Responses to the Anti-Israel Left and Arab Rejectionists


RESPONSE TO HUSSEIN IBISH, AMERICAN-ARAB ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE:

RIGHT OF REFUGEE RETURN AS “HUMAN RIGHT” VS. ISRAEL AS A JEWISH STATE

 

Gidon D. Remba

 

Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee opposes the kind of practical solution to the Palestinian refugee problem forged by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in the Taba talks in January of last year (letter, Jan. 20, 2002, New York Times).   Under such an arrangement, endorsed more recently by Palestinian moderates like Sari Nusseibeh, most Palestinian refugees would either receive compensation, rehabilitation and citizenship in the Arab countries where they now reside, resettle in third countries, or exercise a right to return to the new state of Palestine, living in peace beside Israel, rather than returning to former homes and villages in Israel, many of which no longer exist.  Permitting repatriation to Israel of more than a modest number of displaced Palestinians, most of whom are now descendants of the original 1948 generation, would undermine the Jewish majority in Israel, sabotaging its character as a Jewish state.  

 

Mr. Ibish’s polemic should be recognized for what it is:  a new attempt to delegitimize the right of Israel to exist by cynical misuse of the idea of human rights.   Mr. Ibish charges that maintaining Israel as a Jewish state would accommodate a pernicious ethno-nationalism.  In fact, it is to recognize that Israeli Jews insist on the same right to national self-determination in their own political space that Palestinians themselves claim in their bid for independence in the West Bank and Gaza.   Palestinian moderates including Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PA Minister of Information, recently signed a joint statement with members of Peace Now in Israel, including such former ministers of the Barak Government as Yossi Beilin.  It affirms that “solutions can be found to all outstanding issues that should be fair and just to both sides and should not undermine the sovereignty of the Palestinian and Israeli states as determined by their respective citizens, and embodying the aspirations to statehood of both peoples, Jewish and Palestinian. This solution should build on the progress made between November 1999 and January 2001.”  It is unfortunate that some Arab-American leaders have regressed to radical rejectionist positions which deny the legitimacy of Israel, repudiating the advances made after Camp David II, when the only hope for ever achieving a comprehensive Palestinian-Israeli peace accord lies in a pragmatic compromise which respects the national rights of both peoples.  

 

Hussein Ibish on the Right of Refugee Return as a “Basic Human Right” versus Israel as a Jewish state

 

January 20, 2001

 

To the Editor:

 

Yoel Esteron (Op-Ed, Jan. 13) presents himself as sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian refugees while suggesting that the United Nations has "inflated" their numbers and blaming "their Arab neighbors" for their misery.

 

Worse, he demands that Palestinians renounce their right of return simply because it might undermine the "Jewish nature" of the Israeli state. Mr. Esteron is in favor of excluding the Palestinians simply because of their ethnicity.

 

The right of return for refugees is guaranteed by all basic human rights treaties and was explicitly applied to the Palestinian refugees by United Nations Resolution 194. Mr. Esteron would have Palestinians renounce their basic human rights to accommodate Jewish ethno-nationalism.  

 

HUSSEIN IBISH

Communications Director

American-Arab

Anti-Discrimination Committee

Washington, Jan. 13, 2002

 

 

Refugees and Reparations in the Mideast

By YOEL ESTERON

January 13, 2002

 

TEL AVIV—Before he died, my father gave me a piece of paper. He was the sole surviving member of his family, which had been wiped out in the Holocaust. Germans and Poles had murdered his parents and his brothers. He alone managed to escape the hellhole that was Europe. After World War II, he settled in Israel, established a home and a family, and contributed in his modest way to the miracle of Jewish renaissance. That piece of paper was the only evidence that my father was the legal owner of a large house in the town of Hrubieshow in eastern Poland.

 

I never saw the house and probably never will. My father heard that a pharmacy had been built in its place. He never wanted to go back there, to that place so permeated with pain. Perhaps he was afraid to. I still feel that the house belongs to my family, although we will never return to that life.

 

My father's story is not unique. My mother also lost her family and her home. Most Israelis are refugees, or the children of refugees, from Poland, Germany and Russia, Morocco, Iraq, Syria and other places. I can feel for Palestinians who hold on to their title deeds to houses in Jaffa or Haifa: I have a piece of paper, too. We are all products of a chaotic postwar world in which millions of people fled from country to country looking for sanctuary.

 

When I see children and their parents living in dire poverty in refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, and elsewhere in the region, I wonder why their Arab neighbors, especially those who have enjoyed immense oil riches all these years, have never come to their aid. The sad truth is that the Arab countries have abandoned them to a bitter fate in order to foment hatred of Israel. The misery and despair in these camps is heartrending. The need for urgent, humanitarian measures to alleviate the hardship is clear.

 

According to figures compiled by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the Palestinian refugee population has grown from 730,000 in 1949 to 3.7 million people living today in the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Although these numbers may be inflated, there seems little question that the vast majority of the refugees need assistance.

 

For Israelis and Palestinians, in these harrowing days fraught with terrorist attacks, blockades and now renewed clashes over the smuggling of arms aboard the ship Karine A., seeking a solution to the refugee problem may seem too much to hope for. Gen. Anthony Zinni, the American envoy, is scheduled to return to the Middle East this week to try to broker a cease-fire, which, if sustained, would be a huge stride forward. If and when the shooting stops, the "right of return" in all its complexity is bound to be the greatest stumbling block on the road to a permanent peace.

 

Although Israel was the one attacked in 1948, it will have to acknowledge its share in the suffering of Palestinian refugees. The establishment of a national home for the Jews caused suffering to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who fled or were expelled from their homes during the War of Independence. Israel's independence was their Nakba, or catastrophe. Israel must take part in a large-scale, very costly international aid and development effort — one that could run into billions of dollars, according to various estimates — to ease the distress of the refugees and help them build homes and a new life of political dignity and economic prosperity.

 

Reparations of this sort are possible and could be made politically acceptable to many Israelis. What Israelis cannot accept, however, is the Palestinian demand for the "right of return." To do so would be to destroy the idea of Israel as a national home for Jews who have nowhere to return to. We are not prepared to put our trust in those who promise that if we recognize such a right, the number of actual returnees would not be so great as to overwhelm the Jewish nature of this state.

 

The world did not stop in 1948. The clock cannot be turned back, even for those who still have old deeds. Those who imagine that it is possible to devise complicated solutions to this central question of return must remember this simple truth: The inhabitants of the refugee camps have to accept that their future homes and their Palestinian nation will rise in the West Bank and Gaza, alongside Israel. All the talk about genuine historical compromise boils down to this: Two peoples living in peace in two states on a tiny stretch of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

 

Yasir Arafat refused to forgo the right of return at the Camp David talks in July 2000 because he feared that the refugees would never agree. One can understand how hard it is to put away those pieces of paper, so carefully guarded for over 50 years, and begin life anew. It is hard to give up a dream. But that is clearly the answer for the refugees and their children. The alternative is to condemn the next generation to the suffering of this one. The choice is between a life spent clinging to an unattainable dream and a life of real hope. My parents left the past behind for their children's sake. Palestinian parents need to do the same for the sake of their children.

 

 

Yoel Esteron is managing editor of Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper.