Who Is Keeping the “Right Of Return” Alive? (Part 1)

A new book by two Israelis, The War of Return, describes the changes in how the Arabs – not the Palestinians, but all the others – now view the “right of return.” They appear to have lost interest in the matter, believe that the Palestinians should stop pretending they will ever “return” to places they never were (save for about 25,000 real refugees from the 1948-49 war), and recognize that insisting on something Israel will never grant – for it would mean the end of the Jewish state – prevents any realistic settlement of being achieved, one which would give the Palestinians Arabs now living in Gaza and the West Bank the possibility of a prosperous and demilitarized Palestinian state, as set out in detail in the Deal of the Century.

The review, by Benjamin Kerstein, of The War of Return is at algemeiner.com here:

The greatest tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today is that while the Arab world is moving on from the war against the Jewish state, the West is still encouraging Palestinian rejectionism by giving legitimacy to a fictitious “right of return” that would flood Israel with millions of refugees, a former Knesset member [Einat Wilf] said on May 11.

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Einat Wilf — who with journalist Adi Schwartz is co-author of the new book The War of Return — made the statement during a Zoom event to discuss the book, which holds that the main obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace is not land but rather the Palestinian insistence on a right of return.

The book posits that this “right” essentially does not exist anywhere in international law and in fact violates international norms regarding the treatment of refugees everywhere else in the world.

There has been no “right of return” for tens of millions of the refugees since World War II who left the lands they had lived in. Some of them left to avoid being caught in the middle of violent conflict, which was a main reason for the Arabs to leave Mandatory Palestine before and during the 1948-49 war. Some were expelled because they had chosen to take the side of an aggressor, as did the ethnic Germans living outside Germany who identified with the Nazis during World War II and at war’s end, fled retribution. Some refugees were escaping from discrimination, persecution, and death, like the Jews who managed to flee Nazi Germany and Occupied Europe, or  like the 900,000 Jews who fled Arab lands during and after the 1948-49 war.

No one today thinks that the children or grandchildren of the millions of ethnic Germans who after World War II were forced out of western Poland and Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland now have a “right to return.” Nor does any Arab state think that the 400,000 Palestinians who were expelled from Kuwait for having sided with Saddam Hussein when he invaded that country in 1990, have a “right of return” to Kuwait, though most had been born, and lived their entire lives, in that Gulf country. How many Arab states think that the descendants of those 900,000 Jews who fled Arab lands have a “right of return”? The very idea of a “right of return” for those who never lived in the country for which they claim that right, is consistently dismissed – save in the case of the Palestinian Arabs, who alone among the world’s tens of millions of refugees since World War II, are allowed to pass on their “refugee status” to their descendants, as part of their genetic code. Thus we allow. for example, a “Palestinian” born in London in 1974, of parents born in Marseille in 1955, to claim a “right of return” to present-day Israel, a land which neither he, nor his parents, have ever seen.

For decades the Arab states had dutifully supported the Palestinian cause, including the “right of return.” But in recent years they have grown tired of the conflict; many – possibly most – of the Arabs no longer see the “Palestinians” as central to their concerns. The Palestinians seem to be perennially holding their hands out for aid from the Arabs of one kind or another — financial, diplomatic, military — and those Arab “brothers” are getting fed up. Egyptians, for example, feel they have sacrificed quite enough of both men and money, in several wars Egypt fought for the Palestinians, and are convinced that the latter have been insufficiently grateful.

But more significant in causing the decline of Arab interest in the Palestinian cause is that there is simply too much else going on that Arab leaders now have to worry about. There are civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. In Egypt, the regime worries continually about the domestic threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood. In Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab states there are worries over colossal declines in both demand for, and in the price of, oil. In Bahrain, the Sunni ruler confronts a restive Shi’a majority. In Qatar, the country continues to endure the enmity of its Gulf Arab neighbors, who have imposed a land, sea, and air blockade of the country, because of Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its friendly ties with Iran. In Iraq, there is both continued sectarian strife (Shia versus Sunnis) and simmering ethnic tensions (Kurds v. Arabs). In Libya the civil war between the Government of National Accord and the forces of General Haftar shows no signs of ending, and the conflict has managed to involve other Arab states – chiefly Egypt and the UAE– that support Haftar with weapons and training, while non-Arab Turkey supports the GNA. In Lebanon, the country is faced with a total economic collapse, and popular fury at the government’s mismanagement and corruption has extended to Hezbollah, for its blind support for the government, and its violent suppression of protesters. In Syria, after the civil war finally ends, the regime faces the monumental task of reconstruction, which will cost an estimated $350 billion dollars. Faced with that monumental challenge, how can the Syrians, who in the past were always so solicitous of the Palestinian cause, devote either money or time to the Cause of Palestine? No wonder there is so little interest left over for the “Palestinians.”

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Martina Vaslovik

3 years ago

What Palestinians? There never was a Palestinian nation, people, culture, or language. It’s a fiction, originally invented by the Roman Emperor Hadrian, and glommed onto by the Arab Muslims defeated in their genocidal wars against the Jewish state.
After crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt, circa 132–136 CE the Roman Emperor Hadrian applied the name Syria Palestina to the entire region that had formerly included Judea province. Hadrian chose a name that revived the ancient name of Philistia (Palestine), combining it with that of the neighboring province of Syria, in an attempt to suppress Jewish connection to the land, although the actual Philistines from which the name derives had vanished from the pages of history centuries previously during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC). Today those calling themselves Palestinians are simply Arab Muslims intent on the destruction of the Jewish state.

Of course today Muslims employ the Palestine label for the same purpose as did Hadrian.

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A Cohen

3 years ago

The colonisers have the right to return to their traditional homelands of Brooklyn, Stamford Hill, East London, Poland and other East European countries. The area might then be able to live in peace

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Charles Martell III

3 years ago

Reply to  A Cohen

The “Colonizers” are the so-called Palestinians . . . whose parents in 1948 all came from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and other surrounding Arab Countries during the British Mandate to get work.

“As I lived in Palestine, everyone I knew could trace their heritage back to the original country their great grandparents came from. Everyone knew their origin was not from the Canaanites, but ironically, this is the kind of stuff our education in the Middle East included.

“The fact is that today’s Palestinians are immigrants from the surrounding nations! I grew up well knowing the history and origins of today’s Palestinians as being from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Christians from Greece, Muslim Sherkas from Russia, Muslims from Bosnia, and the Jordanians next door.

“My grandfather, who was a dignitary in Bethlehem, almost lost his life at the hands of Abdul Qader Al-Husseni after being accused of selling land to Jews.

“My father used to tell us that his village Beit Sahur (The Shepherds Fields) in Bethlehem County was empty before his father settled in the area with six other families. The town has now grown to 30,000 inhabitants.” Walid Shoebat.

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golem2

3 years ago

Reply to  A Cohen

Jews are from Judea. Get it? The Arab apologists are not very bright but keep on lying anyway

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knightsstrength

3 years ago

always like history as many know very little

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al_Husseini, the man behind stopping Jews escaping to Palestine and part of the final solution, and to me responsible for modern day terrorism. He was a redhead, just like Muhammad was white.

The Grand Mufti
https://watch.thewest.com.au/series/126/1995

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Maranatha

3 years ago

Ishmalis, they don’t even know their own green book:
”The Land that We(Allah) ….gave to Israel…after We(Allah) …destroyed Pharaoh….belongs to Israel…even to the last days when they come back to their Land”
Surah 17:100-104
Quran
Green book

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Charles Martell III

3 years ago

Reply to  Maranatha

Izzzzlam . . . conceived in the 6th Century AD has no connection to anything before that date.
Decendants of the wild man Ishmal is in no way izzzzlam. Ishmal practiced idol worship as did other arabs for thousands of years.

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Dave

3 years ago

Do black Americans claim the ‘right to return’ to Africa? Not many, but they would be free to go, if African countries would be prepared to take them. I read that the Palestinians were told to move out in 1948, before war was declared by the muslim aggressors, to avoid being killed, and they could move back when the war against Israel was won. It wasn’t, and they didn’t.

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Pantalones

3 years ago

They were overshadowed by the new so called victims of Islam series ,The Rohingya

Keep up people. Buy the trading cards

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