Qatar diplomat mocks Syrian refugees: “European and US officials [are] shedding crocodile tears over the plight of Syrian refugees,” tweeted Nasser Al-Khalifa, a Qatari diplomat and former ambassador to the US-2/10/16, The Media Line, Jerusalem Post

“European and US officials [are] shedding crocodile tears over the plight of Syrian refugees,” tweeted Nasser Al-Khalifa, a Qatari diplomat and a former ambassador to the United States."
 
2/10/16, "As Europe faces Syrian refugee crisis, Gulf States slammed for not taking in Arab brethren," Jerusalem Post, by Felice Friedson, Joshua A. Holmes/ The Media Line

"As the debate surrounding migrants in Europe intensifies, the Gulf States continue to face harsh criticism for their refusal to accept Syrian refugees.
 
Unlike Lebanon and Jordan, which took in some 1.5 million Syrians so far, Gulf States like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE have been accused of having accepted very few, if any, asylum seekers. Human rights activists have been sternly critical of Gulf leaders, blaming them for turning their backs on their Arab brothers....

Spokespersons from dozens of organizations, from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch, have lashed out at Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council for their inaction....

Critics claim that demographics play a huge role in the Gulf’s apathy towards refugees, since most of the Gulf economies are heavily reliant on foreign laborers. In some of them, foreign tenants constitute as many as 80% of the total population. An influx of refugees, authorities fear, would destabilize the already-volatile demographic base.

At the other end of this debate, Gulf leaders have grown increasingly defensive about what they deem to be “false accusations.”

“European and US officials [are] shedding crocodile tears over the plight of Syrian refugees,” tweeted Nasser Al-Khalifa, a Qatari diplomat and a former ambassador to the United States. Like his colleagues in the Gulf, Al-Khalifa accused the West of politicizing the migrant crisis in order to deflect responsibility away from Europe and demonize the GCC....

Nadim Shehadi, the director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University, is also skeptical of Europe’s sincerity in this debate....

According to Shehadi, figures used by the Western media are deceiving, as they rely on data received from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which does not keep track of Syrians in the Gulf.

“Gulf States are not signatories of the Geneva Convention, so they are not included in the refugee counting mechanism,” Shehadi explains.

In 1951, when the Convention was adopted, most of the world’s refugees were Palestinian. From a political standpoint, Gulf States could not agree to the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Palestine, so they opted out of the treaty. “This is why Gulf States supposedly don’t have any refugees. It’s a technical mistake,” he says."...



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