Arab Apartheid against Palestinians

All Arab countries except Jordan:

Palestinians are not allowed to become citizens of Arab countries, in accordance with Arab League Decree 1547 for 1959, "in order to preserve the Palestinian entity and Palestinian identity." Even in Jordan they can no longer become citizens. (There have been some exceptions: Palestinian Christians in Lebanon in the 1950s, Palestinians born from Egyptian mothers in 2011.)

Palestinians face severe travel restrictions throughout the Arab world. They do not receive passports and their travel documents are only accepted by a few countries.

Palestinians cannot vote or run for office in national elections.

Children born to Palestinians do not get citizenship in their host countries, violating Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Jordan:

1967: Jordan refused to allow Gazans who came after the Six Day War to become Jordanian citizens. Today some 165,000 Palestinians in Jordan cannot become citizens and get no government services.

1970: 3500-5000 Palestinians killed and 20,000 Palestinians expelled, their camps demolished, in the Black September events.

1988: Jordan revoked citizenship for millions of West Bank Palestinians as they declared "independence." As usual, this move was justified as being for their own good.

2010: Jordan continued to revoke citizenship for thousands more Palestinians

2012: Jordan passed an electoral law that effectively limits the number of Palestinian members of Parliament to less than 10%

2013: Jordan places Palestinian refugees from Syria in special camps that they cannot leave, separate from other refugees, and turns hundreds or thousands back to a dangerous future in Syria.

2014: Palestinians who are citizens are still denied equal rights in the military, and on getting college scholarships and being admitted to some public universities, among other areas.

Egypt:

1948: Placed all Palestine refugees that reached Egypt into camps, forced men to go back to Palestine to fight.

1949: Expelled all Palestinian from Egyptian camps into Gaza. Very few Palestinian Arabs were left in Egypt.

1950: Egypt refused any UNRWA presence on its territory, relegating it to Gaza.

1949 - 1956: Any Palestinians in Egypt were barred from schooling and employment.

2013: Hundreds of Palestinian refugees from Syria placed into jail as they try to enter Egypt

2013-now: Egypt has effectively closed the Rafah border with Gaza, even limiting hospital patients from traveling, effectively imprisoning 1.7 million Gazans.

Lebanon:

1950-58: Would only issue one-way travel documents for Palestinians to leave the country

1962: Palestinians classified as "foreigners":
73 job categories banned for Palestinians until 2010; now there are "only" 50 jobs off limits
They are still banned from working as physicians, journalists, pharmacists or lawyers.
They are not permitted to build new houses or own property, or even to repair their homes
Martial law imposed on refugee camps. Army stops people from entering and exiting.
Limitations on schools for Palestinian "foreigners"
Not allowed to live outside refugee camps, which in turn are not allowed to grow. Population of camps is now triple capacity.
Palestinians not allowed to create organizations.

1975-78: At least 5000 Palestinians killed in Lebanese civil war

1985-88: Thousands killed in "War of the Camps"

1995: Law prohibiting Palestinians from entering country without a visa; and visas weren't issued. Those expelled from Gulf states could not return to Lebanon. (Law repealed in 1999.)

2005: Specific laws prohibiting foreigners who are not "nationals of a recognized state" - Palestinians - from owning property. Those who owned it previously cannot pass it to their children.

2007: 31,000 Palestinians homeless because while Lebanese Army destroyed Nahr el Bared camp

2013: Some 50,000 refugees from Syria treated differently from other Syrian refugees; expensive temporary short-term visas effectively make them criminals

2013: Lebanon starts turning some Palestinian Syrian refugees away at the border

Kuwait:

1991: 400,000 Palestinians were harassed and forced out of the country.

Libya:

1994-5: Expelled 30,000 Palestinians, dismissed many from their jobs and confiscated their houses
Arab countries refused to take in the new refugees. Hundreds were stranded in the desert or the sea. Eventually Libya allowed some to stay but kept threatening to expel them again. In the end about 15,000 were forced to go to Arab countries they had documents for, Gulf countries, and Western nations.

2011: Palestinians were forced to pay a special tax of $1550.

2012: Many Palestinians lost their homes as properties were claimed by others in the wake of the revolution and the collapse of the judicial system.


Iraq:

Early 1950s: Expelled striking Palestinian workers, along with Saudi Arabia and Libya..

2005: After Saddam Hussein lost power, Palestinians in Iraq were subjected to abduction, hostage-taking, killing and torture from armed groups. Politicians derided them. About 15,000 were forced to leave Iraq. Thousands were stranded in camps in the desert between Iraq and Syria, where no Arab country would allow them to enter.

Qatar:

1994: Refused to grant Palestinians work visas.

Syria:

1970:  Palestinians cannot vote, cannot run for office, cannot own farmland, cannot own more than one property..

2005-2008: Syria did not allow thousands of Palestinian Arab refugees fleeing from Iraq to enter the country.

2012-today: Some 2000 Palestinians killed so far in Syria's war. About 50 have starved to death as forces cut off all food and water to the Yarmouk camp.

Burying Sharon but not the truth about who he was

There are so many twists and turns to Ariel Sharon's remarkable life. The overwhelming lesson Israel learned from Sharon is that unilateral concessions are dangerous and that genuine recognition of the Jewish state is the core precondition to peace

Ariel Sharon buried today

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Ariel Sharon was not born great in February 1928 in the cooperative farming village of Kfar Malal. But he had achieved greatness by the time he died on January 11, 2014, gaining legendary stature as the greatest field commander in the history of the Israel Defense Forces.

He was also proud to be a farmer, and he became a dynamic political leader. He lived up to his nickname Arik (“the Lion” in Hebrew) as the Lion of Israel. Not surprisingly, the title of his autobiography was Warrior.

The least that can be said of Sharon is that he was controversial. Everyone recognized him as a strong and robust figure, but critics regarded him as a brutal military commander.

From his youth he showed extraordinary personal courage and qualities of leadership. In 1948, aged 20, he led the action in Bir Addas, the Arab village accommodating Iraqi troops. In the action he suffered a bullet in his stomach.

Sharon was a key figure, as head of the Unit 101 commando group, in protecting Israel in the 1950s against terrorism. He responded in 1953 to Arab terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens by a raid on the Jordanian village of Qibya where forty houses were destroyed and sixty nine people killed.

Defying military orders in 1956, Sharon sent troops to the Mitla Pass in Sinai; though it was seen as a daring and successful raid 38 Israeli soldiers were killed.

In the 1967 Six Day War Sharon fought what is now regarded as a classic battle against the Arab stronghold in the Sinai. Again, in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War he exceeded his instructions and led his troops in a daring and successful crossing of the Red Sea into Egypt, and encircled the Egyptian Third Army.

Finally, in 1982 his command of troops, then as Minister of Defense, came to an end with the events in Beirut, Lebanon. During the Lebanese War, whose objective for Sharon was the elimination of the PLO terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon, Christian Phalangists in September 1982 massacred Palestinian Muslims in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut.

Sharon was accused of failing to prevent the massacre, and the Kahan Commission investigating the events held that he was “indirectly responsible” for it.

As a result Sharon was obliged to resign as Minister of Defense but his political career continued. As Minister without Portfolio and Minister of Trade he concluded the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. in 1985. While Minister of Housing, 1990-1992, he initiated and carried out the absorption of immigrants, many from Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, into Israel and oversaw the construction of 144,000 apartments.

When Minister of National Infrastructure in 1996 he fostered joint activities with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians. In 1998 Sharon became Foreign Minister and met with leaders of a number of countries to advance the peace process.

After becoming leader of the Likud party, Sharon became Prime Minister on February 6, 2001. It is at this point that he, previously the idol of the Israeli hard liners, and the sponsor of settlements, took a dramatic political turn.

Sharon was never an ideologue nor a religious individual with an emotional devotion to the concept of the whole area as Eretz Israel. He was always a pragmatic politician, concerned above all with what he considered the strategic interests of Israel.

In this respect he was a “hawk” fighting strongly against threats to Israel’s security but he was a realist in recognizing three significant factors: force alone could not end the Arab-Israeli conflict; Jews and Arabs had to live together in the area; and Israel had to take account of international relations and could not, for both security and economic reasons, isolate itself from the world.

Sharon made clear his conviction that Jews and Arabs could live together. Although the State of Israel is Jewish, he held that Arabs should be full citizens in every sense of the word.

He also believed, and indeed reiterated it in his last international speech, at the UN in September 2005, that the Palestinians were entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own. He reached out to the Palestinians in a call for reconciliation and compromise.

On becoming prime minister, Sharon announced his determination to seek peace with his Arab neighbors, though he recognized that Yasser Arafat was not a man of peace. He had already in October 1998 signed the Wye River Memorandum, the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

It was at the 4th Herzliya Conference on December 18, 2003 that Sharon suggested his Disengagement Plan to end the Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip, a plan he proposed to the Cabinet which adopted it on June 6, 2004.

The Plan enforced in August 2005 was to pull out the 10,000 Israelis in the 21 settlements in Gaza, (and four in the West Bank) and then to withdraw all IDF forces and all military installations from the area.

This was a unilateral plan and action by Israel. Sharon in his letter of April 14, 2004 to President George W. Bush explained his position. He accepted the Roadmap for Peace that Bush had proposed in June 2002 as opening a genuine window of opportunity for progress towards a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, involving two states living side-by-side in peace and security.

Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority had taken no action to fight against the terrorists and to institute real reform, as required under the Roadmap. Terror against Israel had not ceased, and no tangible institutional reforms had taken place.

Believing there was no reliable Palestinian partner with whom Israel could make bilateral peaceful advances towards a settlement, Sharon initiated a unilateral process of disengagement with the hope of reducing friction between Israel and the Palestinians. He hoped that disengagement would stimulate positive changes in the PA that might lead to resumption of direct negotiations.

The essential problem then and now is that the Palestinian leadership has not undertaken a cessation of armed activity, ended all acts of violence against Israelis, or acted against terrorism.

Sharon believed that Yasser Arafat wanted to turn a national conflict into a religious one between Islam and Jews. The Palestinian leadership has not undertaken any fundamental political reform. No peace is possible unless the PA ends terrorism and takes action against terrorist organizations.

Regrettably, the international community has not succeeded in getting the Palestinians to fulfill their obligations to combat terrorism and effect reforms.

Sharon went into a comma only three months after his UN speech and died before he could continue his search for peace. He would have been gravely disappointed that, after the territorial concessions Israel made on Gaza, the Palestinians would not enter the peace process. Instead, Hamas, the ruling power in Gaza, took advantage of it to wage a war of terrorism.

The hope of many that Sharon’s policy could parallel the 1962 policy of French President Charles de Gaulle who ended the conflict between France and Algeria has not been fulfilled.

Both leaders were strong nationalists, both had been regarded, not altogether correctly, as right wing hard liners, and both had made dramatic shifts in their political views. Sharon had accepted that the idea of a Greater Israel was unrealistic in the same way that de Gaulle had accepted that France could no longer control Algeria.

No one can be sure how Sharon would have reacted to the Palestinian refusal to make concessions and enter into peace negotiations.

What is clear however is that the Gaza withdrawal he engineered resulted in a shift in Israel’s political direction. Israelis are more aware that Palestinians have shown no willingness to make peace with the Jewish State of Israel.

The overwhelming lesson learned from Sharon’s Gaza policy is that Israel cannot afford to make unilateral concessions on issues or withdrawals from territory unless it is guaranteed in return reciprocal concessions, mainly acceptance of the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the end of terrorism against it.

Secretary of State John Kerry ought to learn that lesson and appreciate that the existence and security of Israel depends on this stance.