The “right of return”: the PLO negotiating position that stalls the process

The most significant decision of the Sept. 13th PLO central committee was barely reported: The absolute and uncompromising Palestinian position that every refugee who left Palestine in 1948 should have the “inalienable right” to return to the 531 Arab villages that they left at the time.

(That would mean, for example, that the campus of Tel Aviv University, built on the razed Arab village of Sheikh Muawannis, would revert to the descendents of that Arab village)

In coordination with that PLO decision, Palestinian support groups around the world have designated Sept. 16th, 2000 as a day to support the Palestinian demand for the “right of return”.

What a contrast that is to those days in September, 1993, exactly seven years ago, when a different decaration of principles for peace and recognotion was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, and Yassir Arafat, the leader of the PLO, and witnessed by Jorgen Holst, the Foreign Minister of Norway, which established a self-ruling Palestinian Arab entity in the predominantly Arab populated areas of the west bank and Gaz, while leaving the more difficult issues such as the Arab refugees who have wallowed in United Nations refugee camps since 1948 to be resolved during seven years that were set aside for a dynamic and complex negotiating process.

Exactly seven years after the genesis of a middle east peace process of hope, the negotiations have ground to a halt over the issue of these Arab refugees.

Over the past two weeks, I had occasion to hear, and then see, the Palestinian Authority’s pursuit of the issue of the “right of return” as their primary issue of concern in this, the final stages of the Oslo process.

On September 8, 2000 I attended a meeting at PLO’s Orient House in Jerusalem, at which the strategy of the PA with regard to the right of return and the compensation claim were clarified. I met with Khalil Tafakji, the Director of the Arab Studies Society. Mr. Tafakji is director of a project to computerize the land records of Jerusalem and its environs, cross-referencing the property records with the ownership claims of the refugees. The project will be completed within three months. He apologized for meeting with me on a Friday, since this was his Sabbath. However, he explained, the computers have to function 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When the project is completed, the PA will have records that will show the present owner or user of each parcel in Jerusalem and the Arab owner of each parcel prior to 1948. Tafakji notes that this is the first step in preparing a legal claim for return of the properties or claims for damages for the value of the properties.

Tafakji noted that similar projects are being planned for other parts of Israel with regard to properties to which Arab refugees will make claims. It should be noted that the Arab refugees in the UNRWA camps dwell according to the precise neighborhoods and villages that they lived in 1948, while UNRWA workers, whose salaries are paid for by the UNRWA donor countries, encourage UNRWA residents to make claims for their properties from before 1948. Meanwhile, UNRWA now organizes daily bus trips, for UNRWA camp residents to see the homes and neighborhoods that they will soon be claiming for themselves, in places such as Canada Park, the Tel Aviv University campus, and Ben Gurion International Airport.

The theory of the PA is similar to that of the Jewish claims against Germany, Austria and countries to which Jewish assets were sold or transferred by the Germans and their allies. It is also similar to the claims against Switzerland and other countries that benefited from the deaths of Jewish property owners whose assets were confiscated after their deaths at the hands of the Nazis.

The implications of the PA strategy are clear. It is entirely possible that a court, such as the World Court in The Hague, will give these claims a sympathetic hearing and order properties returned to their pre-1948 owners. In the alternative, the Court could order that the previous owners be paid fair value for their property together with interest from the time the properties were seized. Israel will have to show that the properties were voluntarily abandoned, which may be an impossible task. The result could be hundreds of billions of Dollars in damages, or, even worse, an order to evict the present owners and return the property to the claimants. Given the respect that Israeli jurisprudence gives to international law, the possibility exists that Israeli courts would give full faith and credit to an order of the World Court.

The Palestinian Authority’s determination to push the “right of return” issue was confirmed by Israel Member of Knesset, MK Dan Meridor, who serves as the security-sensitive chairman of Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. Meridor, who served as the cabinet secretary when Prime Minister Menachem Begin negotiated the Camp David agreement with Egypt in 1978, also played a key role in Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s delegation at the Camp David summit. Meridor participated in meetings on all core issues addressed at the summit, especially the subcommittee that dealt with the “Right of Return” and that of compensation demands for the returnees.

Meridor told me that that the consistent position of the PA throughout the summit, a position that has not changed as a result of the summit, remains that 3.6 million Palestinians have the absolute right to exercise their right to return to their homes and villages in Israel.

Meridor specifically mentioned that the PA asserts that these persons have the same rights as Holocaust survivors and the refugees who were displaced in Serbia and Kosovo¦ to be repatriated to their homes and to recover their property, even if we are relating to a period of fifty two years. The PA asserts that these refugees may, at their option, return to their homes, or receive compensation for the loss of their property and their suffering. As Meridor related it, the Israeli delegation at the Camp David had assumed that that the PA’s position was an opening negotiation gambit, even though the PA has emphasized this position throughout the seven years of the Oslo process.

After 40 hours of negotiations, Meridor reported that the Israelis are convinced that the Palestinian position is no mere negotiation strategy.

On the issue of compensation, the PA demanded that Israel provide it with property records so that the present owners and uses of the property of the refugees could be determined. In this manner the PA intends to arrive at a valuation of its compensation claim against Israel in respect of the displaced property owners.. Meridor felt that the PA could be preparing for the filing of legal claims against Israel and the present owners or users of the property to which the refugees claim ownership.

It is important to note however, that as Israel negotiates the final status issues with the Palestinians, Israel must take note of the intentions and plans of the PA in the matter of Arab refugees. As the media focuses on the fight against terror, someone may wish to pay attention to the people with lethal computers as well.

BACKGROUND ARTICLE

During the 1948 war of Independence, when the new state of Israel was invaded by seven Arab armies, between 350,000 and 650,000 Arabs left their homes in Palestine, depending on which United Nations report you read, while an undetermined number of Jews fled from their homes in the Old City of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem suburbs of Neveh Yaakov, Atarot, and the Etzion Bloc.

The “Inalienable Right of Return” resolution #194 that was adopted by United Nations resolution #194 on December 11, 1948, during the height of that war of independence, legislated that all Jewish and Arab refugees from the 1948 war had possessed the absolute and “inalienable” right to return to the homes and villages that they left during the war. That resolution also determined that all of these refugees would be entitled to financial compensation.

To implement this resolution, the UN established UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, whose purpose was to confine Palestinian Arab refugees to “temporary” transit camps, under the premise and promise of the “right of return”. Israel also established temporary refugee camps to receive the Jewish refugees from 1948, along with more than two million Jews who streamed to Israel in the first decade of the state’s turbulent history. While no Jewish refugee camp still exists, the UN and the Arab nations have continued to confine what are now 3.6 million Palestinian Arab refugees in refugee camps, forbidding them to move out of the camps. Even the new Palestinian Authority, soon to be a Palestinian state, forbids the Palestinian Arab refugees from moving into permanent homes in the areas under PA control. Why? That would mean that this would violate their right to return to the 531 Arab villages that have been replaced by Israeli cities, collective farms and woodlands, all of which lie within Israel’s pre-1967 cease fire lines.