Who’s Mistreating the Palestinians Again?

Jonathan S. Tobin
The standard cliché of Middle East reporting is the notion of Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians. But as anyone with even a minimal grasp of the history of the region knows, the real victimizers of the Palestinians have always been the Arab nations who refused to absorb or resettle them after 1948 but instead preferred to keep them homeless as props to use in the war to destroy Israel. That this is an ongoing story rather than merely a chapter of history is demonstrated anew on the border between Jordan and Syria where Palestinians fleeing the chaos and violence of the revolt against Bashar al-Assad have been left stranded. But as has been the case with the exploitation of the Palestinians in the past, the world isn’t paying much attention.

As the always insightful Khaled Abu Toameh writes for the Gatestone Institute’s Website, more than 1,000 Palestinians attempted to enter Jordan from Syria, but the government of King Abdullah has kept them in a makeshift tent refugee camp with poor sanitary conditions while refusing them entry. The king’s priority remains repressing any possible signs of unrest among the approximately 80 percent of his subjects who are Palestinian and wants nothing to do with them or their plight. So while international “human rights” activists remained focused on aiding Palestinians seeking to destroy Israel, they ignore the real abuses of refugees going on right next door to the Jewish state.

Abdullah understands all too well that a Fatah-Hamas unity coalition of Palestinian groups that is incapable of signing a peace with Israel that would give them an independent state may eventually decide to try and establish one on the territory of his kingdom. Given the fact that Jordan makes up two-thirds of the original land considered part of Palestine before it was first partitioned in 1922, Abdullah knows, as his father Hussein did, that they constitute a potentially mortal threat to the Bedouin minority that forms the ruling class there. As Abu Toahmeh writes, the king is having his government concoct new legislation that will exclude Palestinians from government institutions.

Abdullah’s concerns are real and shared by both the United States and Israel. But that doesn’t excuse the press and the so-called human rights crowd from ignoring any ill usage of the Palestinians that can’t be blamed on Israel. The suffering of ordinary Palestinians is real, but a solution to their problems requires both a sea change in their own political culture and a willingness on the part of the Arab world to stop abusing them. Unfortunately, neither seems even a remote possibility. In the meantime, don’t expect an army of activists to descend on Jordan to help the Palestinians there or anyplace else in the Arab world where they are being mistreated.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/04/17/mistreating-palestinians-again-jordan-syria-refugees/