that repressive regime, now backed and financed by Iran.

But Palestinians are not welcomed anywhere. They are persecuted (even as they are Israeli citizens) on the West Bank where settlers are taking land once intended for a separate Palestinian state. They cannot leave Gaza, and as Jack Jeffery and Samy Magdy (writing for the November 6th Associated Press) tell us, “As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge from Israel’s relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan won’t take them in.

“The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have staunchly refused to accept the refugees. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population…. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi said Wednesday that Israel’s military campaign was not just aimed at fighting the militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, ‘but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to ... migrate to Egypt.’ He warned that this could wreck peace in the region… Jordan’s King Abdullah II gave a similar message a day earlier, saying, ‘No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.’

“Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. Sisi also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries’ 40-year-old peace treaty… ‘Israel’s lack of clarity regarding its intentions in Gaza and the evacuation of the population is in itself problematic,’ said Riccardo Fabiani, the International Crisis Group’s North Africa project director. ‘This confusion fuels fears in the neighborhood.’…

“Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians. It also destroyed tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza… With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, ‘Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,’ Fabiani said… Sisi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel’s 1979 peace deal… He added: ‘The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands, all for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.’”

There is no good end to this conflict, which could explode into a much wider conflict, for any of the participants. I fear for an Israel, however “victorious,” may be a big loser, weakened by severe urban warfare and increasing global animosity at their retaliation against the heinous October 7th attack on Israel. The world increasingly sees the US as Israel’s partner in that IDF retaliation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and modern militaries with increasingly devastating weapon systems deployed against regional militants have yet to ensure that the endgame is not a much more virulent blowback against them.