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TITLE: There Can Be No Right of Return |
AUTHOR: Marcus Gee |
PUB: The Globe and Mail |
DATE: January 4, 2001 |
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This is a fateful moment in the history of the Middle East. Despite all the strife of the past few months, the Israelis and the Palestinians are within a hair's breadth of an agreement that would end generations of conflict. The peace proposals put forward by U.S. President Bill Clinton have been tentatively accepted by both sides -- first by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and now, as of yesterday, by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. But the biggest stumbling block remains: the right of return. The Palestinians say that before they sign any peace agreement, the Israelis must accept that Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel in 1948 have a right to return to their former homes. Israel says that can never happen: Absorbing masses of Palestinian refugees would threaten its very existence. Which side is right? Let's go back to the beginning. In 1947, as Jews and Arabs fought, the United Nations called for the partition of the Holy Land into separate Jewish and Arab states. Arab countries rejected that solution and attacked the infant Israel. In the ensuing war, which Israel won, hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled from their homes. That was tragic, of course, but it happened more than half a century ago. What's done cannot be undone. Some of the villages that Arabs fled in 1948 no longer exist; many of those who fled are no longer alive. Imagine what would happen if their sons and grandsons arrived en masse and tried to reclaim land now occupied by Israelis. If even a fraction of the more than three million refugees returned, it would cause no end of conflict. Look at what happened when Jewish settlers arrived on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians insist that they must leave as part of any deal. How then can Palestinians have a right to live in Israel? The essence of the pending peace agreement is the partition of the Holy Land into two states: one Jewish, one Arab. The Israelis are to give up the land they seized in the 1967 Six-Day War and accept the birth of a Palestinian state on that land. The Palestinians are to give up their struggle against Israel and accept that the land they lost in 1948 now belongs to the Israelis. When the Palestinians demand a right of return, it implies that they don't really accept that tradeoff. But, if the deal is to fly, they must. If they are to win the homeland they have fought for all these years, they must accept that the struggle to regain Israel is well and truly over. In return, Israel must accept some responsibility for what happened to the Palestinians -- and it has. Apart from agreeing to the creation of a Palestinian state that could absorb unlimited numbers of Palestinian refugees from other parts of the Middle East and the world, Israel has agreed to take in a limited number of refugees itself for family reunification. Those that could not return would get financial compensation. This, granted, is not what the Palestinians had hoped for. If they accept American proposals, many will never see the lands they left in 1948. What they will see instead is the birth of their own sovereign state -- a home for all Palestinians, with its capital in holy Jerusalem, recognized by Israel and saluted by the whole world. That, not the right of return, is what they have really been struggling for all these years. That, not the right of return, is what they should set their sights on achieving. END |