The difficulties encountered by the nations of the Middle East to integrate the so-called Palestinians, a group of Arab refugees that did not exist when Israel came into existence, have their origins in the first attack on the new nation of Israel in 1948.
They were told by the invading Arab nations to abandon their homes and farms with the assurance that they would be restored once the Israelis were defeated. Sixty years later Israel is thriving and succeeding generations of the largest and oldest refugee group in the world continues to wreak havoc on Israel and neighboring nations.
The Palestinians have become a human pestilence. Wherever they gather in sufficient numbers their only export is death. When not at war with the Israelis, they make war among themselves.
That’s why the May 9th headline, “Hezbollah overruns west Beirut as Lebanon on brink”, is a reminder of how the Palestinians living in Lebanon continue to repay the hospitality of their host nation by seeking to overthrow it. Indeed, earlier when they attempted to overthrow the monarchy of Jordan, the father of the present king drove out large numbers of Palestinians who then fled to Lebanon.
This is not to say that Lebanon, though a nation with a history as old as Israel’s, had not been a political patchwork quilt since its modern reincarnation following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Lebanon was ceded to France along with Syria, while the British took control of Iraq, Jordan, and the protectorate of Palestine. The protectorate was understood to precede the founding of a Jewish state. The Arab states were pure invention for colonial purposes.
Lebanon, launched on September 1, 1920, joined together a population of Christian Maronites, a Muslim sect called the Druze, and Sunni Muslims. In 1943 a National Pact would establish a government of sorts that would have a Christian as president, a Sunni Muslim as prime minister, and a Shia Muslim as speaker of its Assembly.
As Sandra Mackey, author of “Mirror of the Arab World”, put it, “The whole elaborate system worked because the Lebanese, largely a product of Arab culture, possessed no clear sense of institutions.”
As Muslims gained in population, swelled by the Palestinians fleeing Jordan, the delicate political balance that had brought modernity and prosperity to Lebanon fell apart. From 1975 to 1990, the nation remained in a state of civil war.
Why the “pearl of the east” did not completely disappear as a nation is a mystery. Why it engaged in a civil war for fifteen years is not. The answer lies in the Palestinian inability to live in peace with any host nation. They are a cancer in the body politic of the Middle East.
Mackay writes, “The Lebanese civil war had proved neither heroic nor redemptive. Nor had the terrible bloodshed enabled the Lebanese state to establish its integrity. Nor had it advanced the process of transforming a fragile state into an authentic nation.”
Neither the Syrians who have always coveted Lebanon and occupied it militarily for a decade after the civil war, nor the Palestinians in the form of Hezbollah, an Iranian satanic spawn, want to permit a free, democratic, and independent Lebanon.
Those that keep telling Israel it must make peace with the Palestinians need to take a look at what is occurring in Lebanon again.
No doubt the Israeli army will return again in response to yet another attack by Palestinians from Lebanon. The world will send up a hue and cry about the horrid Israelis forced to defend themselves. Wiser heads will be rooting for them.
