 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 August 2000 Issue No. 493 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 August 2000 Issue No. 493
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Israel's invisible refugees
US President Bill Clinton's references, in an interview with Israeli television, to moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, was not the only surprising revelation by the leader of the country that is supposed to be playing honest broker in the talks between Israel and the Palestinians.Equally alarming was his suggestion that Palestinian officials agreed, during the Camp David talks, on the principle of compensating Jewish "refugees" who left Arab countries after the creation of Israel in return for the compensation of Palestinian refugees hoping to return to their homeland.
President Clinton appears to be guilty of some bizarre mixing of facts, or at the very least creative misunderstanding. Palestinian officials, for their part, have denied making such an offer. Perhaps President Clinton is unaware that a refugee, by definition, is someone forced to leave his or her country and unable to return. Yet as far as anyone is aware, a collective desire by Israelis of Arab origin to return to Egypt, Iraq or Morocco has yet to be expressed. Nor is it generally acknowledged that they are currently living in Israel as refugees. Surely President Clinton is aware that the cornerstone of the Israeli state rests on attempts to attract ever more Jews to Palestine at the expense of its original residents. Only recently Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak attended a celebration to mark the arrival of th millionth immigrant from Russia since the collapse of the former Soviet Union where he announced that he remained committed to bringing all of world Jewry to the "promised land." His speech was conspicuously absent of any mention of Jewish "refugees" queuing to leave Israel.
There is a none too subtle irony in the fact that many Jews have the privilege of enjoying two citizenships while millions of Palestinian refugees are deprived of their right to return to homes from which they were forcibly removed.
Even Israeli commentators expressed their surprise at statements perhaps best read as an attempt to help his wife win a Congressional seat. What Clinton's statements have revealed, though, is something of which many have had a sneaking suspicion for some time -- that the Palestinian negotiators were not engaging with their Israeli counterparts in Camp David, but with a joint US-Israeli delegation.
