The Jerusalem Post reports that the Palestinian Authority is telling Palestinians from around the world to converge on Israel during its 60th anniversary celebrations later this month. The point of this propaganda campaign is to embarrass Israel by pretending the Palestinians want to move to Israel and live peacefully there. They are supposed to bring suitcases and tents and go to “their former villages and towns.”
Somehow I don’t think that a wave of old people are going to be doing this, though anyone who has a “former” village or town in Israel has to be at least 60 years of age. Their fellow Arabs have refused to resettle the Palestinians since they voluntarily left in 1948, preferring to let them stay in miserable conditions in “refugee camps” (many of which are actually towns) in order to create anti-Israel sentiment throughout the world. Their descendants now call themselves refugees and claim the “right of return” to Israel.
Not often discussed is the fact that all the Arabs who stayed in Israel when it was founded became citizens, and have prospered beyond Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East. They also have more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East, and have their own political party and representatives in the Knesset, the legislature.
The idea behind promoting the “right of return” is to overwhelm Israel with Palestinians. One idea is to get an agreement that there will be one state with Palestinians and Jews living side by side rather than a separate Palestinian state. Since the birthrate among Palestinians is much higher than among Israelis, they would soon be a majority. And it is no secret that their intention is to destroy Israel — this is just one alternative way of doing it.
The Palestinian Arabs are using Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration to dramatize their claim that Israel’s founding was illegitimate. Here is a piece by Barry Rubin that lays out the double standard the world applies to Israel over this matter.