Palestinian Refugees

As the foreign minister of Egypt -- the largest Arab country -- Ahmed Maher might have expected a warmer welcome from Palestinians when he joined their worships in Jerusalem. But the scuffles that erupted at Al Aqsa mosque last month, with Islamic extremists yelling, "You are collaborating with the killers of Muslims," underscored a strong current of discontent among many Palestinians toward Arab states.

Israel, I fear, is on a suicidal path: It could cease to be the democratic home of the Jewish people. This is why I greatly appreciate President Obama's decision to come to Israel despite all the serious issues he faces in America. His visit could mark the beginning of a new era in the struggle to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because it is crucial to make the most of it, I am taking the liberty of offering four suggestions to the president as he prepares for his trip.

Israeli troops shot and wounded six Palestinians in the Gaza Strip's Jabaliya refugee camp when residents broke an army curfew to attend Muslim morning prayers today, hospitals said. A seventh Arab was injured by a percussion grenade in Jabaliya, where three Palestinians were shot to death in clashes Thursday, hospital officials said. Friday was the second day of Eid al-Fitr, the festival which ends the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

BEIRUT - Thousands of residents were fleeing a densely populated Palestinian district outside Damascus Monday amid rumors that Syrian government forces were massing and poised to attack. Syrian authorities say cadres of "terrorists" - the government's designation for the country's rebels - have infiltrated the Yarmouk camp, a sprawling urban enclave on the southern fringes of the capital. Yarmouk is home to about 300,000 people, half of them of Palestinian origin. Opposition activists said Syrian warplanes attacked the camp Sunday, killing at least eight people, including several outside a mosque.

Nearly 250 Palestinian refugees fleeing violence and death threats in Iraq arrived in Syria on Tuesday, after most had been stranded for weeks in a desert border area because Jordan refused to admit them. The Palestinians said their community in Iraq was being targeted by armed groups -- although some said they were fleeing general instability. "Every Palestinian in Iraq is targeted.

In 1948, 800,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled out of fear from their homes in what is now Israel, and they never have been allowed to return. Today, these refugees and their descendants number more than 4 million. More than any other factor, the dispossession and suffering of the Palestinian refugees have fueled the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And more than any other factor, their fate is the key to its resolution.

As Palestinian refugees from Kuwait and Iraq streamed westward across the Jordan River on Sunday, a senior Israeli government official promised to expedite the flow of those returning to the West Bank from the Persian Gulf crisis area. Shmuel Goren, occupied territories coordinator, paid a visit to this historic crossing place between Jordan and the West Bank and declared that Israel would "obviously help" any foreign citizens wishing to pass this way.

The surging tide of popular unrest in the Arab world reached Israel's borders Sunday for the first time as thousands of Palestinian refugees and fellow Arab protesters attempted to cross tightly secured frontiers from Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers opened fire on the rock-throwing demonstrators, leaving at least 12 people dead and scores wounded, officials said, at the Lebanese border village of Maroun Ras and along the Golan Heights border with Syria. The clashes took place on what Palestinians call Nakba Day, Arabic for "catastrophe," which marks Israel's 1948 founding and the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians, many of whom now live in Lebanon and Syria.

It is a foregone conclusion that any plebiscite for the Palestinian refugees will result in an overwhelming vote for the PLO. Therefore, the article by Kuttab becomes a fairy tale shaped for the consumption of the American public. From its inception, the PLO has ruled with relentless force and murder. The internecine warfare of this group has been most vicious and bloody. Once under the rule of the PLO, the Palestinian refugees will have little opportunity for dissent. Any demonstrations against the PLO will invite repressive force to a degree that would put the Israeli army on a level with kindergarten teachers.

An American was appointed to lead the U.N. agency trying to care for 4 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. Karen Koning Abu Zayd has been the deputy commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East since 2000.

BEIRUT - Battles raged Sunday in a sprawling Palestinian refugee camp outside Damascus as Syrian government troops pressed an offensive against rebels on the outskirts of the capital. Opposition activists reported at least eight killed when rockets from Syrian fighter jets struck near the Abdul Qader Husseini mosque in the Yarmouk camp, on the southern fringes of Damascus. Video said to be from the scene shows blood-streaked pavement and wounded people lying amid the rubble. The reported airstrike on Yarmouk would mark the first time that the government had used warplanes to target the camp, a densely populated urban zone that is home to tens of thousands, both Palestinians and non-Palestinians.

JERUSALEM - Historian Benny Morris has a knack for enraging Israelis of every political stripe. Morris' research on the 1948 war for independence challenged long-standing Zionist narratives that said Israel was not responsible for the creation of 750,000 Palestinian refugees. He infuriated right-wing Israelis by documenting secret plans to expel Arabs and accounts of massacres and rapes by Jewish forces. Then a few years ago, he turned his critical eye toward Palestinians, holding them largely responsible for stalled peace talks.

Two leaders, divided Re "Bibi and Barack," Opinion, Jan. 2 Aaron David Miller omits one factor in his analysis: that President Obama's one-sided pressure on Israel has only hardened Palestinian positions. Settlements have never been the core issue of the conflict. If there were none, the Palestinian leadership would quickly find a new pretext for confrontation. The bottom line remains Arab refusal to accept a permanent Jewish homeland behind any boundaries. Nowhere is the Palestinians' refusal to compromise clearer than on the refugee issue.

Syrian authorities preparing for a United Nations inspection are covering up damage in a Palestinian refugee camp that was pummeled with gunfire and rockets during a crackdown on protesters in recent days, according to a Western diplomat, Syrian activists and camp residents. The Syrian army and security forces launched a naval and ground attack on the coastal city of Latakia on Aug. 13. During the operation they shelled the Ramel refugee camp, which houses more than 10,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants as well as impoverished Syrians.

Syrian security forces cracking down on opposition strongholds in Latakia herded thousands of people into a stadium and took away their identification cards and cellphones, activists said Monday. Forces loyal to the regime of President Bashar Assad continued hammering opposition strongholds in the country's main port city, especially in the district of Ramleh, which has been pummeled with tank, gunboat and automatic weapons fire after unusually large antigovernment demonstrations broke out there Friday.

President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday held a longer-than-expected meeting at the White House, and afterward they acknowledged their differences on Mideast peace policy but insisted that the close relationship between the countries remains sound and will continue. Speaking to reporters, Netanyahu threw cold water on Obama's suggestion that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians should start with the pre-1967 borders, a position that Obama laid out in a speech on Thursday.

A Lebanese army force was deployed around three embattled Palestinian refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut, and bulldozers removed huge sand barricades from one of them, the Chatilla camp, as a Syrian-mediated truce took hold. Fighting between Shia Muslim militiamen and the camps' Palestinian defenders have left at least 150 people dead.

The United States said Thursday that it has given $3 million to a U.N. organization looking after Palestinian refugees in response to an appeal for emergency assistance. State Department spokesman Phyllis Oakley told reporters the contribution brings U.S. funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) this year to $70 million.

The surging tide of popular unrest in the Arab world reached Israel's borders Sunday for the first time as thousands of Palestinian refugees and fellow Arab protesters attempted to cross tightly secured frontiers from Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers opened fire on the rock-throwing demonstrators, leaving at least 12 people dead and scores wounded, officials said, at the Lebanese border village of Maroun Ras and along the Golan Heights border with Syria. The clashes took place on what Palestinians call Nakba Day, Arabic for "catastrophe," which marks Israel's 1948 founding and the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians, many of whom now live in Lebanon and Syria.

The broken peace process Re "Israel's lost weekend," Editorial, Jan. 25 If Israel lost a weekend, the Palestinians have lost 17 years of opportunities to make peace, having consistently chosen inflexible demands and violence instead. Has The Times forgotten that it was Israel that offered the Palestinians almost all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2000, and was summarily rejected? Or that Israel removed all of its settlements from the Gaza Strip, which was followed by a barrage of Palestinian rocket attacks that continue today?