Its a comparison of the Greek Cypriot Refugee issue to that of Palestinian Refugees.
One reason Greek Cypriots rejected last April UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan for the reunification of Cyprus was that an overwhelming majority of them felt it did not do justice to the claims of refugees displaced during the 1974 Turkish invasion. This was also one of the few occasions when international public opinion became aware that there was a refugee problem on the island, because few people knew that refugees from that war still exist.
When Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 after an abortive attempt by the Greek military junta in Athens to carry out Enosis (unification with Greece), 250,000 or so Greek Cypriots were uprooted from their homes. Some fled in terror from the invading army, some were expelled - the usual complex, morally problematic picture that emerges in such situations.
Although overwhelmed, the Greek Cypriot community reacted with humanity, solidarity, and prudence. Initially, refugees camps were set up, but the Greek Cypriot government decided that while it will not surrender the refugees' claim eventually to return to their homes in the North, it would do its utmost in the interim not to leave them vegetating in squalid camps.
No UN-sponsored refugee agency was established to help the refugees. Instead, with some international help, but mostly out of its own resources, the Republic of Cyprus - a small, then not very prosperous country that was devastated by war - launched a re-settlement and rehabilitation program as a national project. Government loans were offered for housing construction. In many cases, refugees built their own new homes.
Businesses were encouraged with government subsidies and loans. Schools and training centers were established. Within a few years, the refugees were absorbed into the economy and society of the southern, Greek Cypriot sector of the island. As in post-World War II West Germany, much of the current prosperity in Cyprus today is an outcome of the boost the economy received from the absorption of refugees.
Anyone visiting the Greek Cypriot part of the island nowadays will not find refugee camps: most of the millions of tourists are unaware of the fact that more than a third of the Greek Cypriots they encounter are refugees or descendants of refugees. The Greek Cypriot community can justly be proud of the way they handled the humanitarian and social problems of the refugees, without at any point surrendering their claims to the lands they lost.
Equally commendable has been the Greek Cypriot strategic decision to follow a Gandhi-like policy of non-violence: while there is deep bitterness about the Turkish occupation, and the fact that Turkish settlers were implanted in the North, the Greek Cypriot community decided not to use violence against the occupation. Not one incident of Greek Cypriot terrorism or violence against Turkish occupation has occurred in more than a quarter of a century. This is also one of the reasons few people have ever heard about the Greek Cypriot refugees.
It could, of course, be different: had Greek Cypriots followed the Palestinian example since 1948 - that is, kept the refugees in camps, segregated them from the non-refugee society, and fed their children a daily militaristic message of hatred, revenge, and terrorism - a completely different atmosphere would permeate the island. The Greek Cypriot example shows that it is simply not true that the occupied have no recourse other than violence and terrorism. Recourse to violence and terror is a moral and strategic choice. The Greek Cypriots chose the path of non-violence; the Palestinians chose the opposite route. There is always a choice, and there are always consequences.
Consider what the Greek Cypriot community has achieved - a thriving economy, no one living under conditions of misery and humiliation in camps, membership in the European Union - compared to the catastrophe the Palestinian choice has brought to their own people. Perhaps on the level of public relations, the Palestinian leadership - sacrificing their own people on the altar of propaganda - can bask in their achievement: yet it is their own people who suffer.
These leaders would do better to look across the Mediterranean at Cyprus and see how - without giving up claims to disputed land - refugees can live in dignity and honor. But then again, the Republic of Cyprus is a democracy, while the Palestinians have not been able to emancipate themselves from the violent militarized option that has brought them such misery.
