Letter to The Washington Post

Dear Editor,

Richard Cohen blames Israel for the last remaining refugees of the WWII era asking "why else all those Palestinian refugees?", other than because of Israel. ["Whose Israel Shall It Be?" (Feb. 24, 2009)]. With all the tens of millions of refugees from the WWII era that Cohen cites – the Turks, Greeks, Germans, Poles, Pakistanis, Indians, his question is fitting but his answer leaves out a more compelling question to those who wonder, with all the others settled decades ago, why are the Palestinian Arabs the only refugees who still exist?

Palestinian refugees live in camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. Unlike the more than one million Jews who were displaced during that same period and resettled, which Cohen conveniently leaves out, the Palestinians were kept in refugee camps by Arab leaders to serve as a political tool in the Arab war against Israel. Even now, with Gaza under Palestinian control, why not let the Palestinians settle the land? Because it is the image of the squalor, and its impact on world opinion, that is their most effective tool in their war against Israel. Richard Cohen buys right into it.

The real answer to Cohen's question, "Why else all those Palestinian refugees [today]" is because Arab leaders have not been willing to resettle them.

Michael Berenhaus