Tweet
Hetq.am, By Minas Kaynakjian -- The other day on Armenian TV, there was a program dealing with the two visits of Yasser Arafat to Armenia back in the 70’ and 80’s. Arafat would spend several hours in Yerevan on his way from Beirut to Moscow for consultations with the leaders of the Communist Party.
Before parting he laid a bombshell at the feet of his Armenian hosts on his second such visit.
According to the program, the Armenian elite at the time hosted their famous guest with all the trappings of Armenian hospitality. The two sides were quick to make parallels between the two peoples, Armenians and Palestinians. Arafat even went so far to confess that he even exhorted his people to be more like Armenians – in terms of their industriousness and love of country.
Arafat is alleged to have told the Armenians that there was one thing he would never tell his people to copy from the Armenian experience. The Armenian delegation at the VIP transit lounge became anxious and more than a bit concerned. What did the leader of the Palestinian national movement have in mind?
Arafat got up and said that Armenians, after being evicted and exiled from western Armenia, took foreign citizenship and started to accumulate wealth and property in their newly adopted countries. This, he pointed out, lead Armenians to forget about the country they had lost, western Armenia. Palestinians, he stressed, would never become citizens of any Arab nation they were living in for this very reason.
Is there any truth in what Arafat said? Have Armenians given up on the dream of returning to their occupied homeland for the very reasons cited by Abu Ammar? Has the accumulation of material wealth and property in foreign lands served as a substitute for the lands that 95 years ago constituted the bulk of the Armenian homeland?
A number of interesting recent incidents lend informal support to this thesis.
We have the results of a 2009 Gallup Poll in Armenian suggesting that Armenians yearn to leave Armenia, many for good. It would appear that Armenians would prefer to migrate than to stay and build a new nation. Any notion of re-establishing an Armenian presence to the west of the Araks River, given this reality, remains the purview of fanciful imagination.
Before parting he laid a bombshell at the feet of his Armenian hosts on his second such visit.
According to the program, the Armenian elite at the time hosted their famous guest with all the trappings of Armenian hospitality. The two sides were quick to make parallels between the two peoples, Armenians and Palestinians. Arafat even went so far to confess that he even exhorted his people to be more like Armenians – in terms of their industriousness and love of country.
Arafat is alleged to have told the Armenians that there was one thing he would never tell his people to copy from the Armenian experience. The Armenian delegation at the VIP transit lounge became anxious and more than a bit concerned. What did the leader of the Palestinian national movement have in mind?
Arafat got up and said that Armenians, after being evicted and exiled from western Armenia, took foreign citizenship and started to accumulate wealth and property in their newly adopted countries. This, he pointed out, lead Armenians to forget about the country they had lost, western Armenia. Palestinians, he stressed, would never become citizens of any Arab nation they were living in for this very reason.
Is there any truth in what Arafat said? Have Armenians given up on the dream of returning to their occupied homeland for the very reasons cited by Abu Ammar? Has the accumulation of material wealth and property in foreign lands served as a substitute for the lands that 95 years ago constituted the bulk of the Armenian homeland?
A number of interesting recent incidents lend informal support to this thesis.
We have the results of a 2009 Gallup Poll in Armenian suggesting that Armenians yearn to leave Armenia, many for good. It would appear that Armenians would prefer to migrate than to stay and build a new nation. Any notion of re-establishing an Armenian presence to the west of the Araks River, given this reality, remains the purview of fanciful imagination.
Comment