Palestinian
right of return is the concept that
Palestinians driven off their land in
Israel's wars should be allowed to return and assume control over that land. This is one of the points that has nixed virtually
every proposed
peace deal recently;
Israel has no interest in giving a right of return that covers its own
territory, and
Arab countries supporting the Palestinians refuse to back down on it, giving
Palestinian
Authority President Yasser Arafat no room to
negotiate (even
if he is willing to do so, which is very much in question).
The problem with right of return is that it goes against a rule of war that is as old as time -- if you win it in battle, it's yours until somebody takes it away. In Israel's case, the entire independence of the State of Israel was created by this premise, so acknowledging fifty-year-old Palestinian land claims would effectively negate the existence of the State, as the refugees can claim all the land owned by Israeli citizens.
kamamer: giving back 95% of the land claims that resulted from the
Six Day War sounds like
compromise to me. "Right of
Return" is a code word for
no compromise as far as the Arab states go -- they either want
Israel (the state) to give
all of its territory back to the Palestinians via
treaty, or they want to go to
war to take the land back from the Israelis. Either way, the state of Israel ceases to exist, as individual
Palestinians (or, more likely, given the life expectancy in a
refugee camp and
guerrilla warfare, their heirs) go back into modern Israel and claim land that was theirs 50 years ago, pre-development, and invite the
Palestinian Authority to take control of the reclaimed territory. This totally ignores the effect on Israeli citizens who, by the year
2001, probably feel they have a rather strong claim over the land themselves.
"It's hard for other nations to arm a people rebelling against rational compromise."
Conversely, it's hard to negotiate with a people that denies your right to exist. That's what right-of-return is,
in the endgame: the denial of the State of Israel's right to exist.
Response to response: The Six Day War was between Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. Read the hardlink. The Gaza Strip was taken
from Egypt; that's already under Palestinian Authority control. The West Bank was taken from Jordan.
The residents of both areas were and are Palestinians, not Egyptians or Jordanians. 95% of that area is being
offered to the Palestinian Authority. Right of return is not about those areas -- it's about the rest
of the state of Israel, within its UN-mandated borders. It's about Palestinians attempting to claim land
that Israelis have had for 50 years.
I don't argue that the poor life expectancy in refugee camps is a direct result of Israel driving them off their
land. That's a fact. You're reading something into my writing that is not there.
When first written, this writeup was quickly followed by a rather scathing attempt at rebuttal by kamamer, since deleted. I have left my responses to k. intact, because I believe them to be an important part of the WU.