Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Academic freedom, PalArab style

An-Najah university is back in the news.

This august institution of higher learning has made the headlines before. It was, after all, where they put up an "art exhibition" celebrating the Sbarro's pizza bombing, complete with body parts:

It has been recognized as a hotbed of terror, boasting many suicide bombers from its alumni.

More recently, it was "twinned" with Manchester University and added cultural ties with universities in France and Germany as well.

With such stellar credentials, who would be surprised when it decides to suspend classes because the students started shooting each other?

Dozens of Palestinian students were wounded, some seriously, in clashes that erupted on Tuesday at An-Najah University in Nablus between Hamas and Fatah supporters.
Eyewitnesses told The Jerusalem Post that some of the students fired from pistols and Kalashnikov assault rifles during the melee, which was described as one of the worst incidents of its kind on a Palestinian campus in the West Bank.
"The students turned the campus into a real battlefield," said one eyewitness. "They fought each other with chairs, knives, swords and everything they could get their hands on."
Following the clashes, the university administration decided to suspend studies until further notice and advised all students to stay away from the campus.
Rami Hamdallah, president of An-Najah University, accused Hamas-affiliated students of instigating the clashes.
"The Islamic list on campus has been planning these clashes for a long time," he said. "They are trying to disrupt the educational process on West Bank campuses as they did two weeks ago in Bir Zeit University.
Bir Zeit University was also closed down earlier this month following severe clashes between Hamas and Fatah supporters. Tensions have been running high on all West Bank campuses ever since Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last month.

We're still waiting for the condemnations from people who support free speech and academic freedom.

Any minute now!

Haniyeh and Zahhar just got their paychecks - from Israel

Israel gave $120 million to Mahmoud Abbas' fake government in early July.

Today, some of that money is going to pay Hamas members of the "Palestinian Legislative Council."

The Palestinian caretaker government has resumed payment of members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), including Hamas members such as deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and former Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahhar. The caretaker government, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is also meeting today in Ramallah to discuss the plight of more than 6,000 Palestinians stranded in Egypt at the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip.

Official sources in the PLC said that all members have received a portion of their salaries, which were not disbursed at all in the last period.

The Palestinian daily Al Hayat quoted caretaker Information Minister Riyad Najib Al-Maliki saying, "The Government transferred part of the employees' salaries in addition to the PLC members' without any exclusions." He also said : "No one can seize the salary of any PLC member because of his political views. The salary payment is part of the job of the Palestinian Authority."

Which means that Abbas still considers Hamas to be part of his government.

Hamas' killer bee

For those who haven't been keeping up with Hamas' children's TV:

After Farfur the terror rat was murdered by an Israeli soldier, his cousin, inexplicably a bee named Nahoul, has joined the cast of that same children's show named Pioneers of Tomorrow:

Hostess Saraa’: “Who are you? And where did you come from?”
Nahool: “I am Nahool [the bee], Farfur’s cousin.”
Saraa’: “And what do you want?”
Nahool: "I want to continue the path of Farfur, the path of “Islam is the solution”. The path of heroism, the path of martyrdom, the path of the Jihad warriors. Me and my friends shall continue the path of Farfur. And in his name we shall take revenge upon the enemies of Allah, the murderers of the prophets [i.e. the Jews], the murderers of innocent children, until Al-Aqsa will be liberated from their filth.”
Saraa’: “Welcome! Welcome Nahool.”

The following episode, aired last Friday, goes even further in its indoctrination of children into terrorism, anti-semitism and hatred:

Nahool: “You and we will liberate the sad Al-Aqsa that is waiting for us. Yes, we will liberate Al-Aqsa from the filth of the criminal Jews, who killed my grandfather, and killed Farfur, and history will bear witness to that…”

A young caller, Sabah, is asked what she wants to be when she grows up.
Sabah: “Journalist.”
Saraa', girl in studio: “Wow, journalist! Nahool, we need journalists.”
Nahool: "Why? So that… so that they will photograph the Jews when they are killing Farfur and the little children?
Saraa’: “Yes, Nahool.”
Another young caller says: “We will go on [the path] of Jihad when we grow up.”
Nahool: “Yes, we are all Jihad warriors.
Saraa’: “Allah willing.”

Petro-Arabs gone wild - in Cairo

Here's an interesting follow-up to my posting on Saudi summer marriages - how oil-rich act during their Cairo vacations:

For Arab tourists, Cairo can be sin city

As the sun set on another day of "Arab Season," Amr Khouli leaned on the cushions of his boat as it moved to the gentle waves of the Nile.

This time of year, Mr. Khouli spends days on his faluka, one of the many motorboats that cart tourists up and down the wide river that cuts through this city, catering to a growing number of Arab tourists who have passed up violent Lebanon and opted for safer Egypt for summertime holidays.

In 2006, 13 percent more Arab tourists came to Egypt and stayed 12 percent longer than the year before. This season is shaping up to be another banner year because of the Lebanese instability, says Hala el-Khatib, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Tourism.

But while Khouli welcomes the influx of money that comes with the uptick in tourism, many Egyptians complain that Arabs coming from nearby countries, such as religiously strict Saudi Arabia and Libya, are using Cairo as their own city of sin.

To be sure, tourists of all stripes in Egypt drink more than their share of the locally brewed Stella beer, but the exceptional wealth of the Arab tourists coupled with what Egyptians see as violations of religious rules grates more than the bad behavior of Westerners.

"It's very [strict] in Saudi Arabia because of the religion, so we like to come here to see different countries and different religions – it's not so [strict] as in Saudi Arabia," says Hossam Mohamed al-Shariff, who works in the Saudi embassy here.
...
The expansive garden area in the Marriott Hotel in Cairo's Zamalek neighborhood is a popular hangout for visiting Arabs. It's also know to be a place where many come looking for prostitution.

On the night this reporter visited, two women wearing heavy makeup and enveloping black robes sat at a table. A man wearing the dishdasheh robe, typical in Gulf countries, and a baseball cap walked by and dropped a piece of paper on the women's table.

What it said only the women know. But it's a common tactic to write down a room number and a dollar amount and discreetly toss the slip in the vicinity of a subtly apparent prostitute.

Mr. Shariff says that because Egypt is just a short trip from Saudi Arabia, it's an easy spot for vacation. "I like to visit the tourist places and visit the cafes here, and it has an Arab flavor … we like to come and join these parties that have Arab singers," he says.

As Shariff spoke to this reporter in the Marriott garden, a waiter approached and said he and a foreign journalist could not conduct an interview there.

"Don't worry. I'm not telling them about the hashish and [a drug called] bangao and Leil [nightclub]," he laughs, and waves him away.

Leil is a particularly famous club on Cairo's Pyramids Street, an area well known among Arab tourists for the good times to be had.

The Arab tourists "increase every year because we are very loving to them and we give them very good service and high quality. So they prefer to come here," says club manager Sami Nasherti, crowing that Leil is the only club to have received five stars from Egypt's Tourism Ministry. Leil provides "everything they like," he adds. "They eat and drink and see the belly dancers."

Unlike the grittier clubs on the strip that cater to men, Leil serves "mainly families," Nasherti says.

But even with five stars and a dedicated second level for families, Leil still represents the two sides of the "Arab Season."

Two women in the bathroom, when asked, say vaguely that they are working. In the large mirror, they give a final once over to their sparkling lipstick, long strands of fake hair, and tight, midriff-baring clothing, then head out into the dark main room where the entertainment is under way and the seats are reserved for single men.

Where's Egypt's Rachel Corrie?

Last month, Congress voted to freeze $200 million in its annual aid to Egypt unless it started fighting the huge wave of illegal arms and explosives smuggling to Gaza. This was a long-overdue move, and one that Egypt of course bitterly opposed. The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate and the President.

Egypt is taking this seriously. Now, Egypt is planning to raze houses in Rafah near the border to find some of the smuggling tunnels. It has already expelled residents who live within 50 meters of the border and will expand this zone to 150 meters.

This proves three things.

Firstly, it shows that US aid to despotic governments are almost completely ineffective as a carrot to align their actions with US and Western interests.

Conversely, it shows that withholding that same money can be an extremely effective, at least in the short term, as a stick - and that Arab governments are more likely to respond to the stick than the carrot.

Finally, it proves yet again, as if it needed proving, that the "human rights" community is utterly divorced from any claim to evenhandedness and morality. When Israel demolished houses on the Rafah border for direct self-defense purposes, these organizations would routinely condemn Israeli actions. Arms smuggling for the express purpose of killing Israeli citizens was not a human rights issue to these hypocrites - only the defense against that smuggling.

But when Egypt plans to do the same thing, they are silent.

There are no Rachel Corries willing to stand in front of Egyptian bulldozers. There are no heart-wrenching articles about the Egyptians who are losing their houses. There are no calls for UN sanctions against Egyptian violation of human rights.

Now, why would that be?

Teaching the "Naqba" to Israeli Arabs - and Jews

YNet reports:

The Education Ministry has authorized Arab schools to use a history book featuring the establishing of the State of Israel as a disastrous to the Palestinians, Israel radio published Sunday.

The third-grade book, Living together in Israel, states that some Arab residents were driven out of their homes and became refugees and that Israel confiscated many of their lands.

The book's authors made it a point to state that it was the Arabs that refused the United Nations offer to divide the land between the Palestinian and the Jews (UN resolution 181), while the Jews accepted it.

"When the war ended, the Jews prevailed and Israel and its neighbors signed a truce… the Arabs call the war the 'Nakba', meaning the war of disaster and destruction. The Jews call it the War of Independence."
...
Tamir's decision sparked harsh criticism: National Religious Party Chairman MK Zevulun Orlev called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to fire Tamir immediately saying her decision was "anti-Zionist and goes against the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state."

Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman slammed Tamir's decision as well "Tamir is like Avraham Burg. She expresses not only the post-Zionist spirit but also political masochism. The political left is constantly looking for ways to justify the other side, when we have nothing to apologize for."

Both sides are wrong.

It is impossible to be completely objective when writing anything, and schoolbooks are no exception. The overriding concern when writing schoolbooks must be the truth, an important secondary concern must be that the children are being taught to be good citizens of the nation that they belong to.

As my continuing Palestinian Arab history series shows, 1948 was a catastrophe for most Arabs in Palestine. But the reason that it was so disastrous for them was not because the Jews managed to avoid being pushed into the sea as the combined Arab world so fervently desired. The reason it was a Naqba was because the Arabs of Palestine were treated like dirt by their own leaders and by the leaders of the Arab world. They were used as pawns by Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, for his own aggrandizement and anti-semitic aims; they were used as pawns by the Arab League, they were used as pawns by the Arab nations who committed them to refugee camps, and (as we will see as the series continues, iy"h) they were and are continuing to be used by the UNRWA for its own self-preservation. (From the pan-Arab perspective, 1948 was also a tragedy - because weak dhimmi Jews winning a war against the proud Arab nation was the ultimate disgrace. Histories must emphasize the honor/shame society of Arabs as well in explaining why this was a "naqba.")

No one should discount the fact that Israel did end up destroying many Arab villages after 1948 but at the same time no one should disregard that the reasons that most of the Arabs fled were more due to fear of fighting in general and the conviction that other Arab nations would take care of them rather than from any sort of Zionist policy of expulsion. Yes, most Arabs ended up leaving their homes - that should not be denied - but the context can and must be taught. Israel has little to be ashamed of in the 1948 war, as the infant Zionist state had to make decisions to ensure its survival first. The proven examples of how Zionists tried to stop Arabs from leaving Haifa , how outside Arab armies forced the Arab residents to leave Tiberias, how the residents of Abu Ghosh aimed at peaceful relations with the Jews, - all these need to be taught, just as Deir Yassin must be taught in the proper context for the right age groups.

Classic Zionist histories have ignored some events that muddy the waters in the Paul Newman/"Exodus"-style histories. "Post-Zionist" histories have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction, blaming the Jews for events that overtook them and for decisions that had to be made quickly in the context of their very survival (as well as looking at 1948 through the lens of 21st century multiculturalism.) The truth must be the main concern when writing textbooks, and both sides have not spent nearly enough effort describing what the Arabs of 1948 knew on their own - the major reason for Palestinian Arab suffering is their treatment by their Arab "brethren" and self-anointed "leaders," and to a large extent this remains true today.

There is no reason why the true story of 1948 cannot be taught, warts and all, to Israeli Arabs and to Israeli Jews. In the end, when one looks at the facts, Israel's War of Independence is nothing to be ashamed of.

Freedom of the press, Saudi-style

The Saudi-based Arab News notes:

A 49-year-old Makkah institution was bailed out of financial troubles with a SR10 million cash infusion from Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s personal account yesterday.

Al-Nadwa, which has chronicled the daily life of Islam’s holiest city in modern times, has been unable to meet payroll for the past three months, according to Hesham Kaaki, the 30-year-old editor in chief of the newspaper.

“King Abdullah ordered the payment of the amount to the Al-Nadwa newspaper from his personal account to help it overcome its current financial crisis,” said Culture and Information Minister Iyad Madani in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency.

The culture and information minister said that the kind gesture is proof of the king’s support for the Kingdom’s media. Madani added that he hopes the newspaper will regain its glory and competitiveness through the king’s donation.

And we are all sure that Al-Nadwa will continue its hard-hitting editorial policies with this cash infusion from the King.

Peaceful PalArab weekend

The bodies of three women were found, stabbed and strangled to death, in the Gaza Strip. There are reports that it is a mother and two daughters but the names nor the ages have been released yet (the news was in Ma'an Arabic and Palestine Press Agency - Arabic. As of this moment it has not hit any English news sites.)

Since I don't know the ages, I will count them all as women in the 2007 PalArab self-death count, now at 490.

UPDATE: Ma'an English adds more detail:

Gaza – Ma'an – A jeep disposed of three corpses in a deserted area of Deir al Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, and attempted to cover the bodies in soil, reported eyewitnesses and Palestinian security sources on Sunday.

The Hamas-affiliated Executive Force and medical staff discovered the bodies of three females. The cadavers were transported to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah.

According to Palestinian medical sources, there was evidence of knife wounds and suffocation on the corpses.

A Palestinian security source informed Ma'an that the corpses were identified as three sisters aged between 17 and 22. One of the women was married to a resident of Deir al Balah, the others lived in Gaza City.

UPDATE 2: A car was blown up in Gaza, and another person died from the Fatah/Hamas infighting last month. 491.

The effectiveness of a "goodwill gesture"

From Ma'an:

Minister of detainees' affairs, Ashraf Ajrami, has said that the release of 255 Palestinian prisoners, "is a very small step, and is not enough, especially when there are over 11,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails".

Can't you just feel the appreciation?

"The Elders" have done their first good deed

Looking at the pompous, self-righteous website of "The Elders" I at least got something good out of it:

A neat looking logo that I ripped off.

Unfortunately, I may be running afoul of their enlightened and progressive Terms and Conditions:

We own, or are the licensee of, the intellectual property rights in the content of our site, including text, photos, graphic designs, images, audio, video recordings and any data entered or submitted by you.

ELDERS and the Elders’ logo are trade marks owned by us and The Virgin Foundation, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 02155645 and whose registered address is at Hanover House, 14 Hanover Square, London W1S 1HP.

For styling themselves as Elders of a Global Village, this seems sort of petty. Real Elders elicit respect from their actions, fake Elders demand it from others.

Pure Jew-hatred from Hamas Russian website

As much as Hamas claims to not have any problems with Jews, only Zionists, the facts show otherwise.

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel has looked at Hamas' websites in multiple languages, and noticed that the Russian Hamas site is filled with venomous Jew-hatred, much of it recycled from Iran.

The Russian version of Palestine-info, supported by Russian Internet companies, carries a large number of anti-Semitic (and anti-Western) cartoons which do not appear on the portal's other language sites. In our assessment that is because Hamas' propaganda policy is based on the assumption that the Russian-speaking target audiences (in Russia and the independent republics in Central Asia ) are ripe for anti-Semitic and anti-Western propaganda. It also stems from the expectation that such cartoons can promote the absorption and assimilation of other Hamas' messages of radical Islam, support for terrorism, hostility toward the United States.

Looking at the site itself indeed shows the anti-semitic cartoons taken from Iran's Holocaust cartoon collection. The "Israelis" portrayed almost invariably sport large noses, and the beards, payos and clothing of the European shtetl - exactly how Jews were portrayed in Nazi literature.

A glance at the autotranslated Russian site shows also that the word "Jews" is used interchangeably with "Zionists" and "Israelis", without the care that anti-semites normally use in trying to distinguish between the groups. There are three headlines on the main page saying "Jews demolished houses," for example.

Hamas, knowing of the latent anti-semitism endemic in Russia, is purposefully fanning the flames of Jew hatred there in order to score propaganda points.

(h/t EBoZ)

Some of the prisoners released were Hamas members

While Israel stated that none of the 255 prisoners released in a "goodwill gesture" were affiliated with Hamas, it turns out that many were.

YNet reports that 30 were members of Hamas, 2 more from Islamic Jihad, and as many as 38 from PFLP and DFLP. In addition:

According to the guidelines approved earlier in the week by a special Israeli governmental committee headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the prisoners release do not have any "blood on their hands".

Those released were jailed for lesser charges, including weapons trafficking, illegal possession of firearms, belonging to an illegal organization, attempted murder, attempted manslaughter and aiding and abetting fugitives.

While technically people who failed in their attempts to kill Jews may not have "blood on their hands," it is the height of folly to allow them to get another chance. In fact, their motivation to return to terror has increased, as their earlier failures can be seen as shameful that must be avenged.

Even though Hamas members were released, they are also being greeted personally by Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

Israel's Justice Ministry admits that 17% of released prisoners end up resuming terror activities. This means that at least 42 of the released prisoners can be expected to terrorize again.

Since the intifada began, 179 Israelis have been killed by former prisoners released in earlier deals.

To the current Israeli government, a goodwill gesture is something that puts Israeli citizens at risk for their lives - all to prop up an impotent Abbas who allowed Hamas to win Gaza without a fight.

Saudi "summer marriages": another form of legalized Muslim prostitution

From Arab News:

JEDDAH, 20 July 2007 — The summer season is known as a primetime for male Saudi tourists to marry women from other countries while on holiday abroad. These marriages are generally unplanned. Most men undergo such marriages with an intention of enjoying their vacation in the company of women who are “religiously” legal for them.
The marriages are ones of convenience. While men look for fun, the women are usually experiencing financial difficulties and see summer marriages as a way to be spoilt and have money spent on them. The real victims of such marriages are their children.
According to Abdullah Al-Hamoud, chairman of Awasser, a Saudi charity that looks after the welfare of Saudi families abroad, the Kingdom protects the rights of children from marriages between Saudi men and non-Saudi women. He added that such marriages are usually done without the prior-permission of the Interior Ministry. (Saudi law demands Saudis seek permission when marrying abroad).
“Such marriages are not only restricted to the summer season,” he said. “They happen throughout the year. Sometimes Saudi husbands don’t want to bring their foreign wives to the Kingdom. They prefer keeping them outside the Kingdom and frequently fly abroad to visit them,” he added.
The charity has offices abroad at Saudi embassies in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Morocco and Indonesia. The organization also runs awareness campaigns for Saudis, warning them against visiting unscrupulous matchmaking offices.
“Children from such marriages are entitled to come to the Kingdom and be registered in their fathers’ family cards. However, wives can’t come unless they’re accredited. They also can’t get listed in their husband’s family card until then,” said Al-Hamoud.
“In cases of fathers denying they are related to a child, we make them undergo DNA tests to prove their identity. However, we haven’t faced such a scenario as of yet,” he added.
Awasser has also found that 70 percent of Saudis living abroad are the children of cross-cultural marriages. The society has succeeded in bringing 32 poverty-stricken children of Saudi fathers into the Kingdom in the past 18 months.

This article is as notable for what it ignores as for what it says.

Notice that there is no interest in the welfare of these women - presumably Muslims who cannot legally marry unless they get divorced.

While the Saudis claim to take care of the children of these sham marriages, only 32 have managed to join their fathers - presumably their mothers are left high and dry.

It is also interesting that no one expects Saudi men to go on vacation abroad with their own Saudi wives!

And most stunning of all is the 70% statistic. The rest of the world would consider these children illegitimate. The fact that a vast majority of foreign Saudis effectively are fatherless and being brought up by women who rent themselves out to rich visitors is glossed over.

The misogyny displayed in this article is chilling.

Harry Potter will bring Jews to Arab bookshop on Shabbat

From the Jerusalem Post:

Want to get your hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Jerusalem only hours after the worldwide release at midnight on Friday? You won't find it in west Jerusalem, not even at Steimatsky's.
Instead you will have to take a trip down Jerusalem's Diagon Alley, otherwise known as Salah A-Din Street in the east of the city and visit Imad Muna, owner of Educational Books, who is opening his store four hours earlier than usual, at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, to sell the last installment in the series. And Muna is willing to take pre-orders for those who do not handle money on Shabbat.
In fact, according to a Jerusalem Orthodox rabbi who asked not to be named, if Harry is paid for before Shabbat, no Jews work in the store, and the store did not open specifically for Jews, then it is permissible to walk there on Shabbat and get the book.
"I expect a lot of people from west Jerusalem," Muna told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
Usually, he gets few Jewish customers, but he hopes that his stock of 120 Deathly Hallows will attract them. If a customer purchases the book in advance, he or she will be given a receipt to present on Saturday morning.

There's a win/win!

Jews seem to feel a great affinity with Harry Potter. Soccer Dad managed to get an early copy (but remains mum on whether he will read it early); Gil at Hirhurim compared Dumbledore to Rabbi Akiva (check the many, many comments), and someone wrote an entire book on Harry Potter and the Torah.

My review of Book 6, written exactly two years ago today, is here.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad takes the high road. Impressive!

A Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs, part 10

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

In many ways, the story of Palestinian Arabs is a story of the selfishness of Arab leaders at the expense of the people they were pretending to care about. Almost without exception, these Arab leaders were not of Palestinian origin themselves.

The Arab League was created for the purposes of Arab unity but it found itself divided over every major decision, and invariably each member would act in ways that would be good for his nation (or his leader) and at the expense of the unity that they swore to uphold. The Palestinian issue was no exception.

Amin al-Husayni, the ex-Mufti and the League representative for Palestine who was born in Syria, remained ready to sacrifice all of the Palestinian Arab lives necessary to help his own sense of honor and to rid the land of Jews. His fanaticism andsingleminded Jew-hatred can be seen in his memoirs:

"Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours.'”

Yet the biggest conflicts in the Arab League came between King Abdullah of Jordan and everyone else, not only Husayni. Abdullah came from the Hashemite family that had traditionally controlled Mecca and Medina; his brother was installed by the British as King of Iraq at the same time he was designated Emir ofTransjordan. Abdullah enjoyed good relations with the British and he never hid his ambitions of becoming ruler of Greater Syria, which would include Transjordan , Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Both his Western friends and his territorial ambitions troubled his Arab neighbors, especially Syria, greatly.

Abdullah's biggest bargaining chip was the Arab Legion, the British-trained Transjordanian army that was by far the most effective Arab fighting force. The other Arab nations knew that they were unlikely to win the battle for Palestine without his army, but they were skeptical about his pro-British and pro-Western outlook.

The desires of the Palestinian Arab people themselves never entered the equation. While their erstwhile leaders would pontificate about the will of the people, everyone knew that the Palestinian Arabs were pawns in this entire exercise.

The combined Arab armies did not have their heart in the fight. With the exception of Transjordan's Arab Legion, they were filled with soldiers who did not care about their mission and had no battle experience. The last two Palestinian Arab army commanders were AbdulKader Husseini, who was killed in April of 1948, and Hasan Salameh , who fled Palestine in disgrace after a disagreement with his superiors in the same month. The rest of the 1948 war was led by Iraqis, Egyptians, and Jordanians - but no Palestinian Arabs.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Arab refugees were causing great alarm in the neighboring Arab states. These nations for the most part were not that stable to begin with; the influx of refugees was regarded as a real threat to these regimes. This was one of the reasons that Egypt, Syria and Lebanon showed no interest in integrating their "brothers" into their borders. Beyond that, Egypt would take the fleeing male refugees and force them to turn around and fight the Jews. One can only imagine how little thesepeoplewanted to fight, while their families huddled in the refugee camps with little food and no political support at all.

The tug of war between Abdullah and Husayni continued as 1948 wore on, as Husayni wanted to build a provisional Palestinian Arab government. He had the backing of most of the Arab League, butTransjordan's ruler threatened to use his army against any such government. As a result Husayni decided to create it in Gaza in September, 1948.

It was a fiasco. The "government" unsurprisingly chose Amin al-Husayni himself to be their first President, as he arrived in Palestine for the first time since the British expelled him in 1937. There were immediate protests, not only in Amman but in other Arab capitals as well. One of the objections to this pseudo-state was that by declaring a government, the Palestinian Arabs had effectively accepted the hated partition formula.

The protests against this quasi-independence didn't only come from other Arab countries but from the West Bank itself, with protests in East Jerusalem,Nablus and Ramallah. Even in 1948, the differences between the Egypt-oriented Gazans and the Jordanian-oriented West Bankers were apparent.

Husayni kept his "government" going despite the opposition, and even received recognition from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iraq (formerly allied withTransjordan .) This was the only time in history that Palestinian Arabs sort of had a state that was recognized by other countries. Knowing his personality, it should come as no surprise that one of his first acts was to give himself absolute power.Abdullah acidly pointed out that Husayni needed Egyptian troop protection to move about his own Gaza "state."

In an interesting concurrent episode, Transjordan seized truckloads of supplies sent by Iraq for refugee relief as punishment for Iraq's support of Husayni. Even though Abdullah also claimed to be doing things for the sake of Palestinian Arabs, his actions showed otherwise.

This was only one of the hardships endured by the refugees. The Nablus mayor accused the Arab nations of extorting money from the Palestinian Arabs. The richer refugees that reached Lebanon were denied the right to drive while the poorer ones suffered from severe food shortages. There was no consensus on how to deal with the new refugee problem: in August, the Arab Higher Committee as well as Iraq and Syria opposed their return to Palestine whileAbdullah wanted their return to be a pre-condition to peace talks with Israel.

While the Zionists didn't actively work to push the Arabs out of Israel, they showed little interest in letting them back. Some were aghast at the site of their Arab friends and neighbors actively fighting them and the women ululating their support of the Arab armies trying to destroy the Jews.

By November there were an estimated 500,000 Arab refugees with the majority in Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and the non-Jewish Palestinian areas. Only a few thousand were in Egypt. (There were also about 7000 Jewish refugees as a result of the war, as well.)

This left many of the Palestinian Arabs in limbo. They left Palestine with the expectation of either coming back with the victorious Arab armies, or of resettling in those same countries that preached so much about Arab unity. But now, the majority were homeless. And, in 1948, most of them blamed the Arab nations for their predicament (and some blamed the British for allowing outside Arab armies to roam freely in the months before they quit Palestine.) The West, however, looked to the Jewish state to solve the problem.

By and large, Palestinian Arabs were more ambitious, more educated and more pragmatic than their Arab brethren. Many had moved to Palestine in only the previous generation or two in order to find a better life for their families. While they had more than their share of anti-semitism, the majority was able to live peacefully with the Jews. It is indeed ironic that these people, who should have been in the vanguard of an Arab nation, ended up being used by opportunistic and selfish so-called "leaders" who led them to disaster. It is doubly ironic that the very people who felt they could move easily within the Arab world - who trusted the Arab nation to always be there for them, no matter what - were the ones who have become pariahs in that same world.

By December, a large rally and conference in Jericho showed that the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank seemed to favor the idea of being ruled by Transjordan's Abdullah as opposed to the discredited and much despised ex-Mufti. The idea of Palestinian Arab self-governance had been extinguished.