Fatah central committee member Mohammad Ishtayyeh said on Thursday that the Palestinian Authority had attempted to negotiate the return of Palestinian refugees from Syria, but Israel had refused.What really happened, from AP, January 10, 2013:
Ishtayyeh said in a meeting with diplomats organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Ramallah that the PA had tried with all its might to "end the suffering" of Palestinians in Syria through international mediation.
Israeli officials, however, had refused to allow them to come to the Palestinian territories.
The Palestinian president said he has rejected a conditional Israeli offer to let Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria resettle in the West Bank and Gaza, charging it would compromise their claims to return to lost homes in Israel.Hundreds of Syrian Palestinians have died since then. And it is all because Abbas didn't even give them the choice to live. His "principles" are more important than their lives.
Abbas said he asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon last month to seek Israeli permission to bring Palestinians caught in Syria's civil war to the Palestinian territories. The request came after fighting between Syrian troops and rebel fighters in Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. About half of the camp's 150,000 residents have fled, according to a U.N. aid agency.
Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban contacted Israel on his behalf.
Abbas said Ban was told Israel "agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn't have the right of return (to Israel)."
"So we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return," Abbas told the group. Some of his comments were published Thursday by the Palestinian news website Sama.
Even as Palestinian Arabs continue to die in Syria, no one is pressuring Abbas to reverse his death sentence. The UN is silent. NGO's are silent. World leaders continue to treat Abbas with respect. Newspaper editorials gush how "moderate" he is.
And Syrian Palestinians continue to die, every day, directly because of a decision Abbas made more than a year ago.
Every single "pro-Palestinian" activist should be asked in every venue they speak if they agree with Abbas. Amnesty International and Oxfam and Human Rights Watch should be asked whether they agree that Syrian Arabs are better off dead than given the even the choice to live.
The Heinrich Boll Foundation, which heard this new Palestinian Arab slander against Israel, should be told the truth.
Shouldn't everyone?
