The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

171 that Israel is responsible for the fate of the Palestinian refugees. While they are quick to fix blame for the plight of the Palestinians, Arabs and Palestinians usually ignore the parallel displacement of Jewish people. Because of the declaration of a Jewish State and the war that followed in 1948, approximately “700,000 Palestinians sought refuge in neighboring countries” (Peteet 3). In contrast, after the establishment of Israel 850,000 Jewish people were “expelled or escaped” from Arab countries (Bartal). The majority went to Israel where they “were settled during the 1950s in transit camps” (Bartal). Instead of maintaining these camps, Israel transitioned them “into development towns or neighborhoods” (Bartal). To explain the difference between the fates of Jewish and Palestinian refugees, many Palestinian advocates “argue that the Arab states were not empowered to represent them” and “claim … that Jews who emigrated did so because of Zionist manipulation rather than persecution and harassment” (Bartal). Historical evidence does not support this assertion of Zionist influence as the main reason for Jewish migration (Bartal). This evidence includes Syria passing a law that froze “all Jewish bank accounts,” Jewish people “being attacked byArab mobs” in Egypt, and “a horrible pogrom [organized attack on a certain religious or ethnic group] in the Libyan capital of Tripoli” (Bartal). This population exchange suggests a shift of the responsibility for the Palestinians to the Arab countries that expelled or lost, depending on interpretation of events, hundreds of thousands of Jews. Furthermore, when politicians call for the payment of losses from Israel to the displaced Palestinians, they overlook, purposely or accidently, the property exchange that occurred between Israel and Arab countries. Estimated at the equivalent of 3.4 billion dollars, the value of property left behind in Israel by Palestinians is dwarfed by “the worth of Jewish assets left behind,” which were “estimated in 2003 at over $100 billion” (Bartal). A possible explanation for this disparity in property losses is that the population exchange was largely “an inequitable exchange of educated and often prosperous Jews for a population of uneducated refugees with no professional skills” (Bartal). These statistics regarding population and property indicate that the international community should not hold Israel mainly or solely responsible for the Palestinians’ fate. The Arab countries of the Middle East lost large Jewish populations. These Jews were in general taken in and aided by Israel; thus, it is