Should Palestinian Refugees Have the Right of Return?

“[T]he refugee problems [i.e. Jewish and Palestinian refugees] are settled in these two respective states – the question of Palestinian refugees will be resolved in the Palestinian state and not in Israel. Just as the question of Jewish refugees caused by that same Arab assault on Israel in 1948, was resolved within the Jewish state. The Arab attack, the attack of five Arab armies, with the Palestinians, on the embryonic Jewish state caused two refugee problems. About 650,000 Palestinian refugees and a somewhat larger number of Jewish refugees expelled from Arab states. Tiny Israel absorbed all the Jewish refugees and the vast Arab world refused to absorb the Palestinian refugees, and neither justice nor common sense mandates that 63 years later, the Arab world or the Palestinians will come to us and say: Now, absorb the great-great-grandchildren of this part of the refugee problem that we created ourselves. The solution to the refugee problem, both in a practical sense and in the question of justice has to be addressed in the Palestinian state and not at the expense of the solitary, the one and only Jewish state.”

“What is a Muslim, Christian or Jewish state? It is one where Muslims, Christians or Jews are in the majority… Do not expect the Jewish people to lose our majority in our land and stop being a Jewish state. We have suffered enough throughout history, including in Europe, and we do not need to justify our independence. Right or wrong, the right of return does not call for the suicide of the State of Israel…

The right of return of the Palestinians would change the demography of the country… [and] mean the end of the state [of Israel]… We want to participate in solving the refugee problem by saving them from the status of refugees and to help, financially and in other ways, even in the reunion of families. We are ready to do that, but we are not ready to bring an end to Israel as a Jewish state.”

“In the interest of peace, Israeli leaders since 1948 have repeatedly expressed a willingness to accept some refugees as part of a peace agreement, and Israel has already allowed approximately 200,000 to return; however, the Arabs have refused to negotiate and made clear they consider the refugees a weapon in their war against Israel.

Israelis across the political spectrum have made that clear acceptance of a ‘right of return’ would be suicide. If every refugee was allowed to move to Israel, the population would be nearly 10 million and more than 40% Arab. Given the higher Arab birth rate, it would not be long before the Palestinians would be a majority.”

“[T]here are Palestinian rights that deserve support and protection. But there are just as many false claims for rights that are designed to harm Israel and prevent reconciliation rather than improve the Palestinian condition. Foremost among them is ‘the right of return’ – the standard Arab and Palestinian euphemism for Israel’s destruction through demographic subversion…

In fact, there is no such right [i.e. of return]. It does not exist; nor has it been recognized or implemented on the political level virtually anywhere in the world, and certainly not as a tool to destroy an existing nation-state. Only last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against a Greek demand for a ‘right to return’ to the Turkish part of Cyprus stating that there is no such absolute right. But this does not prevent many groups from cultivating this destructive fantasy.”

“It is clear that any solution to the Palestinian refugee issue will have to be found within the borders of a future Palestinian state, rather than inside Israel. Indeed, while refusal to relinquish the principle of a ‘right of return’ is the prerogative of the Palestinians, demands that the principle be implemented inside Israel are tantamount to a demand that Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state. Successive peace initiatives – including the Clinton parameters, the Geneva Initiative, and the Arab League Initiative – all make clear that a solution to the issue must be found that is acceptable to both sides – respecting both the sensitivities of the Palestinian refugees and Israel’s sovereign right to determine who may live within its borders. This is the right approach, and it is guided by moral, political, and strategical concerns.”

“I’m against the right of return. I’m against it both on practical grounds… and on moral grounds. It’s not just that the Palestinians started the 1947-48 war, it’s that they, too, carried out expulsions in that war, expulsions of thousands of Jews from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, Gush Etzion, Kfar Darom and several other kibbutzim and moshavim. As Uri Avnery, a veteran of that war, said in a debate in 2007 with Ilan Pappe: ‘There can be no dispute that ethnic cleansing took place in 1948 – though allow me to remark, in parenthesis, that the ethnic cleansing was on both sides, and that there was not a single Jew left residing in whatever territory was conquered on the Arab side.’ The Arabs were trying to do to the Jews what the Jews were trying to do to the Arabs; the Jews, to be brutally frank, just did it better. So I don’t see that the Palestinians have any right of return, especially since they started the war in the first place.”

“Palestinian refugees have been systematically encouraged to demand the right to return to old homes which, in a physical sense, disappeared decades ago. The Table below gives approximate figures of refugees from different countries who, since 1945, have been resettled elsewhere. World opinion has accepted the terms of their resettlement, and in no instance has there been any outside backing of a ‘return’ to the former homeland. Any such return has, in fact, been castigated as the worst kind of irredentism.

India / Pakistan – 15 million; Finland – 400,000; Czechoslovakia – 1.5 million; Poland – 2.8 million; East Germany – 7.5 million; DDR – 3.8 million; Roumania – 1.2 million

There have been a great many other movements of refugees, of a minor nature. But this short list indicates that up to 35 million refugees have been successfully absorbed in the countries in which they have found refuge. In no single case has a claim to repatriation been supported, let alone upheld.”

“Return in the sense of going back to the country of origin of the refugees is not a legal right derived from the way international law developed over time. It is not a right granted by the general laws of human rights, nationality laws, refugee laws or humanitarian law. Accordingly, the Palestinian claim that they possess a right of return by virtue of international law is unfounded… [T]he Palestinians cannot base their ‘right of return’ on the international instruments dealing with the Palestinian problem itself. These instruments are the resolutions of the UN General Assembly or the Security Council which are not per se a binding source of law in international law… [T]heir content is disputed and alongside the option of return, alternative solutions are being proposed such as resettlement or a just settlement… [T]he State of Israel is not legally bound as a matter of international law to allow the Palestinian refugees to choose whether or not they wish to return to its territory… [B]road implementation of the return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants into Israel will create an untenable situation. Hence, it is unreasonable to discuss this issue in terms of rights rather than as a matter of political negotiations.”

“[T]he return of hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of Palestinians would undermine the Jewish character of Israel…

The state envisioned by the founders of Zionism was a state composed of a large majority of Jews. At the moment, Israel is about 20 percent Arab and 80 percent Jewish. If you were to allow a right of return for several million Palestinians (who have higher birthrates than Israeli Jews) you’d soon have an almost balanced Arab/Jewish population–and that would soon mean that you’d no longer have a Jewish state.

At the present moment, if you speak to most of these refugees who live in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan you will find that they have a wish to return to their villages, their towns, and their houses. But those villages were destroyed, the towns have been repopulated with Jews, the homes have been transformed in the past fifty-two years. There is no place to bring them back to. What happened in 1948 is irreversible…

A country divided between Israelis on the one hand and on the other Palestinians who had returned and were filled with anger not only at the way they had been treated in the past but also at not finding their villages or homes available–that country would quickly become ungovernable. Each individual Jew living in the country would be facing a real physical danger.”

“The outline for the solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] is obvious to all reasonable people: some symbolic recognition of the rights of Palestinian ‘refugees’ including a compensation package and some family reunification but no absolute ‘right of return’ to Israel of the millions of descendants of those who claim refugee status – a questionable ‘right’ whose exercise would produce the great wrong of quickly turning the Jewish state into yet another Muslim Arab state.”