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Refugees

I ran into these numbers a while back—the current numbers of "Palestinian" refugees, as reported by the UN:

Country	Camps	Refugees
Lebanon	12	207,868
Syria	13 (inlcuding 3 unofficial)	233,560
Jordan	10	307,722
TOTAL		749,150

Here are the numbers for Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Don't forget that Judea and Samaria were controlled by Jordan until 1967 and Gaza was controlled by Egypt. I would also contest the idea that the Arabs in Gaza are refugees at all. That land has been turned over completely to the Palestinian Authority, so the people who live there, in whatever condition they may be, are living on their own land, and thus are not refugees.

Area	Camps	Refugees
Judea and Samaria	19	181,241
Gaza	8	474,130
TOTAL		749,150

Where did all of these refugees come from? There were between 500,000 and 900,000 Arabs who left Israel during the War of Independence, most of whom left willingly. Those people were forced into refugee camps by the surrounding Arab governments and were not allowed or encouraged to integrate into society. Those countries refused to absorb the fleeing people, instead choosing to make them pawns in a game of political pressure against the new Jewish state.

Here is a question for you to consider. What about the Jewish people who lived in Arab countries at the time of the creation of Israel? Did you know that there were just as many Jewish refugees who were forced out of Arab lands? These Jews did not end up in long-term refugee camps in Israel. The two-thirds that ended up making aliyah were integrated into society, allowed and encouraged to become part of the new nation. Wikipedia has more about this refugee issue.

Here is what the Jewish Virtual Library says:

The number of Jews fleeing Arab countries for Israel in the years following Israel's independence was roughly equal to the number of Arabs leaving Palestine. Many Jews were allowed to take little more than the shirts on their backs. These refugees had no desire to be repatriated. Little is heard about them because they did not remain refugees for long. Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees, 586,000 were resettled in Israel at great expense, and without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions. Israel has consequently maintained that any agreement to compensate the Palestinian refugees must also include Arab compensation for Jewish refugees. To this day, the Arab states have refused to pay any compensation to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were forced to abandon their property before fleeing those countries.