Jews Against the Occupation

Right of Return

The Right of Return: Sacred, Legal, Possible. 

by Dr Salman Abu Sitta

The uprooting of whole people from their homes in Palestine in 1948 by a carefully executed and externally supported plan is unprecedented in modern history. This is what we call Al Nakba (the Catastrophe). Its dimensions are staggering. The inhabitants of 531 towns and villages were forcibly evicted from their homes by the Zionist forces in 1948. They represented 85% of the people in the land that became Israel. Their land, which represents 92% of Israel today, has been confiscated and administered by Israel Land Administration. Their property and their heritage have been given free for all: Russians, Ethiopians and other people as diverse as passengers in a busy transit lounge. Provided such diverse people are Jews, they were instantly welcomed to the very same homes from which the rightful owners were expelled and to which they continue to be denied the right to return.

What is their Land?

In 1948, the land area under Jewish control was 1,682 sq. km or 8% of Israel today. The land area of Palestinian villages remaining in Israel is 1, 474 sq.km or 7% of Israel. Two thirds of their land is now confiscated by Israel. The remainder of Israel's area, which is 17,166 sq.km, or 85% of Israel, is the property of the expelled refugees. It has all been confiscated by Israel. Thus, fully 92% of Israel's area is Palestinian land.

How could such a massive catastrophe have happened? The refugees told stories of massacres, expulsion and eviction over and over again. The West refused to believe them and preferred to believe the heroic story of David against Goliath or little Israel fighting 7 huge Arab armies. It is a crying shame that it is now left to the Israeli historians to demolish this myth and to tell the West that what the refugees always said was true.

Most of the heinous crimes of "ethnic cleansing", which we have seen on our TV screens during the Kosovo crisis, have been committed in 1948. About 34 massacres have been reported during the Al Nakba, all part of the Israeli military campaign. Many more are still yet uncovered. The pattern is clear. Villages were surrounded from all sides except one, leaving the way open for escapees to spread the horror stories. Young men were shot against a wall, thrown in a well or burnt alive. Their houses were burnt and later demolished. Even bacteriological warfare was used by poisoning wells and infecting drinking water with malaria and typhus. That was the case in Gaza in the summer of 1948 as Ben Gurion admitted in his diary. Evidence is overwhelming that the depopulation of Palestinian land, hence the creation of the so-called "refugee problem", is the direct result of a total war waged against the Palestinians by the Israelis during and after the British mandate, using military and psychological means. In brief, they wanted the land, not the people. They wanted a fulfilment of the myth that Palestine was a "land without people".

In the years of agony that followed Al Nakba in 1948 there was not a single, more basic or stronger driving force for the Palestinians than their quest for their right of return. There are three aspects to the Right of Return which makes it compelling and inevitable. It is sacred, legal and possible.

First, the will and determination of the Palestinians. To them, the Right of Return is sacred. In spite of being dismembered and dispersed in the four corners of the earth, Palestinians continue to maintain a monolithic structure, based on the family and the village. They intermarry across countries on a family or a neighborhood basis. A grandchild of a 1948 refugee identifies himself as belonging to his original village. On the national level, societies or syndicates for professions, trades, women, students, creative artists and others, representing the Palestinian people, are functioning in many countries. That was the raison d'être of the PLO. It was basically a refugees' organization.

Second, the Right of Return has a solid legal basis. To begin with, neither the Balfour Declaration of 1917, nor the UN Partition Plan of 1947 is binding on the Palestinians. They were not a party to them. None of these can grant them any new rights or deprive them of their basic rights.

In recognition of the rights of the Palestinians, the United Nations adopted Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948. Paragraph 11 states:

"(The General Assembly)... resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors 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".

This Resolution was affirmed over 110 times since 1948. It represents the universal, sustained and unwavering will of the international community. The exception is, of course, Israel and the US since 1994.

The Right of Return does not derive its validity merely from UN Resolutions. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the right of every individual to leave and return to his country. The Right of Return to one's home is so basic that it has been stated in Magna Carta (Ch. 42) in 1215. The Geneva Civilian Convention of 1949 prohibits "individual or mass forcible transfers … regardless of motive". There is a growing body of international, regional and national legislation, which affirms the right of return. The Right of Return is affirmed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the American Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and People's Rights. In fact the Human Rights Law has superseded local laws in Europe if they were at variance with it.

Feasibility of the Right of Return

We come now to the third aspect of the Right of Return. With such overwhelming support of law for the Right of Return, we hear voices, well intentioned or self-serving perhaps that exclaim: but is the return of the refugees feasible? They say "that Palestinian towns and villages ... have disappeared... (and) ... it would be difficult to re-establish these former sites".

The claim that it is not possible to re-establish former sites is factually erroneous. There is no land better documented than Palestine. In the period 1920-1947, the Survey of Palestine produced detailed maps for the whole of Palestine. The land area and ownership of each town and village are recorded on maps and government registers. In 1964, the UN prepared ownership records for 500,000 owners describing the area and location of each property. After the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948, these very same maps, with their Arabic names erased and replaced by Hebrew names, were used by Israel. The Israel Land Administration, which leases Palestinian land to Jews, has complete records of every plot of land. Today advanced technology such as the satellite mapping system makes the retrieval and comparison of old and new data quite feasible and accurate.

Then comes the question: where would the Palestinians return to? What is to be done with all those multi-national immigrants who were brought to Israel to live in Palestinian homes? The answer lies in examining Israel's demography.

Demographic analysis of Israel shows that the concentration of Jews today is largely in and around pre-1948 Jewish land and that the expropriated Palestinian land is still sparsely populated. As surprising as this may seem, serious research proves this point. Let me explain a bit further. For this purpose, let us divide Israel into 3 areas.

68% of the Jewish population in Israel live in an area of 1,628 sq. km. (8% of Israel). Let us call this area A. Just to remind you, this area is almost the same area in which Jews lived in pre-1948 Palestine.

Another 10% of the Jews live together with 20% of the Palestinians in Israel in an area of approximately 1,500 sq. km. (7% of Israel). Again for the purpose of our discussion, let's call this Area B. This mixed area is almost the same in size as the land of the Palestinians remaining in Israel. Thus the undisputed fact is that about 80% of the Jews in Israel live in 15% of Israel.

The remaining part, which we shall call Area C, has a total area of 17,325 sq. km. and is essentially the land of the 4.9 million Palestinian refugees. Apart from a few urban centers (mostly Palestinian towns originally) in which urban Jews live, only 200,000 rural Jews control and exploit this vast Palestinian land.

The striking fact is that this small number of rural Jews who confiscated the heritage of about 5 million Palestinians is almost the same as the number of settlers in the West Bank.

The irony is that those rural Jews are the residents of the Kibbutz, which is now ideologically outdated and economically bankrupt. The image of Kibbutz pioneer, the picture of the Israeli fighter, slinging his gun on his shoulder and driving his tractor into the sunset, is dying out. There are constant desertions from the Kibbutz. Almost three-quarters of the Kibbutz are loaded with debts and unable to survive. Most of you have read about the tragic conditions in Gaza Strip where over one million people live in a tiny stretch of land at a density of over 4,000 persons per sq. km. Across the barbed wire they can look at their empty land controlled by the Kibbutz at a density of a mere 3 persons/sq. km. Why can't the refugees return home?

One of the painful twists of history is that the number of Gaza and Lebanon refugees, who have been denied the right to return home, is almost exactly the same as the number of Russian immigrants that have been freely admitted to Israel throughout this decade. While the return of the refugees will bring peace and stability to the Middle East, the Russian immigration is a cause of tension in Israel itself and, as studies have shown, could trigger a new major conflict about water.

If the Right of Return is implemented and Palestinians return to their homes, hardly any infringement on the Jews' Lebensraum (living space) would occur. The Palestinians, mostly farmers, would return to their fields which they had tilled for centuries. Their efforts would compensate for the drop in Israel's agricultural production from 11% of GNP (1950) to only 3.5% (1993). Already the farmers in Gaza, in spite of being deprived of economic support and of water supply, produce superior and cheaper agricultural products.

Maintain Purity of Jewish Character

The Israelis claim that, if the refugees were to return, Israel would lose its Jewish character. There is no place, or a future, in the civilized world for a state that is based on such exclusivity. Israel must choose between being a Jewish or a democratic state. It cannot claim to be both. In the words of a noted jurist, "The Jewish character is really a euphemism for the Zionist discriminatory statutes of the State of Israel which violate the human rights provisions… The UN is under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in Israel than it is to maintain apartheid in the Republic of South Africa".

The Palestinians have no obligation to the Israelis to lose their homes and identity and continue to suffer in the Diaspora, in order to provide the Jews with a second home. The last 50 years showed clearly that it was the Palestinians who had no home except in Palestine, while only 4 million Jews out of 12 chose to live in Israel. On the contrary, the Israelis have an obligation to the Palestinians, which must be fulfilled, to account for their dispossession and the crimes committed against them. The Right of Return to the Palestinians is a dire necessity. To the Jews, it is an option, a luxury.

The notion of maintaining Jewish supremacy is also short sighted and impractical. The Palestinians today constitute 45% of the total population in historic Palestine, between the river and the sea, and the Jews 55%. It is only a question of time when the Palestinians attain a majority regardless of how many Jews continue to immigrate to Israel. Their immigration will sooner or later dry up. What then would Israel do? Continue to maintain the only remaining apartheid system? It is absolutely clear that the denial of the refugees' right to return home in order to maintain the Jewish 'purity' of Israel is immoral, illegal and simply impractical.

The Palestinians will not go away, disappear or accept to be carted away to settle elsewhere. Their plight has shaped the history of the Middle East and will continue to do so in the next century. It behooves fair-minded people and governments concerned with peace and stability to support their Right of Return actively and by every effective means. For it would be an illusion, a dangerous and costly illusion, to think that peace can prevail in the Middle East, indeed in our global village, without implementing the most basic of rights, to return home.

 

This was compiled from the text of an address given by Dr Salman Abu Sitta in the House of Common on 24 November 1999 organized by CAAB.  See full text here.