'They Never Left'

Whether it was done deliberately, to placate the usual suspects, or out of sheer ignorance, the writer of the following introduction to a news item on Syrian refugees aired on ABC Radio National's "flagship current affairs program" AM on 23 December deserves the severest censure:

"The Lebanese government is refusing to build permanent homes for the many Syrian refugees that are enduring a harsh winter in camps across the country. Lebanon is bearing the greatest burden of the exodus from war-ravaged Syria, with a million refugees taking shelter there. The government is wary of the new arrivals because it doesn't want a repeat of 1948 when thousands of Palestinian refugees fled to Lebanon and never left." (Harsh winter ahead for Syrian refugees across the Middle East)

The hell they never left! They certainly tried, and here's what happened:

"Israel's defensive anti-infiltration measures resulted in the death of several thousand mostly unarmed Arabs during 1949-56, the vast majority between 1949 and 1952... Thus, upward of 2,700 Arab infiltrators, and perhaps as many as 5,000, were killed by the IDF, police and civilians along Israel's borders between 1949 and 1956. To judge from the available documentation, the vast majority of those killed were unarmed 'economic' and social infiltrators." (Israel's Border Wars: 1949-1956, Benny Morris, 1997, pp 135-7)

IOW, any Palestinian refugee caught trying to return to his home or land in 'Israel' after the ethnic cleansing of 1948, whether from Lebanon, Jordan or the Gaza Strip, was simply shot on sight by Israeli terrorists.