From: HMAVERIK@aol.com

Subject: EXCHANGE OF POPULATION PRECEDENTS #1

To: mona@israelmail.com

In Asia: Millions of Moslems fled from India to Pakistan following the partition of that sub-continent after World War 1, and a similar number of Indians left Pakistan for India - an estimated eight million in each direction. This was a classic instance of large-scale population exchange.

In Europe: Millions of Germans moved in various directions following the post - war changes in the map of Europe. According to official West German statistics, by September 1950 three million Germans had been expelled from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, and of these 2,069,000 were absorbed in West Germany or Austria and 916,000 in East Germany. Between 1949 and the erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 an additional 2,739,000 refugees from East Germany were registered in West German absorption centers. In all, over 3.5 million people fled East Germany, and another 6.75 million Germans left their homes in areas annexed by Poland, moved west, and were absorbed there.

In Africa: According to official estimates, the number of French and pro-French Arabs who left North Africa for France and other locations following Algerian independence reached over one million.

Refugee migration in considerable numbers also took place in China - Hong-Kong, Korea, Vietnam - Laos - Cambodia, Nigeria (lbo), Greece - Turkey, and many other countries. In all of these instances - as in the situation of the Jews from Arab countries previously described - solutions were found by absorption of the refugees into their new countries. They virtually ceased, after a time, to be considered refugees. Only the rulers of the Arab countries acted otherwise in relation to their fellow Arabs, despite the fact that most of them were victims of the clear, open, and declared invasion of the Arab armies in May 1948.

After 1967 Israel was given the opportunity to help rehabilitate the Arab refugees living in those territories which came under Israeli rule following the Six-Day War. With the initiative, encouragement, and partial financing of the Israeli government, thousands of families in the Gaza Strip and a smaller number in Judea and Samaria were moved from squalid refugee camps to new housing where they received all vital services.

Due partially to this development, and partially to Arab propaganda's shift of emphasis in recent years to the national aspect of the Palestinian problem, the Arab refugee problem has lost some of its point. "The suffering of the poor refugees" is spoken of less and less, and the necessity, as it were, of creating a "Palestinian State" in order to resolve what is presented as the "lack of a homeland" of the Palestinian Arab people is mentioned with increasing frequency…, when 77% of the Mandate for Palestine is already with Jordan.