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Who Is Responsible for the Palestinian Catastrophe?

[ Jerusalem Post] Irwin Cotler - The Palestinian people did endure a Nakba (catastrophe) 60 years ago, but it was not as a result of the creation of the State of Israel. Rather, it was the result of the Palestinian and Arab leadership rejecting the UN resolution calling for the establishment of both a Jewish state and a Palestinian-Arab state. The Jewish leadership accepted the resolution, but the Palestinian and Arab leadership did not, which they had a right to do. What they did not have a right to do was attack the nascent Jewish state with the objective - as they acknowledged at the time - of initiating a "war of extermination." Had the UN Partition Resolution been accepted 60 years ago, there would have been no Arab-Israeli war - no refugees, Jewish or Arab - and none of the pain and suffering since. Indeed, we would have been celebrating the 60th anniversary of both the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. Moreover, this rejectionism, where Arab leadership was prepared to forgo the establishment of a Palestinian state if it meant countenancing a Jewish state in any borders, has underpinned the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever since. In addition, the Arab countries also created a Jewish refugee population resulting from the Arab war against its own Jewish nationals. A pattern of state-sanctioned repression and persecution in Arab countries - including Nuremberg-like laws - resulted in forced expulsions, illegal sequestration of property, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and murder - namely, anti-Jewish pogroms. The writer is a former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada.
2008-07-01 01:00:00
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