Jon Stewart says Arab states won’t grant citizenship to Palestinians because they’re truly terrified of the ‘Islamists’ they support

• Jon Stewart criticized Arab states for not granting citizenship to Palestinians.

• Stewart said the states were “scared to death” of all the Islamists they helped encourage in Palestine.

• “Look, they’re all terrified of Hamas and Hezbollah,” Stewart told his guest, Christiane Amanpour.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart says Arab countries have a “dirty little secret” that could explain why they are not granting citizenship to Palestinian refugees in their own countries.

Stewart was interviewing journalist Christiane Amanpour about the war between Israel and Hamas when he criticized Arab states like Jordan for their passivity towards the plight of the Palestinians.

“Look, they’re all terrified of Hamas and Hezbollah,” Stewart told Amanpour on Monday’s episode.

“The dirty little secret there is the Islamists that they helped encourage through the madrassas and all these other actions, which they are scared to death of,” Stewart said. “They just are.”

“Yes, and they would like to see Hamas have a bloody nose. There is no doubt about that,” Amanpour said.

It’s not just a question of citizenship. In October, when fighting broke out, Arab countries like Jordan and Egypt said they would not accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi then declared that welcoming Palestinian refugees would risk transforming his country into “a base for attacks against Israel”.

This, according to al-Sisi, meant that Israel could decide to “strike Egyptian territory” to defend itself.

This is not the first time Stewart has spoken out about geopolitics in the Middle East. In a previous episode of “The Daily Show” that aired in February, Stewart said he had been thinking about a solution to the Gaza conflict — by forming a Middle Eastern version of NATO.

“Israel stops its bombing. Hamas releases the hostages. Arab countries that claim Palestine is their top priority move in and form a demilitarized zone between Israel and a free Palestinian state,” Stewart said in February.

Stewart’s proposal was met with reluctance by experts, who told BI the plan would be difficult to achieve in practice.

Amanpour also told Stewart on Monday that Israel appeared unwilling to resolve the conflict through plans such as creating a demilitarized zone in the region.

“So some plans have been started,” Amanpour said. “At the moment, the Israeli government doesn’t want it.”

“He doesn’t want the UN. He doesn’t want Arab countries,” she added.

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