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Thursday, March 12, 2009

The Arab world isn't embarrassed at all....

I've mentioned many times before about the plight of Iraqis of Palestinian Arab descent who are stuck in refugee camps between Iraq and Syria. Arab countries have refused to help them, so the lucky ones are getting resettled in Iceland, Brazil, Chile, and Canada.

But one Arab country has offered to take all of them in: Sudan. In an effort to divert the world's attention away from the genocide in Darfur, Sudan has offered to house the Iraqi-Palestinian refugees, and the refugees are considering it:
A delegation of Palestinian refugees stranded on the Iraqi-Syrian border visited Sudan recently to discuss possible resettlement there.

The deputy head of the Refugees Affairs Department in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Muhammad Abu Baker, said that refugees from Al-Walid Refugee Camp went to Sudan in hopes of moving there.

Abu Baker told Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad that four representatives of the refugees met with a committee that is working on arranging the move to Sudan. The committee includes representatives of the PLO, the Sudanese government, and the UN High Commission for Refugees.

The delegation also met with an aide to Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, Uthman Isma’il, and looked at examples of the mobile homes the Palestinians could move into in the capital, Khartoum.

Abu Baker explained that this visit came in application for a resettlement agreement between the PLO, Sudan and the UN. Under the proposed terms of the agreement the Palestinians would reside “temporarily” in Sudan.

According to Abu Baker, the Sudanese government promised the Palestinians that they will enjoy full civil rights in Sudan, including the right to employment. “The Palestinian refugees moving to Khartoum will live as Sudanese people do,” the report said.
With the obvious exception, that is consistent in the Arab world: no citizenship for anyone who can be called a "Palestinian." Ever.

Our of all the oil-rich Gulf countries, out of all the Arab countries who host hundreds of thousands of descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees, the only one that offers any semblance of help for these people is genocidal Sudan. Yet the PLO doesn't castigate the Arab countries - their caring brethren - for treating 2000-3000 people like dirt. Gazans live in luxury compared to these real refugees from Iraq, but there are no Arab charities helping them, no Arab calls to take care of them, no outraged international conferences about their plight.

The reason, of course, is because their plight has been created and extended by Arabs - and Israel cannot be blamed.

The Arab world does not betray even a hint of embarrassment about how they treat their so-called brethren, nor over the idea that Sudan is the only Arab country that (cynically) offers to help.

For a society that is based on honor and shame, it is notable that the Arabs have no shame at all when it comes to abusing their own.