By: David Bedein

Research: Dr. Arnon Groiss

The US State Department has  ​denounced a  proposal ​that Arabs dislocated from Gaza be settled elsewhere:

https://www.state.gov/rejection-of-irresponsible-statements-on-resettlement-of-palestinians-outside-of-gaza/

However, what the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA teach in their schools in Judea, Samaria, Gaza is that Arabs from UNRWA must be settled  elsewhere- under the “Right of Return”.

The Right of Return is considered a basic element in the Palestinian narrative and is expressed in the Palestinian Authority’s schoolbooks. Following are three examples taken from the latest edition of these books that are used today in all schools in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, including those ones operated by UNRWA:

  1. The presentation of this issue to four-graders includes the Palestinian point of view regarding the creation of the refugee problem in 1948, which serves as the basis for the notion of the right of return with a view to annulling the results of that war and returning to the pre-1948 situation:

“I have learned:

 The Palestinians were forced to leave their cities and villages in Palestine in 1948 due to their harassment by the Zionist occupier and the killing of many of them, so they lived in refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and neighboring Arab states, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and are still there until now.

The Palestinians who were expelled from their country are called refugees and they still hold the keys to their houses and the ownership documents for their lands and homes, from which they were forced to emigrate. They have the right to return to them.”

(National and Social Upbringing, Grade 4, Part 1 (2020) p. 34)

  1. The return is not dependent on agreements or on Israel’s good will. Rather, it is an integral part of the fighting for the liberation of Palestine’s territory occupied by Israel in 1948. Following is a poem expressing that notion:

“I am the owner of the great right from which I will create the morrow

I shall retrieve it. I shall retrieve it as a precious and sovereign homeland

I shall shake the world tomorrow and shall march as a unitary army

I have an appointment in my homeland and it is impossible that I forget the appointment”

(Arabic Language, Grade 5, Part 1 (2020) p. 86)

  1. The notion of the right of return to liberated Palestine is emphasized again in the following piece taken from the same book, which ends a story of a 1948 refugee:

“We shall return; we shall return with the soaring eagles; we shall return with the raging wind; we shall return to the vine and the olive tree; we shall return to raise the flag of Palestine, alongside the anemone flower, over our green hills.”

(Arabic Language, Grade 5, Part 1 (2020) p. 84)

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