Abbas lies, again, and dooms his people to misery

Ma'an reports:

According to Beirut-based Now Lebanon news agency, Abbas told the An-Nahar newspaper of “permanent” cooperation with the Lebanese government to maintain security in Palestinian refugee camps.

The president also voiced hope that the lives of Palestinians in Lebanon would be “easier”, adding that they did not “want to be naturalized.”

(Now Lebanon mirrors the article. In his original speech it appears that he says that "we do not want resettlement.")

Either way, it is a lie that the Lebanese do not want citizenship. As I've pointed out numerous times, every time Lebanese Palestinians gained a loophole to become citizens they jumped at it. (So have Gazans to become Egyptian citizens in recent months, over 2000 have done that including Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.)

In 2005, Abbas actually said that Lebanese and other "guest" Palestinians should have the right to become citizens of their host states if they want, and then he did an abrupt about-face, deciding that they should have no freedom to make such a decision themselves.

Arab "leaders" like Abbas have consistently campaigned to deprive Palestinian Arabs of their rights to become citizens of their host countries, as well as the rights of their children to become citizens of their home countries. They effectively tell their people to go to hell.

And it is all because they are holding out hope that millions of Palestinian Arabs will one day flood Israel and destroy the Jewish state. That is the only reason these people have suffered for 64 years, and their freedom to choose to become citizens - that all other Arabs have automatically - is taken away from them.

Not that Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch care. Amazingly, HRW actually agrees that Palestinian Arabs must remain stateless. Really.

(h/t Tamzen)