Only Palestinian Refugees Can Give Up Their
Right of Return

As the Palestine papers reveal new proposals to deal
with the refugee issue, it is worth remembering the
legal restrictions

by Ghada Karmi

Published on Monday, January 24, 2011 by The
Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/24/palestinian-refugees-right-return

No issue has been so thorny or so fundamental to the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process as the Palestinian
right of return.

Long dismissed by Israel as an unjustified threat to
its existence, and sidelined by western policymakers,
it has refused to go away. On the contrary, for the
refugees it has an almost sacred quality.

These are the people who fled or were expelled by
Israeli forces in the wake of Israel's establishment in
1948. At the time they numbered about 750,000,
three-quarters of Palestine's Arab population, but
today they are many more. In 2007, they and their
descendants were estimated by the Badil Resource Centre
for Residency and Refugee Rights at 7.6 million, 4.6
million of whom are UN-registered refugees.

The right of Palestinian return is enshrined in
international law and historical precedent, and
affirmed repeatedly by the UN. Resolution 194 was
passed by the UN general assembly in December 1948 and
called on Israel to repatriate those "displaced by the
recent conflict" with compensation for their losses.
The 1948 universal declaration of human rights states
that those who leave their homes for whatever reason
have the absolute right to return to them. This worthy
precept has been applied often, most recently to the
displaced Kosovans.

Yet no one has succeeded in the Palestinian case, one
of the world's oldest refugee problems. This is due
entirely to Israel's refusal to repatriate the refugees
on the basis that it would destroy its Jewish
character, and the west's implicit acceptance of this
argument. In consequence, since the late 1990s a raft
of proposals - collective or individual compensation,
settlement in host societies, transfer abroad - have
been put forward by Israel and western countries aimed
precisely at preventing the right of Palestinian return
to Israel.

A US proposal for settling some refugees in special
areas on the Libyan-Egyptian border and in Iraq, and
integrating the rest into the Arab host-countries with
Arab funding, was reported in mid-2010. That such
impractical ideas are increasingly circulating is an
indirect acknowledgement of the right of return's
potency even after 62 years.

However, it may not survive for much longer. The peace
process that seeks a two-state solution may end up
sacrificing the refugees. In a desperate bid to wrest
Israeli concessions, Palestinian negotiators may yet
play their last card and give up the right of return.

The 2002 Arab peace plan referred to a just solution
for the refugees only under pressure from Lebanon.
Beneath the rhetoric there is a quiet assumption that
the return of refugees to Israel is impossible, and
other plans must be devised. Many have already been
persuaded by this logic. But this ignores the
illegality of such strategies. The right of return is
an individual right, and no one except the refugees
themselves can negotiate it away.

In any case, the current Palestinian negotiators,
unelected and unrepresentative of the refugees, cannot
legally speak for them. If they do, and this passes
muster, it will only compound the gross injustice
committed in 1948, and perpetuate the conflict for
decades to come. (c) 2011 Guardian Media

Ghada Karmi is co-director of the European Centre for
Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter

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