In fact they were trying to return to families in Egypt in 1948 when ‘Farook the Crook' had his provost seal the frontier against his own people out of pique and petulance at losing his quite illegal aggression in Palestine.
SIR – ‘Resistance to oppression’ quotes back to Article Two of the Rights of Man besides the US First Amendment right of the people, ‘peaceably to assemble,’ for redress of grievances. When Bob Storey waves Soviet-inspired UN General Assembly resolutions promoting armed force he is at the least disingenuous at the expense of those unfortunates he is seconding.
To enter any contest with arms invites similar response and the authorities are usually richer, so better ‘tooled up’ with obvious consequences. The teenagers and young adults suborned to attend the Gaza fence so regularly – with transport provided – are not desperate to return to their grandparents’ 1947 locations which they would not recognise and do not have documents for.
They are desperate for opportunities beyond Gaza, but given Arafat's slimy siding with Saddam Hussain over Kuwait it is the Gulf States that refuse them liberty and opportunity.
Given over 40 million colonisers of Irish descent in the Americas and Australia, be a little careful. You can change to local administrations and continue trading to mutual benefit as after US or Irish independence and the decolonisation of 1945 - 60 or of Latin America; but encouraging the Arabs of Palestine to bang their heads on Israel repeatedly borders on insanity or great power cynical games or a personal problem of the psyche.
Article 29.3 of the UN declaration of universal human rights also disqualifies the misuse of itself ... ‘contrary to the purposes and principles of the UN.’ The entire Arab war on Israel's existence since 1947, if not 1920, has been contrary to the purposes and principles of the UN and its predecessors that there should be a majority Jewish state in the ‘Palestine Mandate.’
That included TransJordan now the Hashemite Kingdom, which by accepting partition in 1921, pocketed the eastern four-fifths of Palestine so that those who are only blotters for propaganda forget it ever was Palestine.
If internal ‘refugees’ went to the East Bank they were still in Palestine even as those in Gaza are still within Palestine's British Mandate borders as sanctified in the 1968 PLO Covenant. Further up to a third of Gaza Strip families are surnamed Masri / Misri. If we are talking of return, they should be in Egypt. In fact they were trying to return to families in Egypt in 1948 when ‘Farook the Crook’ had his provost seal the frontier against his own people out of pique and petulance at losing his quite illegal aggression in Palestine.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Adam,
Prestwich,
Manchester.
*****
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