“Right of Return” Is Not About “Refugees.” By Rick Richman. Commentary, March 23, 2014.
Richman:
In “A Jewish State,” the Wall Street Journal
notes that “the right of return, with its implicit promise to eliminate Israel,
is the centerpiece of the conflict” between Israelis and Arabs. The Journal
observes that it is a “right” recognized “for no other refugee group in the
world,” and that its acceptance by Israel would risk “a demographic time bomb
that could turn the country into another Lebanon, sectarian and bloody.” The Journal explains the Palestinian
rejection of a Jewish state as follows: “As to why Mr. Abbas won’t accept a
Jewish state, it’s because doing so means relinquishing what Palestinians call
the ‘right of return.’”
The Journal’s otherwise excellent editorial
confuses a tactic and a goal. The reason the Palestinians won’t accept a Jewish
state is not because it means relinquishing the “right of return.” It is the
other way around: they won’t relinquish the “right of return” because it would
mean accepting a Jewish state. Nor is this simply a matter of substituting the
converse for the Journal’s
formulation. Rather, it reflects a fundamental point that Ron Dermer (then one
of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest aides and currently Israel’s ambassador
to the U.S.) made in a May 2009 AIPAC presentation. Dermer’s point was that the
“core issue” in the conflict was not refugees, but recognition:
The
half of the Palestinian polity that is not openly dedicated to Israel’s
destruction is unwilling to recognize Israel as the Jewish state . . . For
those of you who think that this has anything to do with the refugee issue —
you’re wrong. In 1947, there wasn’t a single refugee, and the Palestinian and
the Arab world was not willing to recognize a nation state for the Jewish
people. That is a core issue, the core issue . . .
The
Palestinians use a definition of “refugee” that makes their “refugeehood”
hereditary. Other refugees get resettled; Palestinian refugees get born. They
may have never lived in Israel, but they are classified as “refugees” at birth,
on grounds that their grandparents (or great grandparents) were refugees 65
years ago. This is why each year the number of Palestinian refugees increases,
while the number of other refugees in the world decreases. The Palestinians
have been repeatedly offered a state to which their refugees could “return,”
but they repeatedly reject it, clinging to a specious “right” of “return” to
Israel not because it is necessary for the “refugees,” but because it is a tool
in the fight against the Jewish state.
The
latest tactic is the Palestinian assertion (swallowed whole by the New York Times) that recognition of a
Jewish state is a new issue, allegedly raised by Netanyahu to prevent peace. It
is a Big Lie. Last Wednesday Ambassador Dennis Ross, speaking on “Israel,
America, and the Middle East: Challenges for 2014,” summarized the Israeli
position (my transcription and italics):
From
the Israeli standpoint, they say look, if you believe in two states, why is it
that Israel being the nation-state of the Jewish people is something that you
can’t accept? Why is it that self-determination for the Jewish people in a part
of historic Palestine is something that you can’t embrace? And it’s pretty
fundamental.
When I hear it said that this is the first
time this issue has been raised – the people who say that think that no one
knows history. Now maybe it’s true that
most people don’t know history. But they should never say it to me. When we
were at Camp David, this issue was raised. In the period after Camp David,
before we did the Clinton Parameters, this issue was raised. This
issue has been raised for obvious reasons. From the Israeli standpoint, there
is a need to know that the Palestinians are committed to two states, meaning in
fact that one state is Palestinian and one is the state of the Jewish people.
They need to know the Palestinians are not about two states, one Palestinian and
one bi-national.
In
1947, the Jews accepted the UN two-state resolution; the Arabs not only
rejected it, but started a war the next day. In 1948, when Israel declared
itself a state, the Arab states sent their armies in, seeking to destroy it.
Instead, they created a “catastrophe” for themselves. More than 65 years later,
the Palestinians and their Arab allies still reject a Jewish state. They need
to recognize it, not only for Israel’s benefit but their own: it is the
necessary first step on their long road back from the self-created
“catastrophe.” For the reasons succinctly stated in Ambassador Ross’s summary,
no “two-state solution” is possible until they take that first step. But the
Palestinians appear to have already made it clear they will not miss the
opportunity to say “no” once again.
