Would the exiles actually return? =================================
James Bennet The International Herald Tribune July 14, 2003
Ramallah, West Bank - A mob attacked an eminent Palestinian political scientist Sunday as he prepared to announce a startling finding from a region-wide survey of Palestinian refugees: Only a small minority of them would insist on exercising a so-called right of return to Israel as part of a comprehensive peace agreement.
Khalil Shikaki intended to explicate for the Arabic- language press the tensions and complexities of Palestinian society, but, struck, shoved and pelted with eggs but not seriously injured, he wound up starkly illustrating them instead.
Standing in the wreckage of his office here, as workers swept up the broken glass and shampooed the rugs, Shikaki offered a political analysis of the attack. He said that the dozens of rioters - who came prepared with their own press release, in Arabic and English, misrepresenting Shikaki's findings - were hijacking his press conference to signal the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas.
"They are trying to send a message that the right of return is sacred, and that you who are negotiating are on notice," said Shikaki, who is a refugee himself. "It's incitement." Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has accused Abbas of botching negotiations with Israel under a new American-backed peace plan. The two leaders have not spoken to each other since Abbas threatened to resign in a bitter argument last Monday night.
In perhaps the thorniest dispute of the conflict, Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 claim a right of return to live in what is now Israel. Israel rejects the claim, fearing that Palestinians intend to accomplish by demography what they have failed to do by force of arms - erase Israel's Jewish character.
Palestinian refugees and their descendants now number about four million, while Israel has roughly five million Jewish citizens and one million Arab citizens.
In the first such wide-ranging survey, Shikaki's researchers questioned 4,500 refugee families living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan and Lebanon. More than 95 percent of them insisted that Israel recognize a right of return, he said.
But the researchers then presented five options for refugees, including financial compensation and moving to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The options were based on those negotiated but never formally endorsed by the two sides in January 2001, and they assumed that Israel formally recognized a right of return as reflected in a United Nations resolution, 194.
Only 10 percent of those questioned demanded permanent residence in Israel, a percentage that decreased further if the respondents were told they would have to take Israeli citizenship or that their old homes were gone. More than half - a total of 54 percent - said they would accept compensation and homes in the West Bank and Gaza, or in land ceded by Israel in a territorial swap from some West Bank land.
Thirteen percent rejected any deal at all. The poll had a margin of error of less than three percentage points, Shikaki said. It did not include the roughly 10 percent of refugees living in Syria.
Shikaki said that his results showed that refugees were less interested in being standard-bearers for a nationalist cause - a role assigned them by Arab nations as well as many Palestinians - than in living fuller lives.
"This is a slap in the face for all of us," he said. "Refugees are human beings with needs. These people want to live their lives."
Many refugees remain confined to camps, often living in squalid conditions, unable to vote or otherwise join in the life of surrounding towns or cities. Some Palestinian analysts say that Arab and Palestinian leaders prefer to maintain the refugees as an open political wound, rather than help them integrate into other societies.
The press statement of the group that invaded Shikaki's office stated that his study "claims that the vast majority of Palestinian refugees are prepared to renounce their Right of Return." Shikaki called that a deliberate misrepresentation of his results, which he had circulated among some Palestinian leaders before Sunday.
The statement carried the letterhead of the Palestine Liberation Organization, but Saji Salameh, director general of that body's Refugees Affairs department, disavowed any connection to the rioters and criticized their use of violence. He said of Shikaki's study, however, "We don't believe that it reflects the reality and the position of the refugees."
Asher Arian, an Israeli political scientist, said he had not seen the survey, and he cautioned that answers to the questions might vary over time. He called the right of return the most important issue to Israelis. "It raises the demons of demography," he said.
But, he said, Israelis might soften on the question, in the right circumstances. "We've seen Israeli public opinion very flexible when legitimate leadership makes an effort to lead it in that direction," he said. =================================================
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