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Palestine: It will never be just
The State of Israel this week took another step forward in formalising the mass theft of Palestinian property and lands, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank
The right-wing Israeli government has started a process that will make irreversible the dispossession of millions of Palestinian refugees of their land and homes in what is now Israel. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon this week gave a green light to a proposal by a quasi-governmental committee, known as the Gadish Committee, to transfer the ownership of land in Israel from the state to Jewish individuals.
The committee reportedly proposed allowing Jewish home-owners to register their homes under their own names. Nearly all homes in Israel are leased by the state to citizens, usually for 99 years. Until now, the ownership of many of these homes legally belongs to Palestinians, many of whom still retain property deeds dating back to the Ottoman and the British Mandate authorities. The same thing applies to thousands of square kilometres of mainly arable land the deeds of which are still in the possession of the original Palestinian owners.
In 1948, the newly established Israeli government, headed by David Ben Gurion, decided to confiscate up to 90 per cent of lands that had been owned by Palestinians for many generations. In all, 18,8650,000 dunams, or 18,865 square kilometres (about 93 per cent of Israel's area) was seized by the so- called Custodian of Absentee Property. A few years later, the lands were transferred to the Development Authority and then to the Land of Israel Authority, a quasi-government agency answerable to the Jewish Agency.
Earlier -- a few months after Israel's creation -- Ben Gurion sold 2.4 million dunam (one dunam is equal to 1,000 square metres) to the Jewish National Fund. Most of the original owners of these lands were expelled at gunpoint or terrorised into leaving by Jewish forces. Indeed, massacres such as Deir Yassin, Dawaymeh, Tantura and Qastal, to name but a few, cast fear in the hearts of Palestinian villagers who became convinced that they would be murdered en mass if they stayed. In addition to those refugees, tens of thousands sought refuge in larger Arab towns inside what became Israel.
Even those "present" and not "absent" were treated as "absentees", their land confiscated on the grounds that they were no longer in the country. The number of those "present absentees" living in Israel now is estimated at 250,000, or 23 per cent of the total size of the Palestinian minority in Israel.
It is not clear why the Sharon government has chosen this time to take this step, rightly described as "daylight robbery" by Palestinian right of return activist Salman Abu Sitta.
Some Palestinian officials told Al- Ahram Weekly that the timing reflected Israel's growing concerns and anxiety regarding the Palestinians' enduring commitment to the right of return.
"This step is an attempt to forestall any chances for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees. This is a manifestly racist process constituting a clear violation of international law," Abdullah Al- Hourani, head of the Refugee Department in the PLO, told the Weekly.
Al-Hourani added that Israel might also be trying to lure refugees into agreeing to receive compensation for their lands and homes and other property seized by the state. "Israel is now taking advantage of America's worldwide hegemony in order to kill the right of return. But I tell Israel, the United States and the world at large this conflict will continue to smolder as long as the refugee problem is not resolved," Al-Hourani said. "The solution is the implementation of the right of return," he added.
Al-Hourani accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the "entire Arab regime" of not taking a decisive stand on the issue of the refugees' rights, thus giving a green light to Israel to arrogate and confiscate the refugees' lands and homes.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority told the Weekly that the PA would raise the issue with the Quartet (the US, EU, Russia and UN) in an effort to get Israel to respect international law.
However, while the right of return remains the paramount issue for the estimated five million Palestinian refugees now scattered around the four corners of the globe, the PA seems preoccupied with more immediate issues such as the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the construction of the gigantic separation wall and continued Israeli repression of Palestinian civilians.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/743/re2.htm
The committee reportedly proposed allowing Jewish home-owners to register their homes under their own names. Nearly all homes in Israel are leased by the state to citizens, usually for 99 years. Until now, the ownership of many of these homes legally belongs to Palestinians, many of whom still retain property deeds dating back to the Ottoman and the British Mandate authorities. The same thing applies to thousands of square kilometres of mainly arable land the deeds of which are still in the possession of the original Palestinian owners.
In 1948, the newly established Israeli government, headed by David Ben Gurion, decided to confiscate up to 90 per cent of lands that had been owned by Palestinians for many generations. In all, 18,8650,000 dunams, or 18,865 square kilometres (about 93 per cent of Israel's area) was seized by the so- called Custodian of Absentee Property. A few years later, the lands were transferred to the Development Authority and then to the Land of Israel Authority, a quasi-government agency answerable to the Jewish Agency.
Earlier -- a few months after Israel's creation -- Ben Gurion sold 2.4 million dunam (one dunam is equal to 1,000 square metres) to the Jewish National Fund. Most of the original owners of these lands were expelled at gunpoint or terrorised into leaving by Jewish forces. Indeed, massacres such as Deir Yassin, Dawaymeh, Tantura and Qastal, to name but a few, cast fear in the hearts of Palestinian villagers who became convinced that they would be murdered en mass if they stayed. In addition to those refugees, tens of thousands sought refuge in larger Arab towns inside what became Israel.
Even those "present" and not "absent" were treated as "absentees", their land confiscated on the grounds that they were no longer in the country. The number of those "present absentees" living in Israel now is estimated at 250,000, or 23 per cent of the total size of the Palestinian minority in Israel.
It is not clear why the Sharon government has chosen this time to take this step, rightly described as "daylight robbery" by Palestinian right of return activist Salman Abu Sitta.
Some Palestinian officials told Al- Ahram Weekly that the timing reflected Israel's growing concerns and anxiety regarding the Palestinians' enduring commitment to the right of return.
"This step is an attempt to forestall any chances for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees. This is a manifestly racist process constituting a clear violation of international law," Abdullah Al- Hourani, head of the Refugee Department in the PLO, told the Weekly.
Al-Hourani added that Israel might also be trying to lure refugees into agreeing to receive compensation for their lands and homes and other property seized by the state. "Israel is now taking advantage of America's worldwide hegemony in order to kill the right of return. But I tell Israel, the United States and the world at large this conflict will continue to smolder as long as the refugee problem is not resolved," Al-Hourani said. "The solution is the implementation of the right of return," he added.
Al-Hourani accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the "entire Arab regime" of not taking a decisive stand on the issue of the refugees' rights, thus giving a green light to Israel to arrogate and confiscate the refugees' lands and homes.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority told the Weekly that the PA would raise the issue with the Quartet (the US, EU, Russia and UN) in an effort to get Israel to respect international law.
However, while the right of return remains the paramount issue for the estimated five million Palestinian refugees now scattered around the four corners of the globe, the PA seems preoccupied with more immediate issues such as the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the construction of the gigantic separation wall and continued Israeli repression of Palestinian civilians.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/743/re2.htm
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The author writes: "....while the right of return remains the paramount issue for the estimated five million Palestinian refugees now scattered around the four corners of the globe...."
First: Any person who fled or was forced out in 1948 is at least 56 years old or older
Second: In many countries (including the USA), YOU can be a citizen if you were born in that country, but your parents retain the citizenship of their birth country unless they are naturalized. Hence, decendants have no "right to return"
Third: Israel has already re-admitted 170,000 Palestinians, most of whom returned themselves after 1948 when they tired of waiting for the Arab armies to annihilate the Jews like they kept promising they would do.
Fourth: Opinion polls done among Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan asking if they would "return" to Israel (Most have never lived there before) say that only 10% WANT to be returned if given the opportunity and of that , only 5% WANT to be returned IF Israel remains in charge.
Hence, the right of return is a dead issue. Its not worth shedding anymore blood. Nor is it a high moral principal for leftists to get behind when you consider all the factors listed above.
I agree just like we cannot make the settlements the problem in achieving peace, we cannot make the refugee problem.
We have the State of Israel Proper inside the pre 1967 (Green line) border that at this time have some 5,000,000 or so Jews, in this same area there are 1,200,000 Arabs.
So to end the conflict allow the Palestinian State in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza.
Once the State is formed the Jews who do not like living in this Palestinian State can move of their own free will instead of being forced to move.
Just as the Arabs inside Israel Proper can move of their own free will to the Palestinian State.
The few refugees can be helped to settle in the Palestinian State.
Freedom for the People who live in the West Bank and Gaza is more important to the Peace Proccess then the Refugee problem.
A Viable Palestinian State is more important then the Jewish Settlements.
spring of 1948 encapsulates one of the great international frauds of
the 20th century. The Arabs are the only declared "refugees" who became
refugees by the initiative of their own leaders.
The concoction of the monstrous charge that it was the Jews who had
driven out the Arabs of Palestine was a strategic decision made by the
leaders of the Arab League months after the Arabs' flight.
The Arab "refugees" were not driven out by anyone. The vast majority
left at the order or exhortation of their leaders - always with the
same reassurance - that it would help the Arab states in the war they
were about to launch to destroy the State of Israel.
The fabrication can most easily be detected by the simple circumstance
that at the time the alleged expulsion of the Arabs by Zionists was in
progress, nobody noticed it.
Foreign newspapermen abounded in the country, in daily contact with all
sides - and they did in fact write about the flight of the Arabs, but
even those most hostile to the Jews saw nothing to suggest that the
flight was not voluntary.
In the three months that the major part of the flight took place, the
London Times, a newspaper most notably hostile to Zionism, published 11
leading articles on the situation in Palestine, in addition to
extensive news reports. In none was there even a remote hint that the
Zionists were driving Arabs from their homes.
Even more pertinent: No Arab spokesman made such a charge. At the
height of the flight, the Palestinian Arabs' chief representative at
the United Nations, Jamal Husseini, made a long political statement (on
April 27) that was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists; he did
not mention refugees. Three weeks later (while the flight was still in
progress) the secretary-general of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a
fiercely worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a
word about refugees.
WHY DID they leave? Monsignor George Hakim, then Greek Catholic bishop
of Galilee, the leading Christian personality in Palestine for many
years, told a Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub, in the summer of
1948: "The refugees were confident that their absence would not last
long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders
had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs'
very quickly, and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long
exile."
The initiative for the flight was indeed no secret. One of the famous
American newspapermen of the time, Kenneth Bilby, who had covered
Palestine for years, explained the Arab leaders' rationale for the
flight in his book New Star in the East, published in 1950:
"Let the Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to
arouse the other Arab countries to greater effort, and when the Arab
invasion struck the Palestinians could return to their homes and be
compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea."
There is also the piquant report in the files of the British police at
Haifa, of how the leaders of the Jewish community pleaded with the
leaders of the Arab community not to leave Haifa, and how the Arabs
refused. There is too, in the annals of the UN Security Council, a
speech by Jamal Husseini heaping praise on the Arabs of Haifa for
refusing to stay put and insisting adamantly on leaving their homes.
The British police then kindly provided transport and helped the Haifa
Arabs across the Lebanese and Transjordanian borders.
When, four months after the invasion, the prospect of the flightlings'
returning "in a few weeks" had faded, there were some recriminations.
Emil Ghoury, a member of the Palestinian Arabs' national leadership,
said in an interview with the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph: "I
don't want to impugn anybody, but only to help the refugees. The fact
that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action
of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state.
"The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously, and they must
share in the solution of the problem."
THE POLICY adopted inside the country was emphasized by the leaders of
the invasion. The prime minister of Iraq, Nuri Said, thundered: "We
will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the
Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children
to safe areas until the fighting has died down."
One of the Arabs who fled later succinctly summarized the story of the
refugees in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Difaa: "The Arab governments
told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not
get in."
Later, after the fighting began, many Arab villagers who believed the
false rumors of a massacre at the village of Deir Yassin "panicked and
fled ignominiously before they were threatened by the progress of the
war." So wrote the British general Sir John Glubb, who commanded the
Transjordanian army. Throughout the war there were two incidents - at
Ramle and Lod - in which a number of Arab civilians were driven out of
their homes by Israeli soldiers.
The total number of Arabs who evacuated, even according to the British
Mandate's statistics, could not have been more than 420,000. This
figure conforms roughly also to the figure published from Arab sources,
and by the UN.
The central, horribly cruel fact is that the Arab states - who had
brought about their plight - denied them residence rights; and the idea
was born that they should be left in camps and used as a weapon for
Israel's destruction. "The return of the refugees," said president
Nasser of Egypt years later, "will mean the end of Israel."
IT WAS in the immediate aftermath of the war that the refugee scam was
developed into an international operation. As soon as the UN Disaster
Relief Organization started providing food, shelter, clothing and
medical attention to the Arabs who had fled Palestine, a mass of needy
Arabs descended on the camps from all over the Arab states. The
organization had no machinery for identification; so the arrivals
simply signed the register as refugees and received the free aid.
Already in December 1948, the director of the Relief Organization, Sir
Rafael Cilento, reported he was feeding 750,000 "refugees." By July
1949 the UN reported a round million.
The Red Cross International Committee joined the party. It pressed for
the recognition of any destitute Arab in Palestine as a refugee. Thus
about 100,000 were added to the list.
To add a touch of mordant humor, the Red Cross authority wrote about
the additional people that "it would be senseless to force them to
abandon their homes to be able to get food as refugees."
So these people stayed at home, received their free services there, and
were added to the rolls of the refugees.
Thus - and by other more expectable means of humanistic falsification
we have, in the third generation, a large amorphous mass of Arabs, all
of them comfortably lumped together in official UN lists as Arab
refugees, described as "victims of Israeli aggression" and demanding
the right of "return."
While everybody in Israel has rejected the Arab demand for accepting
the return of the "refugees," the government has not rejected the idea
that if negotiations for a settlement take place the problem of the
refugees will be discussed. Moreover, there has been talk
of "compensation" by Israel.
There have even been voices suggesting the return of a "symbolic few"
of the refugees.
Israel must, from the outset and forever, unequivocally reject such
ideas.
Once and for all Israel must remind whoever has to be reminded that the
responsibility for the displaced Arabs lies wholly and absolutely on
the shoulders of the Arab states. Their utterly unprovoked invasion of
the territory of Israel in May 1948 was a crime.
Its declared intent was a crime. Six thousand Israel citizens were
killed in that war, and thousands of others were injured. It was the
Arab states that called on the Arab population to evacuate, all in
order to facilitate accomplishment of their evil purpose.
It is a hutzpa of historical dimensions and significance to ask Israel
to even discuss giving an inch or paying a penny of the price of the
refugee problem. And it is dangerous for any Israeli spokesman to even
agree to take part in any discussion of the subject - at any forum or
in any context whatsoever.
Indeed, the Israeli government should long ago have declared - but even
now it is not too late: "We shall not participate in any discussion of
the so-called refugee problem. This is a problem the Arab nation must
solve for itself in its own spacious territories."
now it is not too late: "We shall not participate in any discussion of
the so-called refugee problem. This is a problem the Arab nation must
solve for itself in its own spacious territories." <<<
Possible, but in the Meantime to have Peace in the Region a Viable Palestinian State called for in the Road Map to Peace is needed so that some of the Refugees can settle there and the many who do not care to come back to the area can settle elsewhere.
But until the Palestinian State is achieved in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza (only 22% of the area which is TODAY Israel, West Bank and Gaza) the Refugee Problem will be an issue.
The majority in the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinians anyway so why not just allow them to have their State so the conflict can come to an end?
The idea is so popular that the Road Map to Peace calls for this Palestinian State free from Israeli rule.
The West Bank and Gaza was not Part of any Country in 1948 when Israel was created....Look at any map of that period and see for yourself. They were illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt.
The Area that is Israel West Bank and Gaza has a Jewish majority (counting both the longtime inhabitants and newcomers).
Even though though the Jews were in the minority in 1948, in the land that is "Today" physically Israel, West Bank, Gaza and Jordan. Israel had the minority of the land for its State and People.
It is strange that you want the Palestinians to rule over the Israeli Jews who are a majority in Israel Proper with the West Bank and Gaza,
But you do not want the Israelis to rule over the Palestinians who are a minority in the same Area.
How do you get any kind of sense from that.
Or any kind of fair and just solution.
Or for that matter a good reason for Peace, (which would be good for both the Israelis and the Palestinians)
>>>However much you spam this site, you cannot demonstrate an Arab Palestine has ever existed.<<<
A Palestinian State does not exist, that is not why one is called for in the Road Map to Peace.
The Palestinians need to cease violence so that a Palestinian State can be created, just like Israel was created in May of 1948.
Before 1967 the West Bank and Gaza were not part of Israel but illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt, and many immigrant Arab People were living there as they are still living there now.
So that the Israeli People who are in the majority in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza can live in Peace.
Without the interference of the Palestinian freedom fighters.
Without having their land where they physically live right now invaded and attacked by the Palestinian fighters.
Without having their homes destroyed, etc. etc.
That gives them the reason to continue to fight for their land and their freedom.
To end the resistance to the Terrorism, end the Terrorism that allows for the resistance.
To the ANGEL imposter: Turning a good Post into lies does not bring you any credibility.
If you want to have any credibility try saying what you have to say in your own name or handle. It might surprise you how well it works
That's great! And so fast!
Possible, but in the Meantime to have Peace in the Region a Cessation of Violence and Terror called for in the Road Map to Peace is needed so that some discussion of a Viable Palestinian State could begin so that the Refugees can ultimately settle there and the many who do not care to come back to the area can settle elsewhere.
But until the Palestinian State is achieved in the Wherever possible, provided the Palestinians agree to settle for a State existing alongside Israel (only about 10% of the area which is TODAY Israel, West Bank and Gaza), the Refugee Problem will be a minor issue.
The majority in Israel with the West Bank and Gaza are Jews anyway so why not just allow them to have their State there so the conflict can come nearer to an end?
The idea is so unpopular but the Road Map to Peace calls for a stop for Palestinian Terror free from Israeli intervention.
To the ANGEL imposter: Turning a good Post into lies does not bring you any credibility.
If you want to have any credibility try saying what you have to say in your own name or handle. It might surprise you how well it works.
graft, corruption, greed, terrorism and lies are common place although. Arafat is roasting in hell. (The thought of this is encouraging)..