Middle East by the numbers
A cute (but rather biased) look at some of the interesting stats regarding the situation in the Middle East. I will excerpt some of the interesting points:
- Number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Old Testament: over 700
- Number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran: 0
- Number of Arab refugees who fled the land that became Israel: approximately 600,000
- Number of Jewish refugees who fled Arab countries: approximately 600,000
- Number of U.N. agencies that deal only with Palestinian refugees: 1
- Number of U.N. agencies that deal with all the other refugees in the world: 1
- Number of Christian or Jewish prayer services allowed in Saudi Arabia: 0
- Number of Muslim prayer services allowed in Israel: unlimited
- Number of Arabs Israel allows to live in Arab settlements in Israel: 1,250,000
- Number of Jews Palestinian Authority [would allow] to live in Jewish settlements [under] Palestinian Authority: 0
Some of his statistics are obviously facetious, but the ones I mentioned above are sufficiently interesting in their own right I believe...
1 Comments:
I think the UN Agency statistic is probably the most telling. Palestinian refugees have "special" status in the United Nations. They're under the jurisdiction of UNRWA, an agency that has been accused many times over of corruption and of turning a blind eye to (or even aiding) terrorism. Jewish groups in Canada and elsewhere continue to lobby governments in the West to press the UN for a full audit of UNRWA, but until now, no dice.
Everyone else - over 17 million refugees and displaced people in 117 countries - comes under the jurisdiction of UNHCR, whose resources are stretched to the hilt. Whether you're a refugee fleeing Darfur or a returnee to Afghanistan, you're not "special" enough to get your own agency. Only Palestinians get that honour.
UNHCR's policy is that solutions must be found for refugees. Either helping them return to their original home voluntarily, when the situation permits, or helping them resettle permanently in their host country, or finding a third-party country where they can resettle. In other words, UNHCR is willing to look at each situation and case individually, and try to work out a solution that fits. It doesn't always work of course, and there are refugee situations that drag on for decades. But the point is, there are options.
UNRWA's policy on the other hand is "right of return or nothing". Unlike the three options officially available for UNHCR, UNRWA wouldn't even consider trying to help Palestinian refugees rebuild homes and lives anywhere else than in what is now Israel. See this article from FrontPageMag for a bit of an interesting - if oversimplistic - perspective.
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