Driven to despair
Should anyone like to congratulate Israel for its creation, it would be equivalent to congratulating it on the success of its daylight robbery of Palestine and the systematic expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land and homes. As Palestinians mark yet another day remembering the Nakba, the catastrophe of Israel’s creation in 1948, any congratulations being extended should go to their evictor-turned-jailor of the world’s largest prison.
The Nakba are the days of infamy that created what has become the largest diaspora of refugees in the world. On May 14 the state of Israel was declared and the first Arab-Israeli war broke out in earnest the next day. The prospective state of Israel launched a massive military incursion into Palestinian territory, creating in its wake three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees, the destruction of hundreds of entire villages not only depopulated but obliterated, and houses blown up or bulldozed.
As a result, five million Palestinian refugees and their descendants are now scattered across the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. About one-third still live in UN-supported refugee camps.
Their plight is one of the most emotionally charged issues of the conflict. The Israeli side has not given an inch on its basic premise: The confiscated Palestinian land, which comprises 92 percent of Israel’s area, will not be returned to its rightful owners, and the inhabitants of villages and towns who were expelled by Israeli forces in 1948 will not be allowed to return home. The standard explanation is an influx of refugees would dilute Israel’s Jewish majority and threaten the existence of the state.
In this, Israel is backed by Washington which would like to see the Palestinians, displaced in 1948 and 1967, assimilated wherever they are now living or resettled in countries, Arab or otherwise, that are ready to receive them.
On the other hand, the five million Palestinian refugees who have endured 62 years of wars, destitution and exile, refuse to accept this diktat and insist on their right to return home. They have strong bases for that claim. The right of return is legal, pursuant to UN Resolution 194, which calls for both repatriation and indemnification.
There is no precedent in UN history for the universal, sustained and firm consensus accorded to the right of the refugees to return to their homes. It has been affirmed over 100 times by the UN. The right to return home has been affirmed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by similar European, American and African charters.
It might be suggested that as the indirect Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, which are scheduled to discuss the core issues of the conflict, begin this is not the time to talk about the right of return in the absence of not just a Palestinian state but substantive progress on other issues of the conflict. The Israelis are expanding the settlements on a daily basis, Judaizing what is left of Jerusalem, and narrowing Palestinian horizons in every conceivable manner. Under these circumstances, it is argued, the right of return should take a back seat in negotiations.
But there is a centrality to the right of return and any resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict not including the repatriation of millions of uprooted refugees to their original homes and villages in what is now called Israel would be strongly rejected by the Palestinian people, especially those forced out, seemingly never to be allowed in again.
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