A group representing Jewish refugees from Arab countries on Wednesday demanded compensation for property they left behind, while acknowledging that Palestinian refugees from Israel must also be dealt with fairly.
The group, ”Justice for Jews from Arab Countries,” released a 39-page report detailing the background and history of the issue of 850 000 Jews who were expelled or fled Arab countries after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Unlike the 700 000 Palestinians who left the new Jewish state, the Jews from Arab countries did not remain refugees for long, the report states. More than 600 000 were taken in by the new state of Israel and granted citizenship, while others scattered around the world and began new lives.
Meanwhile, many Palestinians languish in refugee camps, some with three generations of refugees, as Arab nations have not absorbed them, the report said.
Stanley Urman, head of the group, charged that the world has given ”disproportionate and differential treatment toward Palestinian refugees” while failing to deal with Jewish refugees.
The report estimated that Jewish property left behind in Arab countries was worth about $100-billion.
”The legal case of displaced Jews to redress is as strong as, if not stronger than, the case of Palestinian refugees,” it said.
Palestinians demand the right of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants, about 4-million people, to return to their original homes in Israel. The demand has been instrumental in torpedoing several rounds of peace negotiations. Israel refuses to take in Palestinian refugees, fearing it would undermine the Jewish character of the state.
Urman said a call for a solution to the refugee issue in the US-backed ”road map” peace plan, launched by US President George Bush at a Middle East summit June 4 in Jordan, could apply to both Palestinian and Jewish refugees. The third stage of the plan includes ”an agreed, just, fair, and realistic solution to the refugee issue”, but this is assumed to refer to Palestinians.
According to the study, presented to the United Nations on Monday, 900 000 Jews lived in Arab countries before 1948, compared to only 8 000 today. Jews had made their homes in Arab countries for 2 500 years, or 1 000 years before the advent of Islam.
At a Jerusalem news conference, Linda Abdul-Aziz, who said she was smuggled out of Iraq in 1968, said that after the state of Israel was created, the Iraqi regime seized all Jewish property.
”We had to pay rent to the state on a house that belonged to us,” she said.
Then her father was arrested and never returned, she said. She said she decided to flee Iraq after nine Jews were hanged in public. – Sapa-AP