Unfortunately, we hear too much about suicide/homicide bombers in the Middle East these days. And when Israel goes after the deliberate murderers of its innocents, this then becomes the next excuse for Arabs to kill more innocents.
The situation has become even more of a concern for Americans now that our own officials state that it's just a matter of time before the United States again becomes victimized this way. There is no doubt that this is a horrendous human tragedy. But while Arabs and their supporters place the blame for this on Israel, the truth is actually far more depressing.
Hundreds of millions of people became refugees in the course of the last violent century (not to mention the millions before then). Many were displaced between the two world wars. Scores of millions were uprooted in the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Many more examples exist, like that involving Turks and Greeks; but one truly stands out in light of the current turmoil in the Middle East: The one half of Israel's five million Jews whose families fled Arab/Muslim lands around the same time Arabs fled in the opposite direction because of the invasion of Israel by five Arab states upon its rebirth in 1948. This does not include another million of these Sephardim who fled to other lands in the Diaspora, notably France and the Americas. Greater New York City alone now has tens of thousands of Syrian Jews. They were known as kelbi yahudi --"Jew Dogs"--in those Arab lands...So much for so-called Arab tolerance of "their Jews" before the rise of modern Zionism. How dare anyone else but Arabs demand a sliver of national dignity in the region!
The Arabs had just rejected a plan (similar to the Indian partition) that would have also created a second Arab state in historic Palestine. Jordan had already emerged on 80% of original Mandatory Palestine issued to Britain in the wake of the Paris Peace Conference on April 25, 1920. Colonial Secretary Churchill had separated all of Palestine east of the Jordan River and handed it over to Britain's Hashemite Arab allies in the creation of Transjordan in 1922. Listen to Sabri Jiryis, a prominent Palestinian Arab researcher at the Institute for Palestinian Studies in Beirut:
"While it is estimated that 700,000 Arabs fled the 1948 war...against this...Arabs caused the expulsion of just as many Jews from Arab states...whose properties were taken over...a population and property exchange occurred and each side must bear the consequences (Al-Nahar, Beirut, 5/15/75)." Much more evidence for this exists in books written by Arab kings and officials as well as by others.
So, why is it that over fifty years later, Arabs-- who have received billions of dollars in aid from the U.N., oil revenues, other international funds, etc.--still have not relieved the plight of their own refugees? They have, after all, twenty-two states on some six million square miles of territory--lands that belonged mostly to non-Arab peoples like Kurds, Black Africans, Copts, Berbers, etc. before their conquests and forced arabization in the name of the Arab nation. Jews absorbed their refugees into their sole, tiny state that is not even the size of New Jersey.
The answer can be illustrated by Arab actions. Some years back, with the status of the territories unresolved, Israel offered to knock down the dilapidated camps and replace them with new housing and better living conditions. It's worth remembering that Egypt and Jordan occupied these territories from 1948-1967 and not only did nothing about this but never discussed the creation of another Palestinian Arab state here either. The Arabs demanded that Israel do nothing to remedy life in the camps. Again, why?
Quite simply, Arabs have used their own refugees as pawns in their war to delegitimize Israel. For them, there is no justice nor suffering besides their own. They don't want the refugee problem solved--not as long as it means that a viable Israel will still exist on the morrow. That's why they tacked on the "right of return" of millions of real or alleged Arab refugees to the recent Saudi peace plan. The result is that that Saudi "peace" plan still envisions Israel's Jews being overwhelmed so that a second Arab state will replace Israel, not live side by side with it. This should come as no shock since all Palestinian (and many other) Arab maps, school books, etc. omit Israel as well. This is also why current talk about a "provisional Palestinian Arab State" being created at this time is scary. Faisal Husseini, the late showcase moderate of the PLO, said that while he'd accept any land diplomacy would yield, a purely Arab Palestine from the River to the Sea was the real goal...the same old "destruction of Israel in stages" strategy dominant since after the "one fell swoop" alternative collapsed as a result of its failure in the Six Day War in 1967.
So, this tragic conflict still has no end in sight. And the horrendous human tragedy specifically associated with suicide/homicide bombings has been both created and sustained by Arabs themselves. Reasonable compromises have been repeatedly offered--and rejected-- to end the Arab-Israeli conflict...certainly more than anything Arabs have ever offered to the numerous native, non-Arab peoples they conquered and forcibly arabized in carving out most of the twenty-two states they now call their own.