9-6-22015 Netanyahu Rejects Calls to Accept Syrian Refugees - ISABEL KERSHNER New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/world/middleeast/netanyahu-rejects-calls-to-accept-syrian-refugees.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

…Israel, a state of about eight million people that was largely founded by refugees, has long been torn between the humanitarian demands of taking in non-Jews in need and its fears about maintaining its Jewish character and security in a hostile and increasingly chaotic region. It is still grappling with the presence of tens of thousands of African migrants and asylum seekers who surreptitiously crossed the border from Egypt in recent years.

The issue of Arab asylum seekers is further complicated by the unresolved and politically loaded question of the fate of the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled during the war over Israel's creation in 1948 and their millions of descendants who demand the right of return to their former homes. The Palestinian refugee issue has become one of the most intractable of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority on Saturday instructed the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations to act to bring Palestinian refugees now fleeing the war in Syria to the Israeli-occupied West Bank…

Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

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