Summary
The Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes, acknowledged by the UN General Assembly in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 on 11 December 1948. In Pappe’s account in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, it is the heart of the conflict: Palestinian nationalism centred on it, Israel’s ‘peace process’ axioms excluded it as a ‘non-starter’, and no settlement that does not address it can succeed.
Details
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The right was acknowledged by the UN General Assembly in December 1948, is anchored in international law, and is consonant with all notions of universal justice; Pappe argues it also makes sense in realpolitik, because unless Israel acknowledges its cardinal role in the dispossession and accepts the consequences of recognising the ethnic cleansing, all attempts to solve the conflict are bound to fail, as the Oslo initiative did in 2000 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.290-291).
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Re-emerging Palestinian nationalism was centred on the Right of Return, and found its embodiment in 1968 in the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose ideology was grounded in the demand for moral and factual redress of the evils inflicted in 1948 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.273).
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Israel’s third peace axiom — that nothing prior to 1967, including the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing, will ever be negotiable — totally removes the refugee issue from the peace agenda and sidelines the Right of Return as a ‘non-starter’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.276).
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At Camp David in 2000 the Palestinians expected the Right of Return to be among the ‘three essentials’ finally discussed; the Israeli plan on the table offered no solution to the refugee problem, and Yasir Arafat refused to sign (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.278-279).
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The Israeli media and Knesset formed a wall-to-wall consensus that no negotiator would be allowed even to discuss the Right of Return, and the Knesset swiftly passed a law to this effect — literally ‘The Law for Safeguarding the Rejection of the Right of Return, 2001’, as Pappe’s endnote gives it (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.282, p.324).
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The Geneva Accord recognised the Right of Return provided ‘return’ was confined to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, without acknowledging the ethnic cleansing itself (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.283-284).
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Behind the refusal, Pappe argues, is the fear that Jewish Israelis will eventually be outnumbered by Arabs; the principle of maintaining an overwhelming Jewish majority at all costs supersedes all other political and even civil concerns (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.291).
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The Conferences for the Right of Return and Just Peace began in 2004, where Israelis against the grain and their Palestinian friends reaffirmed their commitment to the refugees’ Right of Return (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.297).
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Manna’s Chapter 3 (part 4) records that communist bloc states opposed UN General Assembly Resolution 194 on return or compensation out of unconditional support for Israel, and that Maki opposed Sharett’s proposal to accept 100,000 refugees’ return (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.144-145).
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Manna’s Chapter 4 opening notes the expectation, after the armistices, that Israel would heed Resolution 194’s right of return and compensation; instead Israel opened its doors to the Jewish diaspora and shut them to Palestinians expelled days earlier (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.151-152).
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In Makdisi, the contrast is present-day and administrative: Palestinians like Sam Bahour are refused return to family land in the occupied territories, and altogether to homes inside Israel, while any Jew is eligible for instant citizenship under the Law of Return and “there is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people” (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.50-51). Resolution 194’s affirmation of return is cited at PDF p.48.
Related pages
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, UN General Assembly Resolution 194, Nakba, Fortress Israel, Oslo Accords, Palestine Liberation Organization