Daily Breeze · Torrance, California · 1 December 1977

CP-1977-007

Palestinians are the key to Mideast peace

L. Edgar Prina, Copley News Service, Washington

Transcribed from the clipping

“WASHINGTON — If there is to be peace in the Middle East, it is generally agreed, the Arabs and Israelis will have to solve what is known as the ‘Palestinian problem’ or, more precisely, the ‘Palestinian refugee problem.’ Who are the Palestinians? Where did they come from and where are they now? Who are their leaders? What do they want and what will they settle for? The answers to some of these questions come easily; to others, with great difficulty, if at all… The vast majority of the approximately 3.4 million Palestinians in the world today live in the Middle East. Curiously, there are more Palestinians (7,000) in the United States than in Libya (fewer than 5,000)… Although not all Palestinians left — there are 460,000 now living in Israel — many poured into Jordan, the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip. According to latest estimates, there are a million Palestinians in Jordan, 700,000 in the West Bank area and 350-400,000 in the Gaza Strip. Syria has approximately 250,000 Palestinians; Lebanon 300,000; Egypt only 20,000-25,000; Kuwait, 140,000; other Persian Gulf states 15,000; Saudi Arabia 20,000; Iraq 15,000, and Algeria 5,000. Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines and, ironically, are sometimes referred to as ‘the Jews of the Middle East.’… It is estimated that about one-third of the Palestinians live in refugee camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon… Palestinians are better educated, in general, than other Arabs in the Middle East. This is, in part, because UNRWA has provided them with a decent school system. Having a good educational start and faced with the need for better qualifications to compete for available jobs, many Palestinians continued their studies on through the universities. According to one observer of the area, Edward Mortimer of the Times of London, more Palestinians, per capita, have graduated from schools of higher education than have Arabs from any other nation and as many as citizens of any West European country. ‘Many of these graduates occupy key positions, especially in the oil-producing states,’ he said. ‘They are found not only in technical posts but also in administrative ones, in both the private and public sectors, and even in the (Arab) diplomatic services, at the United Nations and in embassies abroad.’”

Context added by this archive

A wire-service explainer that sets out to answer who the Palestinians are, and gets a population figure for every country in the region. It also prints, as fact, that Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines. The paragraph on education is the rarest thing in it: a page of this archive in which Palestinians are being counted for something other than casualties or refugee registrations.

Cite this item

"Palestinians are the key to Mideast peace," Daily Breeze, 1 December 1977. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1977-007. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1977-007

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