Via Raw Story, this unprecedented news that, if true, just may break the Middle East gridlock:
Former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert said on Sunday the United States had agreed to accept 100,000 Palestinian refugees within the framework of an eventual Middle East peace deal, media reported.
Washington had agreed to absorb and give citizenship to 100,000 refugees, while Israel would accept less than 20 000, Israeli media quoted Olmert as telling a conference.
“The numbers discussed were below 20 000, but this would require an end to the conflict and a Palestinian announcement that they would not make any more demands,” the Ynet website quoted him as saying.
Olmert was speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv organised by the Geneva Initiative, an Israeli-Palestinian group that aims to show a peace accord is possible.
Unless Congress passes a special law, this agreement taps out the annual quota of immigrants allowed from other countries. Plus, the federal government contracts with social service agencies to provide resettlement services, and the organizations have to be large enough to handle additional volume.
The US might take in a few thousand Palestinian Christians
but there is no way in this climate that 100K Muslim
refugees are resettled stateside.
So, they send the Palestinians here. Then the wealthy move to Europe or China. We become Mexico Norte. Now Canadian newpapers are fully of angry letters from citizens insisting that the government do something to stop the flood of impoverished immigrants from the U.S. See, if we had just let the South seceed it would be a third world economy by now and we could at least have saved everybody north of Virginia.
We managed to resettle 50K Vietnamese after the war.
So, essentially, Palestinians will be offered settlement in the US to give up their lands to Israel. Plus, it would be one step toward slowing the demographic flood which will swamp Israel’s Jewish numbers.
Assist in not quite ethnic cleansing? Do we want to be party to that?
There are some upsides, but I fear there may be unintended consequences. And blowback.
I haven’t thought fully about this, but somehow it seems, well, unseemly.
i can already hear the cries of “terra terra terra!”
Hell, I have absolutely nothing against the Palestinians. Will they be able to draw unemployment? Or, maybe they’ll be the ‘new’ Latinos after we send 12 miliion or so ‘illegals’ back home. Ya’ think?
While sitting on hold for Aetna, the great delayer of giving actual information to its insurees, I realized 100K is a tiny percentage of Palestinians — a drop in the bucket.
But I guess it’s supposed to sound good…or somehing??
Ah! This was supposedly an offer made by BushBoy, who told Olmet he would pass it on to the new administration. And, now I’m not sure if this applies to Palestiians living in the West Bank or if it applies to those living outside of Israel and the West Bank in those huge refugee camps.
Again, 100K is a pitifully small number, and agreeing to this would mean ginving up the right of return for Palesinian refugees.
Time will reveal something about this!
So the Palestinians will replace the Mexicans we’ve lost in the depression-recession?
That will be good for business.