Dann is right on target. Israel's enemies have made sure the Arab refugee remains unsolved to give them a constant excuse to attack Israel. This is the political part of the scam. The economic part of the scam is the untold billions of dollars of international aid collected by the UNRWA, Fatah, Hamas and other entities, who pretend to be building a state. In fact, the aid goes to purchase Mercedes and other luxuries and build fat bank accounts for P.A. leaders. Arafat squirreled away hundreds of millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts and his successors do the same. Palestine is nothing but a gigantic political and economic scam.

make the title "arabs, we took the land you were living on and you're not getting it back. deal with it." you're really dancing around what you're actually trying to say by making it seem like its somebody else's fault that these people are in refugee camps to start with. now dont get me wrong, i couldnt really care less about the whole "we were here first, the bible says so" argument or the "they started it" one either. i dont care who it was, just dont be disingenuous in what youre trying to say. i dont know why you would even bother doing so as you will find plenty of support from the usual talkbackers.

About '30 000 UNWRA personnel earn their lifelyhood from the 'Palestinian Refugee Problem. Why slaughter a healthy, milk giving cow and 'solve the problem? Its like the story of the lawyer's son, taking over his fathers practice and seeing that all the difficult and unsolved cases can be 'solved in 2 à 3 month time. When confronting his father with this fact, the father answers: "son, I send you & your brothers to school, to University, build our villa's, designer clothes, went on holiday's & cruises, bought nice cars, etc. You want to "solve these cases in 2 à 3 month"?

Alleged Jewish immigrants claim a 3,000 link to the "Land of Israel" yet they cannot produce a shred of evidence that their ancestors came from this land. Palestinian refugees have been expelled 63 years ago, have their home keys, and land deeds, all ready to submit to a Court of Law. Who wins the legal argument? Who wins the moral argument? Bring international arbitration. That's what's international law is all about!

number 5 million and insist on the right of return (to Israel) have one purpose in mind: To exterminate the state of Israel. Very hardhitting. As usual, Moshe Dann is exceedingly incisive and, what's more, he is (unfortunately) accurate.

Should the real refugees not also be given states in Islamic lands, who were expelled with pogroms and murder? The UN archives say the Jewish refugees were greater than all Muslim ones combined. UNRWA is blatantly assisting those only hell bent on another holocaust!

what you lost - trillions of dollars over the past 63 years. And to add insult to injury, most of you left at the behest of your Arab brethren embarking on war against Israel, with the promise that you would return after they drove the Jews into the sea. Shut up and continue to enjoy the largesse. The Europeans and US are happy to continue providing for you ad infinitum, even if they can't provide for their own people. You Arabs are their first priority. My taxpayer money is going towards your support while you twiddle. But don't forget that it is the Arab world that made you refugees, not the Israelis. It was your Arab brethren that started the war from which your people fled.

besides for the Torah which existed long before islam... The Torah is the jewish deed to the land whether the world likes it or not.. There are also many deeds to jews who legally bought land from Arabs. Also, there is quite a bit of archaeological evidence that the Jewish people existed in the area long before the Muslim conquest.Please explain what right Muslims ever had to conquer a land that did not belong to them. The amount of "refugees" is not proportionate to the amount of space in the land. The arguement of "Palestinians" being in the land doesn't wash being that in 1882 there were barely 250,000.. while there has been a jewish presence in the land CONSISTENTLY for the past 3,000 years even if it were small.. And now on the topic of tnternational law: Israel has fulfilled it's part of resolution 242 by withdrawing from 90 percent of the terroritories gained lawfully in 1967.. That is why it didn't say "THE"... No other nation in the world , acting rationally,has relinquished territories from an aggressor in self defense. AND, the UN has a legal obligation to uphold all resolutions made by international bodies prior to it's existence.. i.e. The League of Nations , Balfour Declarations , San Remo Conference of 1920.. Just because the UN which is a bunch of corrupt individuals decide to make "laws" does not make them international law. That is why the USA never calls the settlements illegal but "illegitimate" b/c they KNOW that it's not illegal.. And, it wasn't the Israelis who made the refugee issue but the Arab nations THEMSELVES as per : The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.” — PLO spokesman Mahmud Abbas (“Abu Mazen”), Falastin a-Thaura, March 1976 So for all those who think Israel is contrary to international law, let them actually look into the laws instead of looking at the media. www.mythsandfacts.com/

That's another lie that's been going around for decades. The Jews took the poor Palestinians' land. The Zionists started settling in what is now Israel in the 1880s. The didn't take anybody's land. They bought empty lands from the Ottoman and with the Ottoman's empire concent that they'll settle in this part of the world. What is now Israel was then a backward, desolated, scarcely populated part of the Ottoman empire. Yes, there were Arabs living there in villages and towns like Jaffa and Haifa, just like there were Jews there, but their numbers were small -less than half a million all spread over the territory which is now Israel+west bank+Gaza, and it wasn't "their" land, it was part of the Ottoman empire and they were citizens of that empire just like the Jews who lived there. From the 1880s onward, when the Zionists started to develop the land after hundreds of years of neglect, when they started building towns (Tel Aviv in 1909 for instance), villages, developed modern agriculture and so on, they attracted even more Arabs from neighbouring countries to the developing land. (Some "Palestinians" are the descendants of Arabs from Lebanon, Egypt etc. who came to the land in the beginning of the 20th century) The people who did leave their houses and lands, the people whose descendants are now refugees came to be that as a result of a war which the ARABS started in 1948, because THEY didn't want the Jews to have homes and lands in Palestine. THEY are the ones who tried to steal the lands which the Jews bought legally. They are the ones who wanted to kill the Jews and have all of Palestine to themselves. They were not interested in their homes and lands then - no one chased them out, they were interested in making sure that the Jews will not have homes and lands - homes and lands which, again, they settled in and built legally when the land was part of the Ottoman empire and then British Palestine. So why don't YOU for a change be honest and don't preach other people about honesty.

One could argue about why the grandfathers were refugees - although the evidence is pretty conclusive that the vast majority were not expelled - however there is simply no dispute about who is causing the current refugees to be refugees - the Arabs, the Palestinian leadership in particular and the UN and they are all doing it for money and politics.

Majority of Palestinian 'refugees' left all by themselves. This isn't "Arab land", and there's plenty of objective evidence of continued Jewish presence on this land for 3000 years. So don't lie, it just makes all Palestinians look bad. Speaking of land deeds and keys- many Jewish Israelis have theirs from Iraq, Yemen, and other Arab countries. Omission of facts is lying, too. Interesting that jj admits that s/he "doesn't care" about facts. You both are so busy playing victim while 'refugees' are rotting in the refugee camps, used and abandoned by the very Arabs whose land we supposedly took.

There is ample archaeoligical evidence including carbon dated artifacts, the Dead Sea Scrolls written in Hebrew and historical documents such as Josephus Flavious writings. Get your facts right and save us your ignorance.

We were there when you came in, we were there when you went out again. If you knew Israel at all, you would know that there are so many Jewish sites (spanning from the very old to the previously new) that you could play dot to dot with them on a map. Do you think that everyone in the area who is "Arab" has been there longer? If so how do you explain the fact that between the world wars, Arab immigration to Israel out numbered Jewish immigration (apart from the British white paper restricting Jewish immigration)), how do you explain the fact that everyone in Daliyat Carmel speaks the Halebi dialect, how do you explain the Bedouins around Mt Tabor of the Yemeni persuasion?....

Nour The minority of people who fled Israel in the 1948 warfare is balanced by the Jews who also lost their belongings throughout the Middle East. When the Arab countries compensate the Jews , the Israel will be forced to compensate the Arabs. Don't hold your breath to see this happening. Even a hostile Nour is entitled to be hostile. moshe

What happened to the hundred of thousands of Cambodian refugees that entred Thialand. Some were resettled in other countries but 95% were returned to Cambodia once the war ended. This is what happens to most refugees. They go back to the countries they fled once the fighting ends. The only reason we have so many Pal refugees is that Israel is the only country that refuses to allow them to return after the fighting ended.

It is CLEAR that jj has NEVER heard of the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference, the Palestine Mandate, etc. So it NEVER fails to make my TOES laugh to see a FOOT in the MOUTH.

Ynet has censored my comment, and cuz of that i will not post anything today ......BUT I may change my mind SO DO NOT BE SO HAPPY ; )

leave or be made leave, a fine choice indeed. this usual myth of "they all just decided one day to pack their stuff and leave, no connection to our actions whatsoever". you are all also not paying attention to what i said about the fact that i could not care less if i tried about who was where first according to some collection of ancient fairytales or who started a fight over half a century ago. as for who's fault it is that theyre in those camps, it's both theirs and yours. you're like cats and dogs. although it is interesting that you all naturally assumed i was saying it was solely isreal's fault. tells a lot about you. also, you are not paying attention to the fact that my comment was simply about the article's authors dishonesty in what they were trying to actually say. do you guys actually have a template of answers prepared where you simply fill in key words and then just copy and paste (especially 9)? because seriously, almost every article on this site has some variation of your talkbacks, with minor changes. oh and #9, the whole "they werent really using the land properly, so it's only right that we "buy" it". very nice move: "Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed--"...

Ever heard of Josephus? Ever wondered where the word 'Jew' comes from? Evidence for people like you - and for Holocaust deniers - is irrelevant. Whatever the historical record shows, you'll reject it if it doesn't fit your world view.

Arabs were not expelled from Israel. They were told they could stay and remain safely in Israel. An estimated 160,000 Arabs did remain in Israel. In your own words, your family fled to Lebanon because of the Syrian militias fighting in the area. Your family did not think of fighting for the land or remaining to build a future in Israel. From Lebanon they went to Canada. So what if you you have a house key and land deed? Your family should have thought of this 63 years ago. Running away from Arab armies and militias was the priority. Time to use all the billions of dollars forked over by overly generous organizations to remove your Palestinian refugees from squalid camps. You should be ashamed of the situation Nour. And I bet you do nothing to help them. You obviously don't win the legal or moral argument. History connects the Jews to the land of Israel. Anthropological finds and antiquities also provide evidence of the Jewish presence.

Did you know that if you apply the same rules to Jewish refugees resulting from the conflict as UNWRA does for Arabs (transfer of refugee status via birth), that the number of Jewish refugees would still be higher. 41% of Israel's population is made up of those Jewish refugees from Arab countries (and their descendents), about 20% o0f Israel is non Jewish (majority Arabic speakers). That's not including Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who came to Israel via more normal channels, (there are also a lot of other non Askenazi population groups)... so already you have a majority population of Middle Eastern origin, 2 thirds of whom are the result of mass refugee movement. A population of refugees who are under constant threat of further attack by terrorist groups which are supported by a multi million dollar backer (unwra). Take yourself out of the fray for a minute and just think; what would you do in that situation?

The core issue is not which side has no right of return, but denial of the other's right, and the denial of their existence!!!

As for you complaint that my comment seems to repeat itself in various articles - well what can we do? we can't change history and real facts. Regarding the "White nan's burden" - well it's good that the content of your comment changed now from "stole the land" to "bought it from Arabs with no money", and what an unfair thing to do I'm sorry but I can't really find a problem when a people without a land who's been persecuted for thousands of years (the Jews) decides to take its fate into its own hands and by LEGAL means and by a lot of hard work and dedication rebuilds its ancient homeland - the land which the Jews were always cursed to return to - the sentence "Jew go back to your country Palestine", or "your country the holy land" was shouted though out the centeries at Jews in Russia, Poland, Germany, England, Spain, France, Hungary, etc. etc. And Regarding the "poor" Palestinians - I'm sure a lot of the land was sold out of the love for the money received for it. Also, sorry to bring it up again, but the Palestinians until 1967 were "just" Arabs living in a the former British Palestine. Their national identity, culture were similar and part of the millions of Arabs living in neighboring countries. When you think that the Jews have NO WHERE else to live in security and equality except Israel and that the Arabs have vast territory all around this tiny land, I don't see why it's such a tragedy that at least part of the land will be the home of the Jews - especially when no Arab had to be uprooted or to loose his lands and home - they could continue living within the Jewish state - like many Arabs Israelis do today.

palestinians are the only group of people with a 4 generation refugee status and the only ones who were not absorbed by their own people's lands although arabs possess 99, 9% of the m- east territory. a baby with palestinian grandparents born in 3th generation in syria or lebanon is not a refugee but a native of this country. remember all the jewish refugees from the arab states.do you think arab states will grant them and their children/grandchildren "the right to return", pay compensation? palestinians are a political tool in the hands of arab nations, they need to be kept in constant state of misery in arab countries. the plot is that 4 millions of them "return " to israel to eliminate it. this plan won't work.

the ancestry of the jews has been studied and proven in various extensive studies. this is the last one, published in "nature", the most renowned scientific journal of the world. The Genome-wide structure of the Jewish people" published in "Nature" 466, 238-242 , July 2010 Conclusion of the study The results of the study cast light on the variegated genetic architecture of the Middle East, and trace the origins of most Jewish Diaspora communities to the Levant. Interesting that the internationally renowned scientists called the jews “people” and not “religion”. and now you can start speculating about zionist countrol of scientific literature, etc., etc. ...

The suspence and anticipation of your profound words is killing all of us.

A SWINDLE if I ever saw one! This rediculous situation has been enabled and continued, by the Islamic world, in order to perpetuate the myth of Israeli conquest and occupation. By int'l standards the refugees were just a handful, and could have easily been resettled, as were hundreds of thousands of Jews after WW11, thanks to Jewish organizations. The oil rich countries could easily have built each one of them a home and funded a small business for each family, if they cared about them at all. It seems the only time they are concerned with their Palestinian brethren is when they can use the issue to bash Israel.

Someone posted here that the refugees number 5 million. I assume he means as of now. Does anyone have statistics on how many they were at the exact time that they became "refugees." Does anyone out there know why their few numbers at that time, were not assisted and resettled by their Muslem brethren in the oil rich countries. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees (and they were penniless and ill emotionally and physically) were aided by Jewish organizations after WW11. Could this not have been done for the Pali refugees?