Mob attacks researchers who found few want homes in Israel..

@El:

So Palestinians do not want to live in Israel according to this survey!
…
The truth is not welcome in Palestine.

For the first: the first question that came to my mind was “why does Israel then make such a fuzz about the “right to return”, if noone wants to return?”
The next thought was: “What a mess and hatred between the peoples must be there, that even if there was peace they didn’t want to return…”

To the second: It’s not welcome anywhere, and especially not there and in Israel.

El Jeffe,

What is the point you are trying to make? I am deeply confused.

From the article:

The poll, conducted among 4,500 refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan, was the first to ask where they would want to live if Israel recognised a right of return.

Only 10 per cent of the refugees chose Israel, even if they were allowed to live there with Palestinian citizenship; 54 per cent opted for the Palestinian state; 17 per cent for Jordan or Lebanon, and 2 per cent for other countries. Another 13 per cent rejected all these options, preferring to sit it out and wait for Israel to disappear, while 2 per cent didn’t know.

The future of more than three million refugees is critical to any lasting peace. It was one of the unresolved issues that caused the July 2000 Camp David summit to break down.

El Jefe:

Z,
Many are pushing Israel to allow Palestinians to be Israeli citizens, or to retreat and give more land to Palestinians.

Fanatics do not want this survey info made public because then there is proof that it is a very small group wanting citizenship or land or even to stay.

10% want citizenship, 54% want land, that’s 64% total. That’s almost a super majority! Only 19% said that they would chose to leave. Please explain your position because I think the numbers say otherwise.

Plus, I wish to point out as an aside that the OFFICIAL reason that Isreal drove these people from their land 50+years ago and refuses to let them return is that they are not Jewish, and therefore they would dilute Jewish political power in Isreal (a so called democracy). I find it upsetting that the US strongly backs a country that so openly defies the most basic principles of democracy, and that we act disgusted when the Palestinians call for the destruction of a state that denies them citizenship based soley on their religion.

Well, it seems to me that Isreal is one of the few countries in that region that actually appears to uphold the traditional aspects of democracy.

@Zero:

10% want citizenship, 54% want land, that’s 64% total. That’s almost a super majority! Only 19% said that they would chose to leave. Please explain your position because I think the numbers say otherwise.

Plus, I wish to point out as an aside that the OFFICIAL reason that Isreal drove these people from their land 50+years ago and refuses to let them return is that they are not Jewish, and therefore they would dilute Jewish political power in Isreal (a so called democracy). I find it upsetting that the US strongly backs a country that so openly defies the most basic principles of democracy, and that we act disgusted when the Palestinians call for the destruction of a state that denies them citizenship based soley on their religion.

Israel did not drive these people out of their homes. I’m from Haifa, a city where the Jews and Arabs live in peace. The Arabs in Haifa are Arabs that havel ived there sicne before the war in 1948 and chose not to leave. They were immediately given full ctizienship and equal rights. You’re right though, Israel is a very discrimating country. I mean, how is it fair that the Israeli-Arabs do not have to attend the compulsory military service while every Jewish-Israeli does.

It’s such a great crime against democracy not to give citizenship to people who mostly left willingly in 1948. A census in Beirut after the refugees had come there found that over 60% had left without even seeing an Israeli soldier. I think the Syrian prime minister, Khaled al-Azam, Syrian Prime Minister in 1949, put it rather well in his memoirs, “We brought destruction upon the [Palestinian] refugees, by calling on them to
leave their homes.”