Editor’s
Note from The Jewish Press: We’ve excerpted portions of an address by
then-Israeli Ambassador Ebba Eban to the UN General Assembly’s Special
Political Committee on Nov. 17, 1958. The speech makes for remarkable reading,
as it was written and delivered just ten years after Israel’s founding. The
events described were still fresh in people’s minds; the historical distortions
popularized by the ensuing decades’ relentless drumbeat of anti-Israel
propaganda hand yet to gain traction.
|
By Abba
Eban Reprinted
with permission from: The
Jewish Press 338 |
The Arab refugee problem was caused by a war of
aggression, launched by the Arab states against Israel in 1947 and 1948. Let
there be no mistake. If there had been no war against Israel, with its
consequent harvest of bloodshed, misery, panic and flight, there would be no
prob-lem of Arab refugees today.
Once you determine the respon-sibility for that war, you
have deter-mined the responsibility for the refugee problem. Nothing in the
history of our generation is clearer or less controversial than the initiative
of Arab governments for the conflict out of which the refugee tragedy emerged.
The origins of that conflict are clearly defined by the
confessions of Arab govern-ments themselves: "This will be a war of
exter-mination," declared the secretary-general of the Arab League
speaking for the govern-ments of six Arab states, "it will be a momen-tous
massacre to be spoken of like the Mongo-lian massacre and the Crusades."
The assault began on the last day of November 1947. From
then until the expiration of the British Mandate in May 1948 the Arab states,
in concert with Palestine Arab leaders, plunged the land into turmoil and
chaos. On the day of Israel's Declaration of Indepen-dence, the armed forces of
Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, supported by contin-gents from Saudi
Arabia and the Yemen, crossed their frontiers and marched against Israel.
The refugee problem was not created by the General
Assembly's recommendation for the establishment of Israel. It was created by
the attempts of Arab governments to destroy that recommendation by force.
The crisis arose not, as Arab spokesmen have said, because the United Nations
adopted a resolution eleven years ago; it arose because Arab governments
attacked that resolution by force. If the United Nations proposal had been
peacefully accepted, there would be no refu-gee problem today hanging as a
cloud upon the tense horizons of the Middle East.
Apart from the question of its origin, the perpetuation
of this refugee problem is an unnatural event, running against the whole course
of experience and precedent. Since the end of the Second World War, problems
affecting forty million refugees have confronted governments in various parts
of the world. In no case, except that of the Arab refugees - amounting to less
than two percent of the whole - has the international community shown constant
responsi-bility and provided lavish aid.
In every other case a solution has been found by the integration
of refugees into their host countries. Nine million Koreans; 900,000 refu-gees
from the conflict in Vietnam; 8.5 million Hindus and Sikhs leaving Paki-stan
for India; 6.5 million Muslims fleeing India to Pakistan; 700,000 Chinese
refugees in Hong Kong; 13 million Germans from the Sudeten-land, Poland and
other East European States reaching West and East Germany; thousands of Turkish
refugees from Bulgaria; 440,000 Finns separated from their homeland by a change
of frontier; 450,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands arrived destitute
in Israel; and an equal number (of Jewish refugees) con-verging on Israel from
the remnants of the Jewish holocaust in Europe - these form the tragic
procession of the world's refugee popu-lation in the past two decades.
In every case except that of the Arab refugees now
in Arab lands, the countries in which the refugees sought shelter have
facili-tated their integration. In this case alone has integration been
obstructed.
The paradox is the more astonishing when we reflect that
the kinship of language, reli-gion, social background and national senti-ment
existing between the Arab refugees and their Arab host countries has been at
least as intimate as those existing between any other host countries and any
other refugee groups. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the
integration of Arab refugees into the life of the Arab world is an objectively
feasible pro-cess which has been resisted for political reasons.