US, Not Arab Countries, to Receive Palestinian Refugees from Iraq

The Obama administration, in a precedent-setting move, has approved resettlement in the U.S. for 1,350 Palestinian refugees from Iraq. But before this becomes a done deal, Congress and the media ought to ask the White House and the State Department why these refugees, rather than being granted asylum in the U.S., shouldn't get immigration visas to Arab countries, especially those with immense oil wealth.

Wouldn't that be a more logical, more natural destination for these refugees?

White House reporters should ask President Obama, who has twice met with Saudi King Abdullah this year, whether he urged the Saudi monarch to welcome these refugees. After all, Saudi Arabia is in the Sunni Arab camp; so are Palestinians. Why shouldn't as rich a country as Saudi Arabia be expected to welcome a few thousand of these Palestinians? Or what about Kuwait or other oil-rich sheikdoms along the Persian Gulf?

Why are these Palestinian refugees having to be resettled in the U.S. instead of in their more natural milieu -- in Arab countries that constantly trumpet their great solicitude for their well-being (but hardly ever deliver)?

The truth is that Arab leaders feel no real kinship or solidarity with Palestinians. They have exploited them as pawns to use in their century-old campaign to deny Jews their sovereign rights as a nation in the Middle East. But otherwise, they have no use for them.

Just examine the fine print of the so-called Arab "peace" initative, which predicates normal relations with Israel on a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees into Israel, while stipulating that each Arab nation reserves the right to deny them "patriation" within its own borders...

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