[LINK] "The wandering Palestinian"

[rfmcdonald]

Just in time for the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the State of Israel and the beginning of the Palestinian exodus, The Economist has an extended article on the Palestinian diaspora.

[B]itterness is widely shared among the world's 10m Palestinians, 70% of whom are refugees or their descendants. Other peoples have suffered great tragedies, but the Palestinians' trauma not only refuses to reach closure, it has a horrible habit of repeating itself. Worse yet, its effects continue to poison politics within the wider region and beyond. In annual polling over the past six years, three-quarters of Arabs consistently place the issue of Palestine among their priorities.

In other words, little has changed since 1948, when street sentiment prompted five reluctant Arab governments to send troops on a vain mission to block the creation of Israel. During the ensuing war, the Palestinians' initial nakba, more than half the native population of Palestine, some 750,000 people, fled or were driven from the territory that became the Jewish state, whose troops then barred their return and systematically razed 531 of their ancestral villages. The six-day war in June 1967 brought the remaining 22% of historic Palestine under Israeli rule, and pushed out 250,000 more refugees.

The article concentrates on the difficult circumstances facing Palestinians living at home (in either part of Mandatory Palestine) and in the wider Middle East, but notice is also taken of Palestinians elsewhere--more than three hundred thousand Palestinians live in Latin America, for instance.