As of this May, 2,770 Palestinians had been killed since the start of the civil war in Syria. But when Palestinians there sought refuge in Palestinian controlled Gaza and the West Bank, PA President Mahmoud Abbas turned them down. He said, "It's better that they die in Syria than that they give up their right of return [to Israel]."
In Arab countries, Palestinians are subject to apartheid laws such as the ones in Lebanon that prevent them from working in many professions including medicine, law, engineering, and accounting. This stands in sharp contrast to Israel where all professions are open and Arab-Israelis are also Supreme Court justices and Knesset members.
While the Arab/Palestinian population in Israel is constantly growing, Palestinians have been and are being expelled from Arab countries in which they have lived for years.
In the 1990's, 200,000 Palestinians were forced to leave Kuwait.
In Iraq, only 6,000 out of 25,000 Palestinians are left. According to the head of the Palestinian League in Iraq, Thamer Meshainesh, militias routinely attack Palestinians as part of an organized plan to get them to leave the country.
Khaled Abu Toameh writes:
...when it comes to ethnic cleansing and torture of Palestinians in Arab countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the Palestinian leadership chooses to look the other way.
Similarly, the international media seems to have forgotten that there are tens of thousands of Palestinians living in various Arab countries. The only Palestinians that Western journalists know and care about are those living in the West Bank and Gaza strip.
Toameh's report this week, "The Secret Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians" is startling because media tell us so little about Palestinians in the Arab world.
If Israel can't be blamed, there seems to be no interest in what happens to Palestinians.
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