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Syrian Refugee Crisis to Transform Middle East; Bill Would Make Muslim Communities Surveillance States
The Syrian Refugee Crisis Will Transform Middle East Politics. By the time the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 ended, Israeli forces had expelled about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes. Their plight led to the overthrow of Arab regimes as well as civil wars in Jordan in 1970 and in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. Israel bombed refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza. Radicalized Palestinians staged hijackings, airport massacres and suicide bombings that captured headlines around the world and more than once led to dangerous American-Soviet confrontations.
The legacy of Syria’s refugee disaster awaits. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Gutteres, has just declared that 4 million Syrians are now refugees in neighboring countries. That is almost six times greater than the number who fled Palestine. Another 7.6 million Syrians, he says, have also lost their homes but remain destitute within Syria. Gutteres said, “This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation.”
Critics Say Bill Would Turn Muslim Communities Into “Mini-Surveillance States”. An open letter published this week by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, signed by a coalition of 42 civil rights organizations, says that a proposed bill designed to counter violent extremism would threaten “freedom of speech, association, and religion,” while doing little to actually combat terrorism.
