While the Muslim world rallies behind Hamas in the streets, not a single leader of a Muslim-majority nation has offered to take any in as refugees from Palestine – and those who’ve spoken on the topic have only done so to reject the idea outright.
Yesterday, Jordanian King Abdullah II described taking in Palestinian refugees as a “red line” at a press conference after meeting the Chancellor of Germany, stating “I can quite strongly speak on behalf of not only Jordan as a nation but our friends in Egypt — That is a red line. I think that is the plan by certain usual suspects. There will be no refugees in Jordan and no refugees in Egypt.” The “usual suspects” comment appears to be a reference to Israel calling for 1.1 million Gazans to head south toward the border with Egypt.
Egypt had already decided to keep its border with the Gaza Strip closed, as it has been since 2007 after Hamas seized control of the territory.
This raises the obvious question; what do Abdullah and other Muslim leaders know that our leaders either don’t, or are unwilling to admit? And to point out the obvious answer, there’s a certainly there would be terrorists or terrorist sympathizers being among the refugees, as polling from the Pew Research Center on the Palestinian territories shows nearly 60% of the population supporting Hamas – far more than their share in the last elections in 2006.
It also doesn’t inspire confidence that our Department of Homeland Security was just exposed having hired a pro-Hamas spokeswoman to handle asylum claims.
House Republicans have introduced bills to block Palestinian refugees from entering the U.S. while some Democrats are pushing on the U.S. to accept some. If some recent headlines out of New York City and Chicago are any indication, all Republicans really need to do is threaten to resettle those refugees in blue cities to stop it from happening at all.
