Summary
Author of Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and the end of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1997; the publisher is printed “The Councilon Foreign Relations” in the book’s References), whose resettlement plan Salman Abu Sitta attacks at length in Palestinian Right of Return: Sacred, Legal, and Possible as a permanent dispersal of the Palestinians (Palestinian Right of Return: Sacred, Legal, and Possible, lines 1470-1490, lines 1788-1792).
Details
- Abu Sitta’s account of the report: it suggests the permanent dispersal of the Palestinians by resettlement wherever they are, with cosmetic adjustments, or anywhere they wish except their homes; he calls it a “final solution” to the Palestinians and says it contains errors of fact built on doctored tables — her Table-4.1 (p.88) quotes US Bureau estimates for 2005 cited in Peretz (p.16) that exclude Palestinians in Europe and the Americas while halving “other Mideast States” to include non-Mideast states, and her totals underestimate the Palestinians by about one million against his 1995 estimate of 7,025,000 min.-7,590,000 max. (lines 1470-1485).
- The plan as Abu Sitta summarises it: resettle the refugees mostly where they are, with a new transfer for 1,800,000 — half to Europe and the Americas, half to the West Bank; half of Gaza’s refugees transferred again; a negligible number returning to homes in Israel under strict rules in operation since 1950; Palestinian identity papers maintained provided the land claim is dropped, on which event Israel retains the land legally; and 75,000 readmitted in total after rigorous vetting within a limited period, which Abu Sitta translates to 8,000 original refugees in 1948 figures (lines 1475-1490).
Related pages
Salman Abu Sitta, Palestinian Right of Return: Sacred, Legal, and Possible, Right of Return, Transfer