JERUSALEM // A broad coalition of Jewish lobby groups has made a
series of breakthroughs this year in its campaign to link the question of
justice for millions of Palestinian refugees with justice for Jews who left Arab
states in the wake of Israel’s establishment 60 years ago.
Referring to these Jews as the “forgotten refugees” and claiming
that their plight is worse than that of exiled Palestinians, the campaign has
scored political successes in recent months in Washington, London and Brussels.
Last week, the campaign received a major fillip when one of
Israel’s largest political parties announced that restitution of property for
Arab Jews was a central plank of its platform for the general election scheduled
for February.
Shas, a religious fundamentalist party and
the third biggest in the current parliament, said it will refuse to support any
government that reaches a deal with the Palestinians unless it first forces the
Arab states to compensate these Jewish emigrants.
Shas, which has a record of opposing peace
agreements with the Palestinians, draws its support chiefly from Jews who
migrated to Israel from Arab countries – known in Israel as the Mizrahim.
The party is likely to be the power broker in the next
government. Its refusal to accept terms offered by Tzipi Livni, the prime
minister-designate, especially on Jerusalem, forced her to call the election
last month.
The international campaign highlighting the suffering of Arab
Jews, led by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), a pressure group
drawing together dozens of Jewish groups in the US and Europe, has made dramatic
headway over the past year.
After heavy lobbying, the US House of Representatives passed a
resolution in April declaring that no Middle East peace could be achieved
“without addressing the uprooting of centuries-old Jewish communities in the
Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf”. George W Bush, the president,
was also said to be “very conscious” of the Arab Jews’ plight.
In recent months, members of JJAC have also addressed the British
parliament, the United Nations and the European Parliament.
And last month, the group officially moved its operations into
Israel, promising to bring strong pressure on the next government.
A central claim of the JJAC campaign is that the Jewish exodus
associated with the 1948 war dwarfs that suffered by the Palestinians. JJAC
argues that at least 850,000 Jews were forced out of 10 Arab countries, compared
to 720,000 Palestinians expelled from the territory that became Israel.
Using dubious figures, one economist, Stanley Zabludoff, produced
a paper this year for the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs arguing that Arab
Jews’ losses, at US$6 billion (Dh22bn) in today’s figures, are 50 per cent
higher than Palestinian losses.
Yitzhak Cohen, a Shas spokesman, echoed that claim: “The uprooted
Jews’ problem is equal to, if not greater than, the Palestinian refugees’
problem.”
Drawing an equivalence between Jewish and Palestinian property
losses as a consequence of the 1948 war has been made by Israeli politicians on
many occasions in peace negotiations.
The issue was raised during the later stages of the Oslo talks,
at the Camp David negotiations in 2000, and again at the conference called by Mr
Bush a year ago at Annapolis. A cabinet minister, Rafi Eitan, has the issue
included in his portfolio.
This year, both Ehud Olmert, the outgoing prime minister, and Ms
Livni have emphasised the plight of Arab Jews in private conversations with
visiting heads of state.
The reason is clear. Proponents of the Arab Jews’ case argue that
what occurred during the 1948 war was an “exchange of populations”, suggesting
that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has already been settled in a manner
similar to the conflict between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, when hundreds of
thousands were displaced from their homes.
Unlike Shas, however, Israeli governments have been reluctant to
go public with such claims – a fact recently lamented by Uzi Dayan, the
country’s former National Security Adviser.
This is because the equivalence argument fails to withstand
minimal scrutiny. There are a number of grounds for rejecting the case made by
the JJAC, Shas and government officials.
First, it holds the Palestinians accountable for actions for
which they had no responsibility. In fact, the cost of the exodus of Jews from
Arab states was borne chiefly by the Palestinians themselves, whose land, homes
and belongings were transferred to these Jewish immigrants.
Second, although historians are agreed that the Palestinians were
expelled by Israel in 1948, there is little evidence that most Arab Jews were
forced from their homes.
According to the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, whose family left
Baghdad in 1950, most of these Jewish migrants left of their own accord, even if
under pressure from Zionist agencies. The largest numbers came from Morocco,
lured to Israel by Zionist officials who promised them a better life.
Only in the case of the small Jewish populations in Egypt and
Libya was compulsion involved.
And third, and most embarrassing for Israel, there is
overwhelming evidence that its secret Mossad agency carried out false-flag
operations in Arab countries that endangered local Jews and significantly
contributed to the exodus.
The involvement of Israel in bombing campaigns in both Egypt and
Baghdad – and possibly elsewhere – is mentioned, for example, in the diaries of
Moshe Sharrett, the former foreign minister. The explosions were designed, in
his words, to “liven up the Middle East”.
A majority of the Jews from Arab states ended up in Israel, where
today they constitute nearly half of the Jewish population. Shas makes it clear
that its primary goal in raising the issue of restitution is to foil any attempt
by the next government to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the right wing Likud party and
the candidate most likely, according to polls, to become the next prime
minister, is also known to be sympathetic to the principle of tying the question
of Jewish and Palestinian refugees.
Should a new White House under Barack Obama try to revive the
Middle East peace process, Shas may yet offer Mr Netanyahu precisely the escape
hatch he is seeking.
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