Why Palestinians Still Live in Refugee Camps?

So much wasted Palestinian arab potential lost because of the "welfare" and "revenge" mentality and the refusal to move forward to find a lasting peace. Here's an excerpt from a National Review article that talks to this issue which actually existed before Israel was even involved when the Palestinian arabs were under Jordanian Rule (for 20 years) before UNWRA moved in and created its welfare system:

I spent some of my formative years in Hong Kong, a barren piece of rock with zero natural resources, under foreign occupation, chock-full of refugees from the Mao tyranny. The people there weren't lounging in UNRWA camps or making suicide runs at the governor's mansion. They were trading, building, speculating, manufacturing, working — with the result that Hong Kong is now a glittering modern city filled with well-dressed, well-educated, well-fed people, proud of what they have accomplished together, and with a higher standard of living than Britain herself. If, following the Oslo accords — or for that matter, in the 20 years of Jordanian occupation — the Palestinians had taken that route, had set aside their fantasies of revenge and massacre, and concentrated on building up something worth having, I might have respect for them. As it is, I don't.

The only halfway sympathetic thing I can find to say about the Palestinians is that UNRWA has surely been part of the problem. If you go to the UNRWA website, you will see how proud they are of having fed, clothed, sheltered, educated and cared for the Palestinian refugees of 1948... and their children... and their grandchildren. The number of people UNRWA cares for has gone from 600,000 in 1948 to nearly four million today. Now, I understand that the prime impulse of bureaucracies, especially welfare bureaucracies, is the consolidation and expansion of their turf, and a steady increase in the number of their "clients"; but this is ridiculous. The good people of Hong Kong should go down on their knees every night and thank God that there was no UNRWA in the colony in 1949. So, come to think of it, should the German and East European refugees who flooded into Western Europe after WWII. (I have seen the number 14 million somewhere — the Sudeten Germans alone numbered three million. Where are the festering camps? Where are the suicide bombers?)

Another thing to remember is that these camps are not really camps but more like towns. If you took a picture of a street in one of these camps, and compared it to a street in Cairo, Beirut, or Amman, they would be virtually the same.

Yaakov, with all due respect, this article is a crock of @!$%#. Once more I suggest that we stop seeding and arguing about whose fault this situation is, and start talking about how we can solve the problem.

First of all, the article repeatedly claims that that the PLO opposes refugee resettlement without one single shred of evidence. What the article does try to back up is the assertion that Israel ran a "build your own home program" for Palestinians that "died" because of UN and PLO opposition. What the article neglects to mention is that these "homes" that the Israeli military so graciously offered Palestinians were in places that were generally barren and worthless compared to the fertile places in which the Palestinians previously lived. The fact that that the program was run by the military should be a pretty good indicator to you that it was a program designed to resettle Palestinians in areas that were considered by the military to be in the best interest of Israel, not the Palestinians. UN opposition was not to the fact that the refugees were being resettled but that they were being resettled in places that were not their homes, and again, were of zero value compared to the places that they had been forced to leave behind.

If you are interested in the question of why most Palestinians still live in refugee camps, it is because they are living under an alternating regime of Israeli military occupation and corrupt Palestinian leadership, and it is because most of the good land (notwithstanding the Gaza withdrawal) as well as most of the highways and byways, most of the water resources, and most of the economic resources are either reserved for settlers or actively destroyed by the Israeli military.

Ultimately I am disappointed in your ability to empathize with these people. As I recall you were a vociferous opponent of the Gaza withdrawal; why are you able to feel bad for Israelis being evicted from their homes, but not for Palestinians?

While I agree that to some extent the squalor of the refugee camps is something the PA can use to ask for more money and more resources, and I agree that their persistance is partially the fault of poor governance, the notion that Israel has nothing to do with this is pure bull@!$%#.

I have a question: what is your suggestion? What would you have the refugees do? Note that if your answer includes moving them out to other Arab or European countries then I will consider it worthless and somewhat racist. (Just as I would consider it worthless and racist to suggest that we solve the problem by moving all the Jews somewhere else).

just for clarification as a lot of people seem to have this wrong.
The occupied territory is not the same as the land the isreals paid for, the reconised borders before the 6 day war.
The right of return, with palistinians is for the occupied territory and NOT in isreals pre '67 borders.
They are NOT seeking to return to land jewish people bought and paid for from arabian landholders during the ottoman empire.

Olmert has already said that he plans to give back the West Bank,

hmm can u link to that quote? .... I believe you meant "part" of the west bank. or "lousy parts" of the west bank.

Resettling people in new camps not their own. I wonder what arguments you'd be making if some greater power came and resettled your neighbourhood on another land.

Why Palestinians Still Live in Refugee Camps?

Israel denies the right to return, the end.