The right of return of Palestinians from their 60 year exile following the Nakba, an Arabic term meaning the “catastrophe,” the ethnic cleaning that occurred in 1948 in what is today Israel, is sometimes treated as a secondary issue in negotiations for peace with Israel. Yet, for the roughly 5 million Palestinian refugees living in camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and various Arab countries such as Lebanon and Jordan, it is the only issue. Israel, on the other hand, has rejected offhand any possibility for the return of the refugees, even though studies indicate that only about 10% would elect a destination of Israel. The issue has come to take on disasterous proportions for some right wing Israel supporters, who view any return as destructive of Israel, meaning that Israel would lose its Jewish majority. The belief is that it would destroy the “Jewish state” concept even though the numbers in question would not elevate the percentage of nonJews in Israel to more than 25%.
No Palestinian negotiator, however, could conceivably take the position that the refugees are expendable. There is furthermore the human rights issue and the expiation of the war crime that the Nakba was. Many Palestinians died during the ethnic cleansing. Those killed in 24 massacres that occurred during Israel’s herding of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs out of Israel (Benny Morris), and the 3-500 Palestinians who were murdered after they attempted to return to their villages after 1948 (Jeff Halper’s The Problem With Israel), constitute only a small portion of the total Palestinians killed.
To get some understanding of the meaning of right of return for the forgotten refugees themselves, I came across this article on a website situated in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, the Baqa’a Refugee Camp located near Amman. As it provides a missing voice in these discussions, it seemed an appropriate time to present it since it appeared in some respects conciliatory and compromising.
It was written by Benjamin Sand at the Baqa’a Refugee Camp in February 2005 (reprinted by permission).
Palestinian and Israeli leaders are due to hold a summit on Tuesday and efforts to revive peace talks between them has brought renewed attention to the nature of any possible future settlement. In order for any negotiations to succeed, both sides will have to make compromises on some key issues.
VOA’s Benjamin Sand visited the Baqaa camp, outside the Jordanian capital Amman, where Palestinian refugees fear their rights could be jeopardized in the process.
Grocers sell fresh fruit and vegetables at the central market. Customers haggle for a better price and then move on to the next stall. The streets are clogged with traffic and scores of young children walking home from school. This may look like any other teeming Jordanian town but it is actually a refugee camp, home to roughly 100,000 Palestinians. The Baqaa camp is one of ten such sites the United Nations administers in Jordan.
Mohammad Khalak, 53, says his parents were forced off their land west of Jerusalem in the 1940s. He was born in exile and raised his own family in Baqaa since it was first set up in 1968. He says he now has 23 children and 28 grandchildren. And he says he has promised them that one day they will all be able to return home.
It is a rather common sentiment here and has taken on renewed importance since the election of new Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in early January and increasing signs that he may restart peace talks with Israel.
Political analyst, Oraib Al-Rantawi chairs the Al Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman. He says Palestinian refugees hope Mr. Abbas, who is also widely known as Abu Mazen, can produce tangible results after years of disappointment. “Abu Mazen’s popularity and support is getting much bigger than before and it will get much better in the future if things go well in the Israeli-Palestinian peace track,” he said. Mr. Rantawi says people will pay particular attention to the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees and many fear they may lose that right as part of any future deal.
According to U.N. figures some 750,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes at the time of Israel’s independence in 1948. Today, they and their descendants are estimated at over five million worldwide. Their right to reclaim family land and homes remains a cornerstone of Palestinian policy and a rallying point for refugee communities. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the mass repatriation of Palestinians would destroy Israel and cannot be considered.
Mr. Rantawi says the right of return is a symbolic demand for Palestinians, a way to reaffirm their connection to their homeland. But, he also thinks Palestinian refugees would accept limited resettlement with compensation in return for an independent and viable political state.
“Palestinian refugees can compromise on this issue within a package, if there is a package deal with the Israeli government concerning all the major issues for the final state of negotiation,” he noted. But Mr. Rantawi concedes there will be some who will refuse to give up the fight for the right of return.
Abdul is a taxi driver in Baqaa. He gives only his first name but insists the refugees here will never accept anything short of complete access to family lands. He says the refugees will fight politically but if their voices are ignored he says they will use guns to make their point. But just down the street a neighbor seems less adamant. He will not give his name or speak on the record, but he says privately that while he wants the right of return, he would never actually move to Israel. He says it is a matter of honor that Israel acknowledge his existence.
At one point as part of past negotiation discussions, the Palestinian side demanded that an apology from Israel for the Nakba be part of any settlement. Such an apology would constitute an admission of responsibility, but it would also go a long way to appease many of the victims of this historical injustice.
a war crime; nor should it.
The UN General Assembly voted to partition the British Mandate and create Jewish and Arab states. The Arab states and Palestinian Arabs rejected the resolution and tried, first, to prevent Israel’s creation and, that failing, to destroy Israel at birth. Palestinian Arabs initiated an inter-communal civil war on November 30, 1947, the day after the UN vote, by Arab firing from Jaffa into Tel Aviv streets (one dead; others wounded) and attacking two Jewish buses near a Tel Aviv suburb (seven dead; others wounded). The Arab Higher Committee, the Palestinian Arabs’ leaders, called a general strike; which an Arab from Jerusalem’s Old City looted and torched the nearby Jewish commercial center.
For ten days the official self-defense force of the Jewish community, the Haganah, kept to the defensive, hoping that the British would intervene to restore peace. When the British failed, however, the Haganah mobilized. Thereafter, the Haganah, which had about 35,000 members (of whom, some 16,000 to 17,000 were combat forces), and the two dissident groups, the Irgun and Lehi (totaling about 3,500) had neither artillery nor tanks; the Jewish forces had more mortars, but the Arabs “probably had an edge in light arms, the main armaments during the civil war.” From January 1948, the Palestinian Arabs also were supported by the 4,000-man Arab Liberation Army — mainly Syrians and Iraqis — which did have artillery,
The Jewish forces began retaliating following Arab attacks. As Benny Morris notes, “[t]hese reprisals, especially those by the dissident Irgun and Lehi organizations, which were often terroristic, contributed to the snowball effect and helped to widen the conflagration.” By late March 1948, according to Morris, the Arab forces “managed . . . to halt Jewish convoy traffic and to besiege, and to mortally threaten, isolated Jewish communities, notably Jerusalem. By then, tens of thousands of Arabs and Jews, fearing war’s fury, had moved out of embattled or vulnerable urban and rural areas. For the Palestinians, this marked the start of the refugee exodus.”
Until March 1948, the Jews were on the defensive. With two exceptions, they did not conquer or destroy any Arab villages. But, Morris writes, “in early April 1948: the Haganah, with its back to the wall, especially in Jerusalem and along the roads, and facing imminent invasion by the Arab states’ armies, switched to the offensive, and within six weeks overran Arab areas, including Jaffa and (Arab) Haifa, and defeated the Palestinian militias, inducing chaos and mass flight.”
The Arabs again took the initiative in mid-May, 1948. Immediately on Israel declaring its independence, the neighboring Arab states (not including Lebanon) plus Iraq invaded with their regular armies, supplemented by Sudanese, Saudi,Yemeni, and Moroccan contingents. Their aim: the destruction of Israel.
This is the context in which Israel successfully defended itself. I recognize that Palestinian Arabs and their partisans may interpret the facts differently. Fortunately, in my view, peace does not depend on each side accepting the other’s historical narrative. But that is precisely the point: Do you care more about fighting over symbols, trying to get Israelis to apologize for winning their War of Independence? Or, do you care more about the well-being and futures of real, existing Palestinian Arabs?
Simply as a humanitarian matter, Palestinian Arabs ought to have a state of their own. Achieving that objective requires making an end-of-conflict peace settlement with Israel. Palestinian Arabs then will be able to “return” to the State of Palestine, just as Jews will be able to (continue to) “return” to the State of Israel.
Anyone with eyes in her head knows that the future Palestinian state will be created basically along the lines sketched out in the Clinton Peace Parameters and the Geneva Initiative, namely, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (subject to land swaps with Israel), and parts of Jerusalem. By the way, to forestall false charges of bantustans, I note that Jimmy Carter endorsed the Geneva Initiative. Indeed, he was the key note speaker at its launch.
The right of return is based on the ethnic cleansing of 750,000-800,000 Palestinians before and after the Israeli declaration of independence. It is war crime. There were 24 massacres recorded during the ethnic cleansing, beyond Yeir Yassin.
Palestine was an Arab country, albeit under military occupation for the past 400 years, at least since the birth of Islam, but probably longer since Arabic peoples just did not move there for Islam’s sake. The history of the Arabic peoples may even go back to the Canaanites. Neither the Ottomans nor the British attempt to colonize the land.
Jews at the time of independence owned 7% of the land and constituted only a third of the population in Palestine. The partition, which gave 55% to Jews and 45% to Arabs was not the whole problem. 400,000 Palestinian Arabs were caught in the partitions accorded to Jews. It was presumed that these people were to leave their homes, lands, farms, villages, towns, and cities, their stores and businesses, their governments, ans so forth just to make room for the Jewish partition, viz, the Jewish state of Israel.
Of course they refused to accept any such partition and move into tented refugee camps. Would you? The indigenous Arab peoples had no say in the partitions.
Ever since the Arab peoples understood that the British had sold them down the river and intended to set up a state on their for Jews, and the nature of Zionism, they naturally fought the proposition.
The UN had no basis legally for giving this land to just one party, which is what it did.
Right of return will no go away. The ethnic cleansing was a war crime as was the killing of Palestinians who attempt to return to their homes on their own.
As to bantustans, will someone tell us all what Israel intends to do with the 100+ villages, towns, and cities, euphemistically referred to as “settlements,” situated from the Jordan River to the border? And will Israel relinquish the water rights from those lands and the acquifers in the West Bank? And will there be land swaps to constitute 22% of the land of Palestine.
Christ. That is only a fifth of their original homelands.