Research by international economist Sidney Zabludoff shows that the Jewish refugees of 1948 suffered more and have been helped less than their Arab counterparts.

In a paper published by The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Zabludoff shows that many more Jews were forcibly displaced or expelled from their homes around the world than Arabs, that they lost significantly more property, and were helped over the years to a much smaller extent.

The number of Arabs displaced by the War of Independence in 1948 is estimated at 550,000, and another estimated 100,000 were displaced by the Six Day War in 1967. The number of Jews who were forced to move as a result of the Israeli-Arab conflict was between 850,000 and one million.

It is further estimated that the Jews, most of whom lived in cities, lost $700 million in lost and stolen property - worth some $6 billion in today's dollars.  The Arabs of 1948 and 1967, on the other hand, lost an estimated total of $450 million, or $3.9 billion in today's money. 

Zabludoff notes that the case of the Arab refugees is different than any other refugee crisis in world history, in that aid for their cause has never stopped, and has been ongoing for nearly 60 years.  UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency, has poured $13.7 billion dollars into the Arab refugee concentrations.  In addition, Arab and Western countries have given their own aid over the decades.

The Arabs have also done much better than the Jews in terms of repatriated assets. Israel returned more than 90% of blocked Arab bank accounts and most of the contents of safe deposit boxes, Zabludoff notes, while there have been only "a few cases where Jewish property was restored."

While many of the Arabs living in the Land of Israel left their homes voluntarily, goaded on by Arab promises that they would come back as victors and be able to displace the Jews, the Jews in Arab countries were generally expelled amidst violence, threats and confiscation of their property.

"Since 1920," Zabludoff writes, " all other major refugee crises involving the exchange of religious or ethnic populations, while creating hardships, were dealt with in a single generation. Meanwhile, issues such as the 'right of return' and compensation never were adequately resolved and were largely forgotten. The same pattern evolved for Jews who fled Middle Eastern and North African countries, even though their number was some 50 percent larger than Palestinian refugees and the difference in individual assets lost was even greater."

Click here for the full report.

The U.S. House of Representatives last week recognized for the first time the rights of Jews who became refugees as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.  Resolution 185 expressed "the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the creation of refugee populations." 

Zabludoff is an international economist who has worked for the White House and the CIA.

Palestinian Authority terrorists launched a rocket attack on the western Negev city Sderot Saturday night after a rocket and mortar fire-filled Sabbath in southern Israel.

One rocket slammed into the center of Sderot, sending a woman into emotional shock. The location of the second rocket was not immediately identified.

No other injuries were reported.

Terrorists fired two rockets and seven mortar shells at Gaza Belt communities over the course of the Sabbath.

Four of the mortar shells exploded in and around Kibbutz Nahal Oz, damaging a warehouse and several power lines.

Three other shells and two Kassam rockets landed in open areas.  No one was hurt in any of the attacks.

False Alarm in the North
In the north, Israel Air Force helicopters were scrambled Saturday afternoon after a light aircraft was detected without identifying itself and without authorization.  The brief incident ended peacefully after it was ascertained the pilot was Israeli and the aircraft was benign.

"The Air Force registered an unknown aircraft on Saturday afternoon flying over Israeli air space. Air Force helicopters took off in the direction of the aircraft and when the plane made contact, the helicopters returned to base," the IDF spokesman said in a statement.

Tensions have been high along the northern border, with threats of vengeance by Hizbullah terrorists in Lebanon following the assassination of the group's second-in-command in a Damascus car bombing in February.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert turned down a request from former American president Jimmy Carter for a meeting during his visit to Israel next week, ostensibly due to his plans to follow the visit with a meeting with the head of Hamas.

The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni both said that their schedules will not allow a meeting, but an anonymous Israeli official told the Washington Times, "You draw your own conclusions." Other officials have expressed anger at Carter's proposed meeting with Syrian-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

Even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been openly critical of the former president's plans to meet Mashaal.

However, President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israel Is Our Home (Yisrael Beiteinu) leader Knesset Member Avigdor Lieberman have scheduled to meet with Carter, whose recent book compares Israeli policies on the Palestinian Authority (PA) with former apartheid policies in South Africa.

Carter is scheduled to visit Sderot as well as Fatah PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah before traveling to Syria for his meeting with the Islamist terror chief.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice politely slammed former United States President Jimmy Carter on Friday, who against the strong urging of her senior advisors to abandon the idea, still plans to meet next week in Damascus with Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal.

"I find it hard to understand what is going to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is, in fact, the impediment to peace," Rice told reporters in response to a question about the former president's plans. She did not, however, mention Carter by name. The Secretary of State made her comments during a news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

A spokesman for the Mashaal said last week that Carter's Center for Peace sent an envoy requesting a meeting with Hamas officials in Syria – a direct violation of American foreign policy.

Such a meeting, if it goes through, will be the first public contact between a prominent American official and the terrorist organization since Hamas terrorists kidnapped IDF officer Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid from Gaza near the Kerem Shalom Crossing. Shalit's condition and whereabouts remain unknown.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week that US officials had advised the former president twice against meeting with any Hamas officials.

Nearly 60% of Israelis say the Israeli government is secretly negotiating the division of Jerusalem with the Palestinian Authority - despite government attempts to blur the existence of such talks.

This and other findings were the results of a survey carried out by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Bar Ilan University.  The official numbers will be presented this Tuesday at a special seminar at Bar Ilan.  The Guest of Honor will be Trade Minister Eli Yishai, the head of the government coalition member Shas Party.  Yishai has stated frequently that the moment it becomes clear that Jerusalem is being negotiated, his party will quit the coalition.

Opposition Leader Binyamin Netanyahu, Natan Sharansky, Jerusalem mayoral candidate Nir Barkat and others will be in attendance as well.

PA is Sure to Make More Demands
The respondents were asked their forecast of the situation in the event that an Israeli-PA peace agreement would include an Israeli giveaway of Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods, Old City and Temple Mount to the PA.  Nearly 70% said there is no or little chance that such an agreement would bring about an end to terrorism, and 56% feel there is a high or very high likelihood that the areas would be used for terrorist bases.

Some 61% said there is no or little chance that this would mark the end of PA demands regarding Jerusalem. 

The survey further shows that 71% object to giving away parts of Jerusalem even in the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement. Only about a third of these - less than a quarter of the public - say they would actively demonstrate against a plan to divide Jerusalem.  Approximately 7% of the public say they would even participate in violent protests. 

Prof. Efraim Inbar, Director of the Begin-Sadat Center, says that the public is essentially against giving away parts of Jerusalem - but that when the government gives in, this erodes the public opposition.

"There is great opposition to concessions in Jerusalem in general, and regarding the Temple Mount in particular," Inbar said. "Before Ehud Barak presented his plan to give away the Temple Mount in 2000, 85% of the public objected to this - but Barak's plan broke the taboo."

Asked if they think the PA would preserve and maintain the Jewish and Christian holy sites, 50% said no.

While the establishment of new Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is barred, and even building in existing towns is frozen, new Arab settlements are being approved.

A group of veteran bankers and businessmen using the name Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) says it has received approval to build 30,000 “affordable apartments” for Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The homes are to be constructed in two new large Arab settlements approved by Defense Minister Ehud Barak as a good-will gesture at the behest of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

A PIF official told the Associated Press that the project will cost at least $2 billion and that “private investors” will be involved.

Many of the diplomatic initiatives since the Oslo Accords have been accompanied by Israeli and PA private investors' projects. Top Israeli officials, as well as their lawyers and financial backers, have been criticized for allowing financial interests to color negotiating positions and diplomatic actions vis a vis the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.

One example is the casino in Jericho. It bypassed the illegality of gambling in Israeli territory by establishing Palestinian Authority-controlled areas to gamble in, in which Israeli law did not apply. In the end, only Israelis were permitted to gamble at the casino, with local PA Arabs barred by PA law. Involved in the project was Sharon family attorney Dov Weisglass, Arafat money-man Mohammad Rashid, German Jewish businessman Martin Schlaff and others.

The PA cellular phone network (Paltel), a planned post-Disengagement Gaza resort complex as well as the cement companies involved in building the wall around Judea and Samaria have each been singled out in various investigative reports. Paltel was underwritten by the PIF and the cement for the wall comes from families with close ties to top Fatah officials, according to Arabic news reports.

The PIF housing project is to include the establishment of a mortgage company, according to the AP report, which opined that “investment in housing is seen as one of the more attractive business opportunities in the West Bank.”

The PIF, founded in 2000, says it is an independent investment company “committed to increasing the assets of their Palestinian shareholders.” It has offices in Ramallah, Jordan, Egypt and Gaza.

Residents of Kibbutz Negba were surprised to receive letters over the weekend from an elderly “Palestinian refugee” asking them to leave their homes. 

The letter claimed that the kibbutz was built on the remnants of the destroyed Arab village Beit Afa, which the letter said was “ethnically cleansed” in the 1930s. The letter writer promised European Union funding to any residents of the kibbutz who would “go back to Europe” or America and leave their property for “refugees” and their offspring.

One of the Kibbutz's senior member is MK Avshalom Vilan (Meretz), who is spearheading a campaign to offer Jews living in Judea and Samaria towns beyond the Partition Wall compensation to abandon their homes to a future Palestinian State. MK Vilan calmed his neighbors, assuring them that the letter was not sent by a “refugee,” but by Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria angered by his political plan. 

On the other side of the letter, National Union Secretary-General Nachi Eyal, a Jewish resident of the Binyamin-region community of Psagot, explained his reasoning for dispatching the letter. 

Eyal informed residents that the “refugee” author of the letter, Salah Washa, who claims seven children and 136 grandchildren and great-grandchildren who long to return to their ancestral home, is real.  While the man did not personally write the letter, Eyal said, he had posted his picture and story on a website aimed at encouraging foreign Arabs to return “home” to villages their grandparents and great-grandparents left during the War of Independence.

The activist explained that their neighbor, MK Vilan, seeks to evict the Jews of Judea and Samaria. "It is unpleasant to know that there is someone who wants to expel you from your home," Eyal wrote. "But this is exactly what MK Avshalom Vilan seeks to do, dispatching letters to my neighbors and telling us we will be expelled anyway so we may as well take the money and leave now."

He invited residents to visit the expellees of Gush Katif in Nitzan and other temporary communities to see for themselves the result of displacing Jews from parts of the Land of Israel.

MK Vilan responded angrily Saturday, claiming that in fact "only a small part of the kibbutz" was built on the former village of Beit Afa, while most of the village’s lands were used for the nearby Jewish community of Moshav Yad Natan.

Vilan called Eyal’s comparison of Kibbutz Negba to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria “pathetic and ridiculous.”  Kibbutz Negba was vital to Israel’s security during the War of Independence, Vilan argued.  Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria are “not connected to security," he asserted, insisting that "most Israelis" are ready to give them away.