Peace and the ‘Right of Return’
On May 24, at Speaker of the House John Boehner’s invitation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress. With the demand for change sweeping the Middle East, the UN General Assembly threatening to declare a Palestinian state in September, and President Obama in his speech from the State Department earlier today having reaffirmed his determination to see negotiations move forward, it will be incumbent on Netanyahu to restate the principles for a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Among those principles will be recognition by Palestinians of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Contrary to international public opinion and Obama administration rhetoric and policy, Palestinian refusal to do so remains the heart of the conflict.
Since the collapse in July 2000 of the Camp David talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat, it has been widely assumed that the parties agree on major principles:
- A Palestinian state should be established with borders that for the most part track the 1967 lines but which accommodate Israel’s needs for security.
- Israel and Palestine should share Jerusalem as their capitals.
- A reasonable number of Palestinian refugees should be allowed to take up residence in Israel.
Meanwhile, President Obama’s demand in 2009 that Israel cease construction beyond the Green Line became, for the first time, a Palestinian precondition for negotiations, and directly led to a breakdown in talks between the two sides. It also reinforced the opinion common in Europe and progressive circles in the U.S. — and Israel — that but for Israeli intransigence, the two sides could achieve peace.
Thanks to “The Palestine Papers and the Right of Return,” a study recently released by Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, we know that what has been widely assumed is wrong. The study (available online as a PDF file) carefully analyzes the leaked Palestine Papers — more than 1600 internal Palestinian documents published online in January by Al Jazeera dealing with the last decade of negotiations. While Israel’s settlement policy is certainly open to criticism, and most of what is supposedly agreed upon remains contentious, the Palestine Papers show that the biggest stumbling block is fundamental disagreement about refugees.
And contrary to initial reports in the Guardian, the Palestine Papers do not reveal conciliatory Palestinians pitted against inflexible Israelis. For example, whereas Israel is prepared to welcome a small symbolic number of refugees, the PA seeks to preserve an unlimited flow that would, by sheer numbers and deliberate intention, end Israel by turning it into an Arab-majority state.
OK, fair is fair. If we’re going to recognize and confer a “right of return” to “Palestinians” (whatever that might be) we should also recognize and confer a “right of return” to Jews. In other words, Zionism should be recognized as legitimate and ethical.
They can not have one without the other. Good luck selling that concept to anyone in the Middle East.
The establishment of Israel as a Jewish state was one of the most dramatic events in world history. It was a revolution against the indifference and complicity of the Christianized West in the destruction of European Jewry. I partly wrote about its revolutionary character here: http://clarespark.com/2011/05/20/the-mentalist-melville-blake-and-israel/. Yes, Zionism was part of it, but the resistance to the founding of Israel was the result of oil politics, Pan-Arabism, and a Nazified Middle East.
My father served in WW II and he not only wasn’t complicit in squat he helped end the Holocaust.
You think people just liberated themselves?
Alexander Werth sent a dispatch to the BBC they didn’t even believe in at first it was so crazy what had happened at Majdenek.
Let’s not have any talk of Americans sitting around fireplaces filing their nails while they knew Jews were being exterminated. There’s thousands of American graves in Europe that say otherwise and the shock of Werth and others was very real and in no way something they knew about or expected to see.
There was also this little thing called an ocean to cross and a German army to fight.
Arab states have not absorbed the Palestinians and their descendants as citizens. That is fact and they never will.
Palestinian state we are talking about could use some immigrants. Israel would not be here today had it not done the same.
Simple solution would be that as part of the deal money is spent to resettle Palestinians who want to leave from places like Syria on a realistic schedule in the new homeland of Palestine.
Defacto Palestinians run a state under their own control mostly. So far as I can see a unilateral declaration of Palestinian state on 67 lines writes out any such return rights. Maybe the residents of Bethlehem, Ramala, and even Gaza are thinking about their own futures more. Or not.
Why is the PM of an alien nation allowed to talk to the US Congress?
We can understand Churchill or Blair– as England has fought by our side in many wars–as has Australia.
Who is bibi?
why are you posting here? don’t you have to get to your Hitler Youth meeting?
We can understand Churchill or Blair ….
Is that the Royal “We”?
Actually, the we was either an abbreviation, stuck keyboard or typo; what Victor meant to type was weakminded.
Bibi is one of Israel’s great leaders. His clear vision of right and wrong has protected ARABS from their own self destruction. There never EVER have been palestinians – they are ARABS who were conquered by muslems and have been captive ever since. Hey – how about demand a release from the captivity of mohomed!
Did you have a problem with Calderon a couple of years ago?
Didn’t think so.
Are you sh*tting me shipmate? Israel has been a steadfast friend through thick and thin and not always with reciprocity (see Carter administration). I welcome Bibi and hope he tells Obama to go bleep himself.
“Why is the PM of an alien nation allowed to talk to the US Congress?”
It’s really annoying when people pose questions that are answered in the very article they are commenting about.
The answer is provided in the first sentence of the article:
On May 24, at Speaker of the House John Boehner’s invitation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress.
What part of that sentence did you not understand?
When we can build a grand synagogue and cathedral next to the mosque in Mecca, when the Jews and their ancestors expelled from all Arab lands post 1948 can return with full rights and half of all parliamentary seats, when all imams renounce the sections of the koran that equate Jews and non-muslims as infidels, when Israel can have permanent editors and ombudsmen at al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, then, MAYBE… we can perhaps start to consider a dialogue to begin a negotiation to possibly talk.
In other words, POUND SAND, world. Israel forever.
The fact of the matter is that thousands lost their homes after the 1948 creation of Israel and were forced to live in exile. There is great hostility toward Israel in the Muslim world, including every single neighbor of Israel. If you truly care about Israel’s future (beyond the macho rhetoric and emotionalism), you should hope that the negotiations with the Palestinians proceeds. Let me assure you that the Palestinians will not stop fighting, the same way that you love Israel, other people love their homeland as well. It’s been 63 years, many wars and massacres and terrorist attacks, many lives destroyed, many homes demolished, many children orphaned… enough is enough. Give peace a chance.
The fact of the matter is that thousands lost their homes after the 1948 creation of Israel and were forced to live in exile.
Actually, those thousands who lost their homes departed the new state of Israel on their volition, or due to persuasion (or threats) from their fellow Arabs. They were not expelled by the Jews.
The same cannot be said of the tens of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries in 1948 (most of whom went to Israel to bolster its still-small population).
Peace will have its chance when, as Golda Meir said, the Palestinians love their children more than they hate the Jews.
The Palestinians refugees of today, rose up IN ISRAEL against the Israeli govt as a 5th column in the ’67 War / 6 day War.
These traitors were exiled to several (Lebanon, Syria, etc) countries and interned in refugee camps which exist to this day as a Muslim/anti Israel ploy to undermine any form of reconciliation with Israel.
Tell that to the PA coalition government, which doesn’t recognize the right of Israel to exist and wish its destruction, and also their Arab “brothers” (who treat Palestinians worse than Israel does) do not recognize Israel.
Tell that to the Israeli Arabs who protest vehemently whenever Israel tries to draw the border so that their village or neighborhood is in PA territory. Or to the Arabs of Jerusalem who are buying property to West Jerusalem or petitioning to keep Jerusalem united because they don’t want to live under the PA.
Israel gave up the Sinai and Gaza for peace. What are the Palestinians giving up? Right of return? No. East Jerusalem? No. Giving back Gilad Shalit or letting him see a Red Cross worker? No. Giving up rockets from Iran? No. What?
Oh good grief! Give peace a chance? With who? You have to have somebody who WANTS peace to have peace. The arabs don’t want peace. They want the destruction of Israel. Period. In fact if you ask them the arabs acutually LOVE the idea of Israel because it gets the Jews all in one place to kill!
And for your information, Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria were INVADED by Jordan in 1948. Israel simply recaptured the land in 67. If you want the arabs gone send them back to Jordan and Egypt where they came from.
The vast majority of Arabs left voluntarily in 1948, to facilitate the Arab invasion of Israel. They were promised by the Arab armies that they would return to a judenrein land and help push the Jews into the sea.
Even Abbas admits they left voluntarily:
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2009/07/abu-mazen-we-left-voluntarily.html
That many of them now hate Jews and Israel reflects only their own rejectionism and the failure of them and their Arab brothers to defeat Israel.
Ignorance is not bliss, lgkicks. Ignorance is dangerous. Yours is painfully obvious.
A resonable number of refugees should be allowed to take up residence in Israel? Really? where would you let the people raised up on a diet of anti Israel, anti-West, anti-Christian propaganda? I’m thinking that Israel should agree to this immediately, let the attacks commence, and then finally handle the problem. I’m so sick of hearing about Muslim parents strangling and stabbing their own children!
“the PA seeks to preserve an unlimited flow that would, by sheer numbers and deliberate intention, end Israel by turning it into an Arab-majority state.”
To better understand change to read as follows: “the Latinos seek to preserve an unlimited flow that would, by sheer numbers and deliberate intention, end The United States of America by turning it into an Latino-majority state.”
Now ad the fact that Obama, the same one that hates America, Israel, Caucasians and Jews with a passion has his nose stuck in the middle of everything and ask yourself what should Prime Minister Netanyahu say to the joint session of Congress..?
“Ladies and Gentlemen I have just placed Israel on maximum alert and ordered that every conceivable method of defending Israel against all of her enemies; including and especially President Obama and this hostile Congress be taken immediately.
Hopefully the American people will wake up and pull their heads out of their rear ends before they sit down and break their necks!”
“… including and especially President Obama and this hostile Congress be taken immediately.”
There’s no call for referencing “this hostile Congress”. This Congress, like all its immediate predecessors, has been overwhelmingly supportive of Israel, as is the American people. Even the Democrats by a majority are supportive, though somewhat less so than Republicans. So it’s no surprise they invited Netanyahu to speak to a Joint Session of Congress (which he’s done before). Obama didn’t like that, which is why he scheduled his speech *before* Bibi got here – to try to cut him off at the knees.
What are Americas fundamental interests in this religious/tribal/land dispute in cultures driven by hatred and and revenge.
Why does America bother with this ridiculous charade that is the ‘peace process’ ?
What would be the political consequences of a US president (or aspirant) saying,
‘the US cannot be more desirous of peace than the two parties involved. therefore we disengage and will refuse to fund all interested parties in middle east peace until the protagonists are ready to sincerely work towards peace.’
AIPAC should be registered under Foreign Agents Registration Act FARA
http://www.fara.gov/
The Israeli economy is doing OK-they should pay their own way–no more handouts from America.
AIPAC is not “persons acting as agents of foreign principals” because they have no authority from the Israeli government and often have differing policies. It is an organization of Americans representing what they see as their interests as Americans. So FARA is not applicable.
Israel doesn’t get handouts from America. Israel and America cooperate on military intelligence and design of weaponry and Israel gets chits which it can only spend buying US military hardware.
Also Israel develops an enormous amount of electronic, software, and medical innovation which benefits the whole world. Israel more than pays its own way.
Gee, thanks for letting me live in your shadow.
Genesis 12:3
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
The Israeli economy is doing OK-they should pay their own way–no more handouts from America.
Not a problem – as long as they also end all handouts to ANY Muslim country. Countries which have – time and time again – shown themselves to be enemies of the US. How many terrorists from Israel have attacked the US? OTOH it was Saudis and Egyptians flying planes into the WTC, and it was Yemanis running their boat into the USS Coles, and Libyans who bombed Pan Am 103. Not to mention literally hundreds of other attacks around the world. So why in the Hell, do we seem hell bent on destroying our one true friend in that region, while spending lives and treasure attempting to drag those Muslims out of 7th century barbarism?
I look forward to the ‘right of return’ for German Prussians and Silesians to their lands and property.
You beat me to it.
I guess a few million Germans are going to get a chance to move back east. If the Poles don’t like their new German neighbors, they can move back east of the Curzon Line.
Finns and Sami can move back to Petsamo and Karelia. All the Australians can return to the UK now.
I assume the Israelis will have a “Right of Return” to all the places they were kicked out of – Russia, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, etc…
There’s more to the “right of return” than you say. The other piece of it is that when those refugees return, they expect to take possession of the land and property they originally left behind.
Let’s have a do over and go back to pre Roman boundaries.
It is important to understand that each potential “right of return” Palestinian immigrant is most likely not to be a patriotic citizen, but a potential terrorist — indoctrinated from birth with a savage, cold-blooded, hatred for the nation they plan to inhabit and then destroy.
The refugee problem is really quite different from what has been discussed.
The Palestine refugees, (there were 1.2 million of them in the beginning of 1049 a majority of whom had never lived in what became Israel, but showed up to get the marvelous welfare benefits offered refugees). They were offered free room and board, free medical care, free education, and other benefits as well. Their descendents enjoy them to this day.
By the way of the perhaps half a million who had lived in Israel, the vast majority had left before Israel was founded including most of the population of Haifa and Jaffa, who were evacuated by the British though the Jews begged them to stay. Few of these people owned any land in what became Israel.
The real refugee problem is that a goodly proportion of the refugees do not want to give up the welfare benefits they now receive through UNRRA (or whatever its initials are)
They have resorted to violence whenever peace appeared near, and will continue to do so. They have done so out of the very legitimate belief that peace will bring the end of the dole for them. Who will support them in the style to which they are accustomed if there is peace?
Some of their host countries do not allow them to work legally, which I suppose justifies their receiving welfare (paid for by us of course). What is Obama’s plan for addressing this question?
Sudeteners got a nasty shaft in 1945/1946, where’s their right of return?
EMERGENCY RALLY IN NYC
FRIDAY
MAY 20TH
An emergency rally to protest the outrageous speech of President Barack Obama!
Friday May 20th at 12:0opm, The Israeli Consulate, 800 2nd Ave & 42nd Street
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/05/nyc-emergency-rally-today-protest-obamas-jihad-against-israel.html
Time is of the essence. Please spread the word quickly!
Sincere apologies to the the Israelis. Barry the Pretender does not speak for us, he is a buffoon, a marxist idiot and the turd in our punch bowl.
May God forgive us, this halfrican has to go.
Obama assuming OBL’s role.. the nostalgia is overwhelming.
Can we look forward to the Cyprus Spring, when hundreds of thousands of Greek Cypriots cross the Green Line, and retrieve their homes, lands and businesses in Northern Cyprus, occupied by Turkey since 1974? Will the Turks then greet them with their customary killer charms? What will the President do then?
This is the Obama Doctrine, be treacherous to American allies, and harmless to America’s enemies.
Obama especially hates Israel which he sees as a foreign colonial occupier of Arab Islamic lands, and while he cannot break off relations with the Jewish State, he can and will do everything he can to make life difficult for Israel.
And Obama despises Jews as a People, seeing us as a disruptive, corrosive, and capitalist influence on America, and the historical oppressors of African Americans. If you doubt this maybe you can tell me how Barack and Michele Obama and their daughters sat in the anti American, anti Semitic, anti Israel, and Black racist congregation of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and yet never found any of the good Reverend’s anti American, anti Israel, anti Semitic, and anti White diatribes deplorable, in fact, how the Obama’s somehow never even heard them?
Barack Obama has almost incredibly managed to alienate Israelis even more than we were before, and he has done his level best to alienate even more American Jews by his unfair and historically baseless attacks on Israel in this speech. Obama may even have provoked PM Netanyahu to be even more specific, more outspoken, and harsher towards Obama’s foreign policy towards Israel and the Middle East in his speech next week before Congress.
The Arabs so called “refuges” came to Palestine after Jews start to cultivate the land in 1880. They came because there war plenty of work at that time.
Before that time the country was deserted with few Arabs and Jews for hundreds of years.
It got a big push after the WW1 when the British built Haifa Port and the gas pipe line from Iraq to Haifa.
In 1932, 30000 Arabs enter Palestine in one month from Syria – Horn.
Most of the Arab population in 1948 lived in Palestine for few years.
After the Israeli independence war in 1948 UNRWA was establish to deal with the refuges problem. A new type of refugee was born, one who lived only two years in Palestine. The normal refugee definition is someone who lived in his home country for generations. UNHCR is responsible to those refuges all over the world.
It shows clearly that the Palestine refuges problem is not a real one but a fake one, aimed to play by the Arabs counties against Israel.
All those called “refuges” left Palestine because Arabs leaders told them to leave, and promise them to come back after the war will ends.
The reason that was behind this request is not so innocent. The 6 Arabs countries that invaded Israel likes to divide Palestine among them and they really didn’t care about the refuges.
I can summarize this issue. The Arab refuges returned to their homeland, and should be settle down in their countries.
More can be read in the book of Joan Peters – From Time Immemorial
It’s been largely discredited. Jews weren’t buying empty land from nobody.
IRRELEVANT OBAMA MAKES DESPERATE SPEECH ON MIDEAST PEACE
If Osama bin Laden were still alive Barack Obama wouldn’t have had the effrontary to give this treacherous, backstabbing speech on Middle East peace yesterday. The killing of bin Laden has gone to Obama’s head and warped an already poor and deficient judgement on world and regional affairs. He thinks that God and history are now on his side for a comprehensive Mideast peace where Israel will fall on its sword for him because he slew bin Laden. And he is dead wrong. In less than a month Obama has gone from the sublime of killing bin Laden to the absurd of requiring Israel to return to its indefensible 67 borders against a prior US agreement. And for what? For peace? With whom? An implacable, bitter, Jew hating enemy-driven by injustice, imperialism and intolerance-who wickedly defines peace in triumphalist terms as Israel’s destruction-and won’t settle for less “We must persue the world as it should be.”: said Obama. Which is exactly what Palestinians, Iranians and Islamists believe; for such a world means Islamic conquest with Israel destoyed and the US and Europe defeated. What incredible naivity!
Coming just five days after George Mitchell resigned in frustration as the US Envoy to Mideast Peace (frustrated because of the ominous reunion of Fatah and terrorist Hamas making peace impossible) Obama’s speech was an act of political desperation to make it appear that he’s relevant to regional events and back in the game as a peacemaker. Unfortunately, Obama blew his chance two years ago to make his mark on Mideast history as a shaper of events when he ignored the democratic uprising in Iran-to avoid offending Ahmadenijad who he imagined would be a partner in a grand deal to moderate and denuclearize Iran. Now he’s reduced to fighting Kaddafy in Lybia and imposing sanctions on Syria and making absurd, self-serving, tiresome speeches (aimed at his improbable reelection) about an impossible peace between peaceloving Jews and Palestinian murderers. History is passing Obama by, his moment for greatness long past as he loses what little prestige he gained from killing bin Laden.
Israelis created a “right of return” as an internal law affecting only their own state, once they had won independence. They did not inflict that “right of return” on anyone else.
What the Arabs demand as a “right of return” consciously and intentionally turns that on its head. They are demanding that a “right of [Arab] return” be imposed upon Israel as a condition of the Arabs themselves deigning to accept the “gift” of the sovereignty they supposedly desire. Israelis, in other words, are extending a right to potential immigrants; the Arabs, in contrast, are seeking to impose an invasion on the Israelis, camouflaged in language to make it appear, falsely, that they are seeking a mirror image of what Israel already has.
There are three prongs to the Arab attack on Israel:
1) The bogus “right of return,” which is an invasion cloaked in “human-rights” language;
2) The demand that Israel cede the West Bank and Gaza to the Arabs, undoing the victory of the Six-Day War and leaving Israel physically vulnerable;
3) Most pernicious of all, because often barely noticed, the demand that the Gaza/West Bank state be “contiguous.” This means that the Arabs are demanding that Israel be bisected in order to create a unified state for the Arabs. This is much worse than a mere retreat to the 1967 pre-war borders—and, like the demand that Israel bisect its capital city, contains an inevitable implication that Israel itself is illegitimate. What legitimate state, undefeated in war, would permit outside forces to divide not merely its capital city but its very territory?
The refugee question demonstrates that the key problem in making peace is agency.
Israel can make a peace agreement with politicians acting as agents for the ‘palestinians’. However, many of their people will feel betrayed and not accept it – they do not consider any agent who would relinquish their ‘rights’ as a legitimate agent.
So they will not accept any peace, except as a first stage in a phased plan to destroy Israel entirely.
Israel can make peace with agents, but not the principals.
The principals will not accept anything less than Israel’s destruction.
Only Obama would consider killing a terrorist like Bin Ladin a means to showing Israel whats what. It would bother me but he still has been harder on Honduras than any other country. What a shmuck.
Today, BIBI schooled Bama on ME history. I wish he could run for the Pubs as Prez. And I mean it. Bama made hash of Israel on the 19th and BIBI made chop suey of Bama today, repudiating his lack of understanding of Islamofascist terror. Bibi is re-indoctrinating Bama to tell him all of Bama’s leftist brainwashing has made him and America very unsafe domestically and internationally. And his policies would make both nations unsafe and voters in both nations have to understand that.
I am thinking that the only so-called Palistinians who may have agreed that Jewish Israel has a God given right to exist don’t live there now, because they were Christians. Those Pali Christians who are not dead at Arab hands are now in Syracuse NY, and even that crew is forgetful about how they happened to immigrate, even to the point of emotionally ientifying with the idiots who allowed Arafat to plunder them all those years.
Israel’s existance was never about the plight of the Arabs in Palistine. The Pali Arabs are merely pawns, to be expended or removed from the board at the pleasure of their Arab betters.
What do you suppose would happen to the Palistinian Arabs if Israel did not exist? As I recall, one of the greatest killers of Pali’s is Jordan.
If America has any soul left to her, we will impeach this enemy agent in the White House and return to supporting our true frienda with honor. My wife has been weeping over Obama’s speech for two days.
He shames us all.
A disclaimer: I am an Aerican Christian. My son-in-law is Jewish, though apparently of that particularly American sub-genus that embraces the progressive left (a poor student of history, he has not yet made the connection between the hard left and the fate of religious beleivers under their rigimes, but he is a bright young man and I have hope for him.).
While I hold out hope for peace, I cannot help but think that Mr. Netanyahu was a bit disrespectful toward our president. When you are a guest in someone’s home, it is wrong to point fingers at them and just say “no”! Seems like Mr. Netanyahu could use a few lessons from Miss Manners the next time he goes hat-in-hand, begging for U.S. defense and dollars. Just sayin.
It’s incredible that no one is talking about close to one million Jews expelled from the Arab countries. In many places from Iraq to Egypt they had lived in those countries long before the Arab conquest in the 7th century AD. Their property was worth much more than the Palestinian property left behind after Palestinian Arabs urged them to leave in 1948 so they could finish off the Palestinian Jews. If we wish to end the conflict, the first thing would be for the Arab countries to accept the same number of Palestinians to replace the Jews they expelled. That wouldn’t be completely fair considering the value of the Jewish properties compared to the Palestinian ones , but would be a good way
to end the conflict. I am sure that Jews would be ready to absorb the losses.
Whatever has been “widely assumed”, Israel must not permit a palestinian state, and Israel’s borders must be defensible, whoever is on the other side of the line.
Why? Because a palestinian state would have a military, which would attack Israel. Thats why. It should not be necessary to explain why a country must be able to secure its borders. Just look at the damage to the USA as millions of illegal aliens pour across the mexican border.
And moslems cannot be part of Israel because their koran requires them to kill all jews. It might not be presumptive to suggest that the majority of jews do not want to be killed.I, for one, do not.
To jews stupid enough to vote for Obama I say, “When the obamathugs come for you, please remember that it was YOU who empowered them to do so.”