"Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen." (Golda Meir, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961)
Sadly, when it comes to the Right of Return, there is virtually no difference between the Israeli Left and Right, as peace activist and founding member of Gush Shalom Uri Avnery once noted (1)--they all reject it. But, the question is why.
It is one thing to denounce such rejection, but to defeat it, a strong
case must be made against it, by exposing its underlying moral
bankruptcy, lawlessness and debunking its relevant myths, until it is
exposed for what it really is --mere chauvinism, in the racist sense.
Al-Nakba (Arabic: the catastrophe)
"It was estimated that before the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war, on
15 May 1948, the number of Palestinian refugees had reached about
300,000. As Anthony Nutting has remarked: 'it would be truer to say that
the refugees were the cause of the first Arab-Israeli war and not the
result'." (Cattan, Henry, 1976, Palestine and International Law, p.138)
In the course of the 1948 war in Palestine, what Palestinians refer to
as Al-Nakba, and the subsequent establishment of the state of Israel,
some 800,000 Palestinians were expelled and displaced from their
villages, homes, and lands by Zionist forces.
"The extent to which the refugees were savagely driven out by the
Israelis as part of a deliberate master plan has been insufficiently
recognized." (John H. Davis, Commissioner General of UNRWA 1959-63, The
Evasive Peace, p.57)
An Israeli military intelligence document indicates that at least 75
percent of the refugees left due to direct Zionist military actions
and/or Zionist terror campaigns. There are several well-documented cases
of mass expulsions (the best-known is that of the 50,000 Arabs of the
towns of Lydda and Ramle) during and after the 1948-49 Zionist-Arab
hostilities. Close to 500 Palestinian villages were depopulated and
destroyed by Zionist forces (2) (destroyed, to prevent the return of
Palestinian refugees).
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not
even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you
because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not
exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place
of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the
place of Huneifis and; Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman.
There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a
former Arab population." (Moshe Dayan, Israel's Defense Minister,
addressing Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. Quoted in Ha'aretz,
04/04/1969)
Whatever the cause for their exodus, Palestinians never willfully
relinquished their lands and, as such, these lands were, literally,
stolen from them by the newly founded Zionist government. To be clear,
these lands were systematically expropriated from Palestinians in what
amounts to legalized theft and were not rightfully "bought," per the
common Israeli myth.
Enough UN documents and maps as well as testimonies by Israeli
historians and politicians (for example, Ben Gurion's testimony to
UNSCOP in 1947) (3) concur that, prior to the 1948 Arab-Zionist war,
Jews owned no more than 6% (5.6% by Palestinian estimates) of Palestine.
By the end of the 1948 war, however, Israel controlled 78% of the total
landmass, the vast majority of which was owned by Palestinian residents
who were evacuated from their villages and/or who fled their homes
during the war.
The Israeli government undertook formidable measures to legalize its
systematic confiscation policies in the Israeli legal system in order to
legitimize its ownership of confiscated properties. Various intertwined
policies and laws were enacted to accomplish this task. The lands and
properties of evicted Palestinians, which were described as "absentee
property," were seized under the Absentee Property Regulations of 1948.
On March 15, 1950 the Israeli Knesset passed the Absentee Properties
Law, which declared as "absentees" all Palestinian citizens who were not
present in Israel on the 1st of September 1948, and vested all their
property in the Trustee on the Absentee Properties. This law considered
the latter as the legitimate "custodian" of these properties and gave it
the authority to sell and transfer ownership of such properties to the
Israeli Department of Construction and Development. From thence, lands
were acquired ("redeemed," say the Jewish fundamentalists/Zionists) by
the Jewish National Fund, such that by 1953 the Jewish National Fund's
"ownership" totaled over 90% of the territories under the control of the
"Jewish state." Such properties are referred to as the "nation's land"
and are limited to the use of Jews only. (4)
According to UN estimates, Al-Nakba left the Palestinian refugees
dispersed in the following manner:
West Bank: 26.25%
(The UN initially registered an additional 40,000 Palestinians as
displaced persons inside the territory of the state of Israel itself.)
Who is a Palestinian Refugee?
"Under UNRWA's operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons
whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May
1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of
the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict...UNRWA's definition of a refugee also
covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. The
number of registered Palestine refugees has subsequently grown from
914,000 in 1950 to more than 3.8 million in 2001, and continues to rise
due to natural population growth." (5)
"One-third of the registered Palestine refugees, about 1.1 million, live
in 59 recognized refugee camps in the area of operations in Jordan,
Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the West Bank and Gaza Strip." (5)
In wake of the June 1967 war, which Palestinians refer to as Al-Naksa
(Arabic: the setback), Israel displaced between 235,000 and 350,000
Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. This included around 175,000
UNRWA registered refugees who became refugees for a second time.
Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who were displaced for
the first time in 1967 were considered "displaced persons" rather than
"refugees". (Until the 1967 war, the West Bank had been under the
control of Jordan. Most West Bank Palestinians fled to Jordan and
continued to live under Jordanian jurisdiction, hence their
classification as "displaced" persons.)
"Ten of the (refugee) camps were established in the aftermath of the
June 1967 war and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, to accommodate a new wave of displaced persons, both refugees and
non-refugees." (5)
Consequently, there are over 3.8 million UNRWA registered refugees and
about 2 million others non- registered.
In all, about 3 million Palestinians now live within the territory of
Palestine, as it was defined by the British mandate, which is now
divided between the state of Israel, and the West Bank and Gaza. About
one million Palestinian are citizens of Israel, living inside the
country's 1949 armistice borders; about 1.2 million live in the West
Bank (including 200,000 in East Jerusalem) and about one million in the
Gaza Strip. The remainder of the Palestinian people, perhaps another 3
million, live in Diaspora outside their ancestral homeland.
Palestinian refugees constitute the single largest refugee population in
the world, according to the U.S. Committee on Refugees. One in four
refugees worldwide is Palestinian.
The Feasibility of the Return
Ironically, the majority of Palestinian refugees reside within a 100
miles of their places of origin (inside Israel, West Bank and Gaza) but
are unable to exercise their right to return. (6)
"By the time Israel became a state in 1948, JNF owned 12.5 percent of
all the land of Israel, on which 80 percent of Israel's population now
lives," boasts the Jewish National Fund on its official website. (7)
Noted Palestinian researcher, Salman Abu Sitta, more or less agrees. His
research on Israel's demography concludes that 78% of the Jews in Israel
live in 15% of Israel proper; 85% of the land is mostly refugees' land,
in which 22% of Israelis live. (8)
Logistically, therefore, the Right of Return is feasible with minimal
disruption, albeit warranted, to the Israeli citizenry.
The Right of Return & International Law
Before its admission to the UN, on 11 May 1949, Israel declared that it
"unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and
undertakes to honor them from the day it becomes a member of the United
Nations." (9)
UN General Assembly Resolution 273 stated that Israel would be admitted
to the UN on the condition that Israel accepts its previous relevant
resolutions, namely, 194 (which guaranteed Palestinian refugees the
right to return to their homes) and 181 (the partition plan of November
29, 1947). The General Assembly has reaffirmed this resolution over
forty times (most recently on 11 December 1990, in Resolution 45/73).
(9)
Paragraph 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194, of December 1948,
which outlined the framework for a resolution of the Palestinian refugee
problem, states:
"Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their
neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date,
and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing
not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under
principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the
Governments or authorities responsible."
In the first Progress Report submitted by the UN-appointed Mediator for
Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, the Mediator recognized the right of
return as key to a resolution of the conflict in Palestine. Bernadotte
wrote:
"No settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded
to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the homes from which he
has been dislodged. It would be an offense against the principles of
elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied
the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into
Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent
replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for
centuries."
(Count Bernadotte paid dearly for his conscientiousness --he was
liquidated by Zionist terrorists in Jerusalem, on September 17, 1948.)
UN General Assembly Resolution 3236 of 1974 reaffirmed this droit.
According to Article 2, it is "the inalienable right of the Palestinians
to return to their homes and property from which they have been
displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return."
General Assembly Resolution 51/129 of 1996 reaffirmed the right of
Palestinian refugees to their property and the revenues from the
property.
Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to
return to his country." Article 15 states: "Everyone has the right to a
nationality."
Conclusion:
Aside from being a pressing humanitarian case, solving the Palestinian
refugee problem is the true oft-shunned key to attaining justice and
lasting peace in the Middle East. The Right of Return is inalienable and
cannot be "negotiated" away in a manner contradictory to the principles
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN resolutions. To do
so would be perpetuation of inexcusable and unconscionable injustice.
It is a fact: if it weren't for Zionism, for Israel, there would be no
Palestinian refugee problem. Hence, today Jews have an indisputable
moral responsibility to ending the Palestinian suffering. And, if the
return is demographically feasible, why, then, could not Jews and
Palestinians coexist as equals in a democratic pluralistic society in
the Holy Land?
Golda Meir was gravely wrong and myopic to stack Israel over
humanistic-Judaism, when she said, "we shall not let this happen." She
was a Zionist.
--------
Footnotes:
(1) http://www.mediamonitors.net/uri3.html
Gaza: 38.5%
Arab Countries: 35.25%
(2) http://www.palestineremembered.com
(3) UNSCOP is United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. See Maps &
Mythology, Edward F. Henderson, American Educational Trust
(4) "Land Ownership in Palestine/Israel," by Nasser Abufarha
(http://www.ap-agenda.org/nasser/nasser3.htm)
(5) UNRWA is United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees. See http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/p1.htm
(6) The Right of Return, March 2001, Badil
(http://www.badil.org/Campaign/Packet/RoR01.pdf)
(7) Direct quote from the official Jewish National Fund website, Oct 13,
2002 (http://www.jnf.org/history.html)
(8) "Is the Right of Return Feasible?" by Dr. Salman Abu Sitta,
AUGUST-7-2001
(http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Right-Of-Return/Story440.html)
(9) http://arjanelfassed.mediamonitors.org/art200005p2.html
*Mr. Baha Abushaqra is a Canadian-based media activist of Palestinian
origin who believes in peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs under
one democratic state in the Holy Land. His articles/letters are posted
at mideastjournal.com