Refugee Return Quotes
San Domingo was on the Island of Haiti. The government had attempted to have a colony there for American Blacks. Most Negroes of the time were not enthusiastic about colonization. The San Domingo colony was not very successful and most of the colonists were very unhappy. Lincoln gave this order and those who wished to do so were returned to the United States. This quotation also refutes the argument made by a that Lincoln favored forced emigration and colonization of Negroes. Early in his career had had favored colonization {590145}, as it was called, but never forced. See {40859}. And if he was in favor of forced colonization, the easiest thing he could have done was left the dissatisfied San Domingo colonists where they were instead of going to all the trouble to repatriate them.
The strategy was to have Arab refugees, who had been trained to not only hate the Israelis but also in military and terrorist techniques, to return to israel and foment an insurgency. Ironically, this quotation was cited at the time as one of the few statements upon which the Israeli and Egyptian governments could agree.
This quotation is the basis of the Arab argument that the United Nations decided that the Palestinian refugees who left Israel upon its creation at the urging of some Arab leaders. Other’s opposing this point of view observe that only the Security Council’s resolutions are binding and the General Assembly resolutions have no weight in International Law. Further that the Arab Refugees do not want to “live at peace” as is required in the resolution. Numerous surveys demonstrate the desire of most of the Palestinian refugees to support efforts to expel the Jewish Israelis from Israel. The other barrier is that there are tens of thousands of Jews who were forcibly ejected from Arab countries for whom no country is offering a right of return. The irony of Resolution 194 is that it was opposed by every Arab country at the time.
