Palestinian Media Watch reports that PA seeks to deprive Palestinian refugees from voting in local elections. “The Supreme National Committee for the Protection of the Right of Return – announced yesterday that it opposes the participation of the refugee camps in the local elections that are expected to take place in the Palestinian Territories. The committee justified its objection as protecting the unique status of the refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, considering them testimony to the crime that the occupation state made against our nation for 56 years. The committee warned of the dangers of integrating the refugee camps into the urban housing units...” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 29, 2004]

For decades any attempt by caring people or organizations to settle the Palestinian refugees has been met by a stiff Arab opposition. As John McCarthy, a U.S. Catholic conference's expert on the refugees told Joan Peters in a February 19, 1978 interview:

"I've worked in the Palestinian structure, trying to say,"let's resettle these people." The governments of Egypt and so on, they all said:"Wait a while," or,"No, we won't do it. The only place they're going to resettle is back in Israel, right or wrong.' ' You must remember - well - these people are simply pawns . . ."

Typical has been a 1976 Libyan ad to recruit workers offered citizenship and other incentives to Arab workers except Palestinians.

Have they no shame?! You may wish to write your representatives on the subject.