The Saudi initiative for Middle East peace adopted by the 22 Arab League countries today calls for a "just solution" to the issue of Palestinian refugees. What?s not mentioned in the plan ? or in the news coverage of it ? is that Palestinians are not the only refugees as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. A greater number of Jewish refugees fled Arab countries after the state of Israel was created. Their rights, including property and other claims, have never been addressed by the international community.
Myths and Facts, a well-researched and heavily-footnoted website that dispels myths about the Arab-Israeli conflict, points out:
The number of Jews fleeing Arab countries for Israel in the years following Israel?s independence was nearly double the number of Arabs leaving Palestine. Many Jews were allowed to take little more than the shirts on their backs… Little is heard about them because they did not remain refugees for long. Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees between 1948 and 1972, 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 reparations 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. Through 2005, at least 115 of the 774 UN General Assembly resolutions on the Middle East conflict (15 percent) referred directly to Palestinian refugees. Not one mentioned the Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
For more about Jewish refugees from Arab countries, visit The Forgotten Refugees and Justice for Jews from Arab Countries.
