“The next time the terms apartheid or oppression are used with reference to the Middle East, one must remember the intolerable conditions of Palestinians in most of the Arab countries,” writes Khaled Abu Toameh. He says:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in Jordan have been stripped of their Jordanian citizenship over the past few months.

The Arab governments want the Palestinian issue to be Israel’s problem alone. But Israel will never be able to handle this matter alone.

Defending the measure, the Jordanians authorities claim that it is actually intended to help the Palestinians as it will thwart any attempt to settle them permanently in the kingdom.

“Jordan is not Palestine and Palestine is not Jordan,” the Jordanian Minister of the Interior, Nayef al-Kadi, explained. “The Palestinians should be allowed to return to their homes in Palestine.”

The US and its Western allies must press the Arab dictatorships to end their anti-Palestinian policies and start treating Palestinians in a better way.

One can imagine the response of the United Nations and European countries if the Knesset tomorrow approved a law that bans Palestinians from working in any profession or if Israel started stripping the 1.4 million Arabs of their citizenship.

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