Palestinian right of return

[19] The Palestinian refugee problem started during the 1948 Palestine war, when between 700,000 and 800,000 Arabs left, fled, or were expelled from their homes in the area that would become Israel.

[20] From April to July, between 250,000 and 300,000 fled in front of Haganah offensives, mainly from the towns of Haifa, Tiberias, Beit-Shean, Safed, Jaffa and Acre, that lost more than 90% of their Arab inhabitants.

[citation needed] It is the position of most Arab governments not to grant citizenship to the Palestinian refugees born within their borders; this policy is in part due to the wishes of these Arab states for Palestinians to be allowed to return to their homes within Israel, in part due to these states wishing to relieve themselves of the refugees.

During her visit at Haïfa on 1 May 1948, Golda Meir declared: "The Jews should treat the remaining Arabs 'with civil and human equality', but 'it is not our job to worry about the return [of those who have fled]".

[35] A group consisting of "local authorities, the kibbutz movements, the settlement departments of the National institutions, Haganah commanders and influential figures such as Yosef Weitz and Ezra Danin started lobbying against repatriation.

[37] In July, it had become an official policy:[38] "Absentees' property" was managed by Israeli government and numerous Palestinian villages were leveled.

[47][48][49] In 2000, Bobby Brown, advisor to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Diaspora affairs and delegates from the World Jewish Congress and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations began an intensive campaign to secure official political and legal recognition of Jews from Arab lands as refugees.

Article 11 of the resolution reads: [The General Assembly] Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.The exact meaning and timing of enforcement of the resolution were disputed from the beginning.

Israel has always contested this reading, pointing out that the text merely states that the refugees "should be permitted" to return to their homes at the "earliest practicable date" and this recommendation applies only to those "wishing to ... live at peace with their neighbors".

"[62] Attorney Stephen Halbrook in "The Alienation of a Homeland: How Palestine Became Israel" writes: "Palestinian Arabs have the rights to return to their homes and estates taken over by Israelis, to receive just compensation for loss of life and property, and to exercise national self-determination.

[73] Opponents of the right of return reject it partly based on the following sources: Israeli official statements and many accounts from supporters have long claimed that the 1948 refugee crisis was instigated by the invading Arab armies who ordered Palestinian civilians to evacuate the battle zone in order to allow the Arab armies freedom to operate.

[79] Karsh writes that the Palestinians were not the victims of a "Zionist grand design to dispossess them" but rather were "the aggressors in the 1948–49 war" and as such are responsible for the refugee problem.

[80][81] Some critics of the Palestinian right of return also argue that it is not supported by international precedent, drawing attention to the 758,000–866,000 Jews who were expelled, fled or emigrated from the Arab Middle East and North Africa between 1945 and 1956.

[82] Former Israeli foreign minister Moshe Sharett asserted that the migration of refugees between Israel and the Arab world essentially constituted a population exchange.

He further argued that precedent does not require reversal even of one-directional refugee migrations, such as the expulsion of 900,000 Germans from Czechoslovakia following World War II.

[74] According to Lapidoth, Stig Jägerskiöld in 1966 said that the right of return was intended as an individual and not a collective right, and that "there was no intention here to address the claims of masses of people who have been displaced as a by-product of war or by political transfers of territory or population, such as the relocation of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe during and after the Second World War, the flight of the Palestinians from what became Israel, or the movement of Jews from the Arab countries".

Kent concedes that international law almost certainly would mandate a right of return if a refugee displacement under similar circumstances were to occur today.

[85] Anthony Oberschall [de; fr] has argued that a full right of return by refugees and their descendants to their original homes would create chaos as the original Palestinian villages no longer exist and in their place are Israeli homes and property, writing that "the townhouses, villages, farms, olive groves, and pastures of 1948 do not exist anymore.

[86] The argument over the existence of such a right has perpetuated the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the failure of the peace process is due, in large part, to the inability of the two parties to achieve a solution with justice for both sides.

The Palestinians consider the vast majority of refugees as victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and cite massacres such as Deir Yassin.

In addition to the right-wing and center, a majority of the Israeli left, including the far-left,[citation needed] opposes the right of return on these grounds.

The Israeli left is generally open to compromise on the issue, and supports resolving it by means such as financial compensation, family reunification initiatives, and the admittance of a highly limited number of refugees to Israel, but is opposed to a full right of return.

Not only was there no final status agreement, but the Oslo process itself broke down, and its failure was a major cause of the Second Intifada and the continuing violence.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that the Palestinian Authority must also drop its demand for the right of return, calling it "a recipe for Israel's destruction".

Rather, it was to "form a part of a general plan for resettlement of refugees which would be established by a special organ to be created … by the United Nations."

The Arab governments agreed to the offer, but under drastically different terms: that it apply only to the area originally allotted to Israel under the Partition Plan, that all refugees originating from areas allotted to Arabs or under international control be immediately allowed to return to their homes, and that Israel exercise no control over the location of resettlement.

Clapp explained on 16 February 1950, in front of the American House Foreign Affairs Committee: "Resettlement was a subject that the Arab governments were not willing to discuss, with the exception of King Abdallah [sic]".

In 1955, Henry Richardson Labouisse, who had by that time become UNRWA's third director, reported that "Resistance to self-support programmes is particularly evident in the case of large-scale development projects, since the latter inevitably appear to the refugees to carry serious political implications.

Their cost, size and consequent permanence raise in the minds of the refugees the fear that to accept settlement on them will be tantamount to giving up the hope of repatriation.

[95] The 2003 Geneva Accord, which was an agreement between individuals and not between official representatives of the government of Israel and the Palestinian people, completely relinquished the idea of a Right of Return.