Fifth in a series
In any negotiation, each side will have several “deal-breaking” points on which they will not compromise. The same holds true for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Palestinians will never agree to a compromise that gives Israel absolute control over all of Jerusalem. (This is reasonable.) Israel will never permit all of the Palestinians who left in 1948 — along with their descendants – to return to and settle within the Jewish State because the resulting demographic mix would eliminate the country’s Jewish majority. (This is also reasonable.) I will discuss the issue of Jerusalem in a future post, but for now I wish to address the “Right of Return.”
Before and after Israel declared independence in 1948, millions of Arabs left their homes for the areas now known as the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as for neighboring Arab countries. But opinion is divided on why they left. Did Israel kick them out under threat of violence? Did the people who became known as Palestinians leave voluntarily to escape the warfare that erupted in 1948? Did Arab and Palestinian leaders ask or tell them to leave? We can never really know the entire truth.
(My personal opinion, based on Prof. Benny Morris’ research, is that the Arabs left Israel for all of these reasons. In certain instances, they were forced to leave under threat of violence. Other times, they left voluntarily or at the recommendation of local Palestinian leaders. In essence, sometimes Israel was to blame — and other times, it was not. It depends on the specific event.)
But the crux of the issue is that neither side can live in the past. What’s done is done. Jews cannot invoke the Holocaust to justify any and every Israeli action. Palestinians and Arabs cannot cite atrocities committed decades ago — and, yes, sometimes they did occur – as a reason to murder civilians. For any progress to occur, all negotiations must start from the present reality on the ground. And the reality is that Israel — whether rightly or wrongly — will never allow all the Palestinians to return to Israel proper because the Jewish State wishes to remain, well, Jewish.
In the interests of peace, the Palestinians, therefore, must forgo their desire to return to Israel proper and instead demand the right to return to the future Palestinian state that will exist in the West Bank (and, most likely, Gaza).
Still, there is an element of hypocrisy in the demand for a Right of Return. The Palestinians were actually Jordanians before Israel — following an attack by Jordan — took the West Bank from that country in 1967 to defend against future aggression. But Jordan never allowed all of the Palestinians to settle in their former country. Israel, of course, has treated the Palestinians harshly (with some justification in specific contexts), but the neighboring Arab countries have treated them no better. Arab countries only pretend to care about the Palestinians when they can invoke their cause to raise anti-Israeli sentiment.
The world also seems to forget that many Jews in Israel and elsewhere can also claim a Right of Return: following Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948, millions of Jews in the Middle East were expelled from the Arab countries in which they lived. But, of course, no one seems to demand that they return as well. The idea of Right of Return also applies to American Indians. The United States, of course, took their land and decimated their populations. But the political reality is that the U.S. government will never give them back, say, the entire Old West. The same holds true for the Palestinians, as well as Jews from Arab countries and American Indians. In negotiations, one must be realistic. The Palestinians cannot demand a Right of Return to Israel proper as a condition for peace.
The entire series: Part VI: Israel and Syria; Part IV: The Palestinians Need a Viable State; Part III: Settlements and the Separation Barrier; Part II: Israel Needs Electoral Reform; Part I: Fix the Palestinian Authority
