Canada’s role in the ‘right of return’

Jerusalem – A cardinal principle of the Arab information campaign against Israel since the inception of the Jewish state 53 years ago has focused on the plight of Palestinian Arabs who left their homes and villages while seven Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state.

Following the 1948 war, United Nations Resolution 194 was enacted to assure Palestinian Arab refugees that they have the “inalienable right of return” to the homes and villages they left in 1948. Under the premise and promise of the inalienable right of return, the United Nations and neighbouring Arab countries have confined Palestinian Arab refugees to the squalor of UN refugee camps to this very day.

Indeed, a UN refugee aid agency, UNRWA, was created, whose purpose is not to rehabilitate and resettle refugees, but instead to prepare them for the return to their homes of 1948, whether they still exist or not.

This principle has even been adapted by the Palestinian Authority, which has forbidden Arab refugees from moving into homes and villages in the West Bank or Gaza because that would violate their right to return to Jaffa, Haifa and more than 500 villages inside pre-1967 Israel.

In December, 2000, the Palestinian Authority issued a new 56-page illustrated brochure, Witness to History: The Plight and Promise of Palestinian Refugees, with an introduction by PLO spokeswoman Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, promoting the right of Palestinian Arab refugees to repossess the 531 villages they lost in 1948, even if those villages have been absorbed by Israeli cities, collective farms or woodlands.

That the PA would issue such a brochure calling for the implementation of UN “right of return” Resolution 194 is not surprising.

What is surprising is that the brochure was funded and distributed by the Canadian government, through its Canadian Representative Office in Ramallah. This office, which I have had the opportunity to visit, acts as a de facto Canadian embassy to the Palestinian Authority. Last May, when I met with Tim Martin, the chief representative and his assistant John Laine, they both indicated they understood the Palestinian commitment to the idea of the “right of return,” and they handed me the April 2000, booklet printed by the PA on the subject.

Mr. Laine went on to describe in great detail (and with great pride) how the Canadian government was actively trying to help with job training programs in these refugee camps.

A year later, it would seem Canada’s mandate has been expanded from helping reduce Palestinian refugee unemployment to helping fan the flames of a Palestinian refugee war to conquer all of Palestine.

The brochure, replete with pictures of suffering Palestinian Arab refugees over the years, calls Israel’s “denial of the right of return” a continuing breach of international law, while defining the entire history of the Middle East conflict in terms of the “Palestinian dispossession and will to survive.” The 1948 war is defined as if Israel’s purpose was to kick out Arabs, without mentioning that seven Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state with the support of local Palestinian Arab villagers.

UN refugee education is described in innocuous terms, “their lifeline to the future,” without any mention of the schoolbooks published by UNRWA that encourage a new generation to liberate all of Palestine.

Canada is the gavel holder for the refugee working group that was established to negotiate the future of Palestinian Arab refugees under the Oslo process in 1993.

By publishing “Witness to History: The Plight and Promise of Palestinian Refugees”, Canada appears to have taken a partisan PLO position that will compromise any constructive role the country may play in solving the tempestuous refugee issue of the Middle East peace process.

David Bedein is Media Research Analyst and Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem.

This article ran in the National Post of Canada on march 23, 2001