"Return" -- For whom? And to where?

Excerpts:

One of the most annoying quirks of our major media outlets involves their consistently misleading characterization of the current debate about demands for a Palestinian "right of return." ....

Tzipi Livni, Israel's popular Foreign Minister, articulates the core issue far more clearly than Prime Minister Olmert. "Just as Israel is the homeland for 800,000 Jewish refugees who fled or were expelled from Arab countries," she says, "so a new state of Palestine should be the homeland for Palestinian refugees."

Actually, the Arab League and the United Nations currently count some 4.3 million Palestinians as "refugees" or the descendants of refugees - a hugely inflated figure which, if nothing else, gives the lie to claims of Israeli "genocide." After all, if 700,000 Palestinian refugees of 1948-9 have now become 4.3 million - multiplying by some 600% in less than 60 years-it's hardly an indication of genocide. Few populations on earth - certainly not American or Israeli - have boasted that sort of explosive growth during this period. Moreover, only a small minority of the refugees (and of the Palestinian population in general) were actually land-owners. Most were tenant farmers or "fellahin" or urban tradesmen, and most had arrived only recently in the area from their homes in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, lured by the economic opportunities presented by the surging Jewish population in the 1920's and '30's. The idea that the great-great-grandchildren of such arrivals possess some inviolable connection to specific landscape in today's bustling Tel Aviv or Haifa is both illogical and altogether unenforceable.

The Israeli position may sound harsh in Prime Minister Olmert's formulation, but it remains eminently reasonable: if the Palestinians will negotiate peace, they get to decide who lives in their new state, but they don't get to decide who lives in the neighboring state of Israel. What's the sense behind the very idea of a "two state solution" if the Palestinians insist upon a similar "right" to live in both states?

No, the debate isn't about compassion for refugees, or protecting the "Jewish character of Israel" (a phrase that brings up the old, discredited "Zionism-is-racism" charge), or ethnic cleansing, or any other distracting issue cited by the American press.

The issue, as always, is Arab refusal to accept Israel's existence and sovereignty. Until the Palestinians and their Islamic allies come to terms with the reality and permanence of a restored state on the ancient homeland of the Jewish people, and drop the ludicrous demands about a "right to return," peace negotiations will go absolutely nowhere.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Scandal: the welfare state of "Palestine": "According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) tens of billions of dollars (one-third from US taxpayers, the rest mostly from Canada and European countries) have been spent over the last 50 years providing "Palestinian refugees" and their descendents. An estimated half million people 60 years ago, that number is now over four million and increasing daily. UNRWA's purpose: to insure the "Palestinian Right of Return" - the destruction of Israel. No Arab country except Jordan -- where they constitute more than two-thirds of the population - accepts them as citizens. Saudi Arabia, for example, recently passed a law allowing all foreigner workers in the country to apply for Saudi citizenship next year - except Palestinians. More than 400,000 "Palestinian refugees" living in UNWRA-supported "camps" in Lebanon cannot work or even go to school outside their designated areas. Ditto for Syria. Most "Palestinian refugees" listed by UNRWA (which includes Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and Gaza) in 2002, don't even live in the camps, but in nearby villages and towns. All receive free assistance and services for the rest of their life, including their children, their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, ad infinitum".

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