After longtime focus on Arab refugees, Israel putting Jewish refugees on the agenda
No, not Palestinian refugees; Jewish refugees.
For many years the world has heard about the “right of return.” This refers to Arabs who became displaced during the defensive war Israel was forced to fight when the surrounding Arab countries attacked it the day after declaring independence in 1948.
Arabs during 1948 war with Israel Photo: AFP
The plan was for Israel to be destroyed “in a few weeks,” allowing Arabs to return to their home. Yet these plans were dashed as Israel won the war. After Israel’s victory, not a single Arab country took these Arabs in - they were intentionally left to become “refugees,” so the world would perceive Israel as the villain.
For more than 60 years now, most of them have lived in camps. As part of any peace agreement with Israel, Mahmoud Abbas has demanded that they and their descendants be allowed to return. Today they number more than five million. Their return would mean Jews would no longer be the majority in the only country designated as their homeland.
If they are not allowed to return, Abbas has demanded compensation.
Compensating those complicit in a plan to destroy Israel seems a logical absurdity.
Mutual compensation
What is virtually never given media attention is the issue of Jewish refugees. For centuries, Jewish communities existed in many Arab countries. Their combined numbers were estimated to be roughly 850,000. The UN partition vote in 1947 brought tremendous upheaval for them.
The creation of the tiny state of Israel brought about a harsh reaction from Arab countries where Jews lived. They lost jobs and had their homes and land taken away. Their assets were frozen. Many were jailed, and some were killed. Virtually all of them were eventually forced to flee with just the clothes on their backs, and whatever they could carry.
The recent meeting, which seeks to raise awareness of the Jewish refugee issue, was hosted by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Attendees included individuals from numerous organizations representing Jews from Arab countries.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon opened the meeting by calling attention to the injustice done to the Jewish refugees.
Ayalon also asked the Arab League to take responsibility for giving birth to the Palestinian refugees by declaring war on Israel, which caused their displacement. He insisted that if compensation is part of future negotiations, it will be addressed only on a mutual basis, which includes Jewish refugees.
This meeting represents an attempt by Israel to counter the Arab revisionist agenda by presenting documented facts designed to bring fairness and media attention to this long overlooked component of the “peace process.” Whether the balance of opposing narratives will shift remains to be seen.
While much remains in dispute, there is one indisputable fact about the peace process. There has been far too much “process,” and far too little “peace.”
Spain’s ex-PM says no peace possible when one side committed to other’s destruction
The unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, and its international recognition, would be a huge mistake. A peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is essential, but it can only be achieved through honest negotiations –not by any party imposing a unilateral decision.
Over the past two years, the Palestinian Authority has refused to sit at the negotiating table with the Israeli government, hiding behind the excuse of Israeli construction work on a few West Bank settlements. At the same time, however, it has been negotiating the creation of a national unity government with Hamas, a terrorist group whose stated aim is the elimination of Israel.
A Palestinian “government” of a unilaterally established, self-declared “Palestinian state,” in which Hamas is a member of the governing coalition, will make negotiations, much less a peace agreement, impossible: no negotiation is possible, and no agreement is possible, when one side is committed to the other’s destruction.
US President Barack H. Obama has recently advocated a return to talks based on the pre-1967 lines with mutual land-swaps. But even those lines, as originally delineated in the 1949 Armistice Agreements, were subject to negotiations in accordance with UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which both sides agreed at the time would be the basis for a future peace agreement. Any future border, according to these resolutions, must be the outcome of a negotiated agreement.
The unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood is also a clumsily concealed de-legitimization device. Serious Palestinians know very well that they do not meet the internal and external requirements to become a viable state, much less to become a new UN member-state with all its attendant obligations. Their objective is different: the unilateral declaration is, in reality, simply another tactic in a broader strategy of embarrassing and then de-legitimizing the State of Israel.
There is no historical, institutional or legal basis on which to recognize a Palestinian state today, except as a kind of “virtual state,” which exists in some fashion in the imaginations of various parties but which has no tether to reality. In the West Bank, Palestinians crucially depend on Israeli cooperation to function. Other more modern aspects of statehood, such as respect for human rights, freedom and a functioning democracy - all of which are required of other countries seeking recognition - are sadly lacking in the Palestinian case.
Indeed, this rush to a unilateral declaration of statehood, including the intra-Palestinian negotiations with Hamas, is impeding the deeper formation of civil society in the West Bank, which has made progress in recent years and which is essential to any enduring peace.
Blackmail will lead to disaster
A declaration of Palestinian statehood by the United Nations General Assembly will be an act of political manoeuvring that will only make it even more difficult to find a solution. Unilateral action will have unforeseeable consequences, so the only true way forward is through a bilateral agreement.
This is not the time for destructive gestures: it is time to encourage everyone to sit down and negotiate, face to face, with no pre-conditions other than mutual and unequivocal recognition.
There cannot be two states, living in peace side by side, unless Palestinians accept that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people and the Israelis accept that the Palestinian State will be the state for the Palestinian people. Absent that basis, no genuine progress will be made.
The government in Jerusalem has said on numerous occasions that it is ready to talk. Now is the moment of truth for the Palestinians. They must choose negotiation, with all that negotiating entails, including concessions by both parties.
The alternative is for the representatives of the Palestinian people to continue demonizing their only possible negotiating partner, while expecting the international community to tilt the scales in their own favour. But blackmail will lead to disaster. Negotiations must be conducted in good faith and not as a means of exerting various forms of international pressure.
It is time for the international community, starting with the UN, to say that the time for game-playing and wishful thinking is past. Serious negotiations can only be conducted by Israelis and Palestinians themselves, no matter how much help or goodwill is provided from the outside. A unilaterally declared Palestinian State, which is not the product of bilateral negotiations, is a demand that Israel accept the unacceptable.
Diplomacy demands, above all, negotiation and agreement, not unilateral demands imposed with contempt.
We all have a sincere desire to see a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, living in a lasting and stable peace. We therefore call on all leaders of the European Union and the Western world to reject unequivocally the current position of the Palestinian Authority. We urge the Palestinians to see that the only way they can have their own State is through an agreement with the Israelis. No other options should be supported by the international community.
Only sincere dialogue and the unconditional recognition of each side by the other can be the basis for renewed negotiations. Only sincere dialogue and the unconditional recognition of each side by the other can set the foundations of a viable Palestinian state in the near future.
Jose Maria Aznar, former Prime Minister of Spain
