Palestinian Exiles' Right of Return -- Feasibility

[Seth Ackerman]

"Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>

> The depth and width of ordinary Americans' support for Palestinian
> refugees' right to return to their homes is deep and wide (as shown
> in the Arab American Institute/Zogby International poll in 2000),
> despite the fact that US leftists have hardly discussed the right
> even amongst ourselves, much less doing a lot of work educating the
> public, probably because the idea of exiles and refugees,
> Palestinians or any other people, having the right to return to their
> homes has a visceral moral and emotional appeal, as well as well
> grounded in international law.
>
> Given the size and level of militancy of the solidarity movement
> today, as well as the result of the latest Israeli election, there is
> _no_ demand of ours ("end the occupation," "stop the violence," etc.)
> that is "practical" in the sense that the USG and the state of Israel
> are likely to agree to it in the next couple of years.  That being
> the case, we must do groundwork for a future (a post-Zionist
> Israel?), and one of the crucial tasks of such groundwork is to
> create an emotional identification between Americans and Palestinians
> -- more Americans need to feel and identify with Palestinians' anger
> and sorrow, their dreams and aspirations.  The idea of home, the
> images of exiles, and the longing to return have important
> psychological roles to play here.

Yoshie, you're absolutely right on the princple of the right of return. But
you're eliding the real practical problem of implementing it. It's not the
question of whether there's physical room for the Palestinian refugees in
Israel, it's the fact that no conceivable Israeli government would ever
agree to it. There's a war on, and people are dying, mostly Palestinians. If
a peace agreement is made contingent on Israel's acceptance of the right of
return, the war will never end and eventually the Palestinians will be
transferred. That's not a fact to be gloated on, but it's true nonetheless.

When you try to equate the virtual impossibility of Israel ever agreeing to
an unlimited refugee return with the current Israeli government's refusal to
end the occupation, you're again glossing over the crucial point: There is
considerable support in Israel for ending the occupation and returning to
more or less the 1967 borders. Key figures in the Barak government were for
it, and Barak himself might have even agreed to it if the Taba talks had
gone on long enough, and with enough pressure. Not to mention the political
forces to the left of labor. But not only has no Israeli government been
willing even to consider unlimited refugee return, no Israeli political
party would either. (Not sure if Hadash has taken a concrete position on it,
but if it came out in favor, it would quickly stop being, for all practical
purposes, a "Jewish-Arab" party and would lose most of its small Jewish
contingent.)

What kind of scenario do you envision leading to mass return? (Two-state
solution--->>peace--->>resumption of war over refugee
return--->>international solidarity with Palestinians--->>victory for
Palestinians--->>return? What?)

Seth