Palestinians: Arab Idol or Arab Apartheid? | Gatestone Institute

It was not Abbas’s meeting with the Arab Idol contestants that sparked a wave of denunciations from Palestinians. Rather, it was his failure to set foot in any of the refugee camps surrounding Beirut or in other parts of Lebanon.

Abbas knows very well that if he had so much as set foot in a refugee camp in Lebanon, it might have been the last step he would ever take.

The residents of the refugee camps are furious with their leaders, who have kept them there for decades, lying to them about a mythical return to their forbears’ homes in Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and Ramle. That is the real reason Abbas and other Arab leaders stay as far as possible from these miserable holding-pens.