by Nadav Shragai
Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan
A new book by Adi Schwartz and Dr. Einat Wilf shows how Israel absurdly ignores the Palestinian refugee issue at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and continues to defend UNRWA, which perpetuates Palestinian expectations of "going home."
Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
Anyone
who still isn't convinced that the Palestinians mean every word they
say when it comes to their "right of return," that they aren't just
paying lip service to the Palestinian ethos and that they won't be
satisfied with a symbolic return, will cease to doubt after reading a
new book, "The War for Return," by Adi Schwartz and Dr. Einat Wilf.
The book, which came out as tens of thousands of Palestinians were attempting to breach the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, underscores its authors' documented, and sometimes surprising, insights.
Schwartz is a researcher and lecturer who
has worked for Haaretz and Israel Hayom and is now finishing his
doctorate in conflict resolution at Bar-Ilan University. Wilf, a former
MK who represented the Labor and Atzmaut parties and served as
chairwoman of the Knesset Education Committee, has spent considerable
time researching the Palestinian refugee issue. Both Wilf and Schwartz
were raised as left-wing Zionists.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, the
authors say their book is aimed "particularly at the thinking Left," but
also at the current government, which they criticize for "continuing to
protect UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East] and prevent any attack on its funding."
They say that UNRWA has not been an arm of
the U.N. for some time, and that for years the Palestinian refugee
agency has served as a "womb of Palestinian terrorism, and never ceased
to foster an awareness of expulsion and return among the Palestinians."
The new book includes a few sentences
written by Wilf that are hard to swallow: "Israel is frightened at the
possibility of the UNRWA question appearing on the international agenda …
It is actually the Israeli government, particularly the defense
establishment, that is preventing any actions against UNRWA. Absurd as
it might be, it turns out that the Israeli government is the main
defender of the Palestinian demand for 'return.'"
Q: Does it go that far?
Wilf: "In the book, we document UNRWA's
involvement in raising consciousness of expulsion and return [among
Palestinians], its support for terrorism over the years, and what we
found is that the [Israeli] defense establishment alone that sets
Israeli policy on everything having to do with the possibility of funds
to the organization being cut off."
Q: That sounds almost illogical.
Wilf: "I know, but defense establishments
don't know how to deal with narratives. They know how to demand and
secure quiet right now. If the defense establishment thinks that UNRWA
and the funds [it sends] to Gaza are buying it calm, it will do anything
possible to ensure that the funds keep flowing, even if that means that
the calm is purchased at the cost of a war that will go on for
decades."
Q: This is a right-wing government, doesn't it understand that?
Wilf: "A right-wing government naturally
tends to hold the status quo even more sacred. I assume that if the
government put an end to Palestinian maximalism – which demands right of
return to [Israeli towns] Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Haifa – it would also
have to put an end to Jewish maximalism from the Right and acknowledge
the Palestinian demands beyond the Green Line."
Q: Someone who has been
screaming for decades what you're saying now is journalist and
researcher David Badin. The establishment portrays him as a nuisance,
even though the material he presents seems convincing. Now you come in
and document and bolster a lot of his arguments. Why has is it been so
hard for so many Israelis for so many years to believe that the
Palestinians mean what they say on the issue of return, that they really
are serious in their belief that they will return and live here instead
of us?
Schwartz: "Because it's not pleasant to
discover the truth. I'm not happy about what we found, either. I would
like to have found out something else. Very much so. But political
stances are not determined by reason alone. People tense [tend] to cling to a
romantic approach, to assume that all the Arabs want is to get up in the
morning, go to work, and make a decent living. That things will
eventually work out. But 'we' and 'they' are two different things.
"It's easy for secular Jews to understand
that the ultra-Orthodox have a different world of values … that they're
willing to raise 13 kids in a two-room apartment, because Torah study is
more important to them.
"But it's very hard for people to
comprehend that for the Palestinians, it's more humiliating to forgo the
land and the [idea of] return than it is to stand for hours at a
security checkpoint. They are making their choice, just as the haredim
do. I'm not comparing the two sectors, but we do need an analogy to
understand what is happening to us and why we've been wandering around
in a daze for years on the matter of [Palestinian] return."
Schwartz argues that when it comes to the
issue of return, the Left and the Right are the same, "but the Left
attacks the Right for recalcitrance, whereas the Right just ignores the
refugee problem as if it didn't exist. Since the [1967] Six-Day War, the
discourse in Israel has come with internal friction about whether or
not to return territory, but all sides in the dispute are completing
ignoring the main aspect of the conflict: the refugee problem. Ignoring
it keeps us from understanding the true nature of the conflict."
According to Schwartz, "the conflict isn't
about borders, or territory that can be split up, but rather the very
existence of a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Any
discussion of the conflict that doesn't seriously address the refugee
story is ridiculous. It's like trying to use makeup to disguise skin
lesions on someone who's dying, or plastering a building whose
foundations are completely unstable."
An estimate of sentiment
The book reveals for the first time a
secret Palestinian document from April 2008 that aimed to provide a
scientific tool for the Palestinian leadership to use on the matter of
Palestinian return. The document sought to lay out a rational analysis
that would support the Palestinians' goal of returning to Israel, as
well as account for Israel's capacity to take them in.
"The document investigated three possible
[numeric] scenarios of [Palestinian] return, ranging from hundreds of
thousands to Israel to 2 million," Schwartz says.
"It claimed that in each scenario, the Jews
would remain a majority in Israel, that even in a case of 2 million
refugees returning, the Palestinians would only comprise 36% of the
population in Israel by 2058.
"That's a piece of paper that the Israeli
PR effort should have jumped on. It's one of 1,700 original documents
that the Al-Jazeera network published in 2011. It's not a problem to
find, and it's the most detailed estimate of Palestinian sentiment on
returning to Israel. It unmasks the supposedly calming phrase
'considering demographic needs,' that they are trying to dope us with.
But this paper isn't the last word on the matter."
Meaning?
Schwartz: "What the Palestinians actually
envision is a return without an end. The documents we have obtained show
that they were demanding that an agreed-upon quota of refugees be
permitted to enter Israel every year for 15 years, and that [they
planned to] keep asking for that after the 15 years. We need to add that
the Palestinians see the 'right of return' as a personal right of every
refugee of the 8 million people they define as refugees. Their
refugeedom is eternal: fathers, sons, grandsons, great-grandsons,
great-great-grandchildren. They have no intention of eradicating this
refugeedom in any way other than return. The Palestinian Authority
demanded in negotiations that every refugee be given the option of
returning to Israel."
Q: And Israeli negotiators have been told about this?
Schwartz: "No. It's a real mechanism of
deceit. We found another document in which the Palestinian negotiating
team explains straight out the meaning of the expression 'an agreed-upon
solution to the refugee problem.' It says in the document: 'Wording
must be used according to which a [peace] deal will arrive at an
agreed-upon solution. This is the best possibility for the Palestinians,
since it does not require that they give up the possibility of return
for millions of refugees.'"
The end of the 'Arab Moses'
Wilf confesses that she "hated settlers"
and believed that they were keeping the peace she longed for, which two
prime ministers, Ehud Barak and the late Yitzhak Rabin, had created hope
for, at bay. She says she was raised with the assumption that the Green
Line separated "legitimate Israel" from a non-legitimate one. The
Second Intifada shook up her worldview, Wilf says. In meetings with
"moderate" Palestinians, Wilf heard that Jews were nothing more than a
religion, lacking any right to self-determination and a country of their
own.
Schwartz has spent the last 10 years
researching the Israeli-Arab conflict. He found that the problem of the
refugees and the right of return are front and center in the Palestinian
ethos, but absent from the Israeli discourse about the conflict. This
led to his writing the book with Wilf.
One chapter tells the story of Musa
al-Alami, a former member of the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee, who
in 1948 fled to Beirut and Amman but hurried back to the West Bank
because he wanted to work on behalf of his people, whom he saw suffering
there.
Alami decided to found farming communities
along the Jordan River. He and his people dug 15 wells with their own
hands and found fresh water. They grew produce of excellent quality.
Alami dreamed of setting up an experimental ranch that would help
rehabilitate the uprooted and the refugees and serve as an inspiration
and a model. He did not see working on behalf of the refugees as
collaboration with Israel or as forgoing the demand to return to it. He
only thought that it would be better for his people's dignity and
welfare if they lived in humane conditions.
The New York Times dubbed Alami the "Arab
Moses." But many displaced Palestinians, who were living in camps around
Jericho, refused to cooperate with him. They were afraid his plans were
a scheme to keep them from returning to Israel.
In December 1955, thousands of Palestinians
attacked and destroyed the ranch. Heads of the clans in the camps
incited the masses against the "network of traitors," that they said was
headed by the "arch-traitor Moussa al-Alami." The site was set on fire.
Orphaned children were undressed and beaten. Women had to be rescued
from rape attempts. It was the clearest and most brutal proof yet of the
Arab position that any attempt at rehabilitation or to join an economy
and lead normal lives was a grave betrayal.
"Given a choice between the humiliation of a
life of poverty and distress in the refugee camps or the perceived
humiliation of accepting the state of Israel as a fait accompli, the
refugees chose to stay in the camps," write Wilf and Schwartz.
At the beginning, they reveal, "the heads
of the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee saw the return of the displaced
and the refugees to the new state as recognition of its existence and
vigorously opposed it. Actually opposed it," they write.
Then UNRWA was founded. The camps the
organization set up turned into hotbeds of hatred. The school system it
operated worked to exalt the concept of return and tell the story of the
"exile." In those early years, UNRWA supplied the physical and social
infrastructure from which the Palestinian identity sprouted.
In that same period, UNRWA made a decision
that had dramatic ramifications: to include the descendants of the
refugees and the displaced for all future generations in the list of
"Palestinian refugees." Living in the camps was no longer an existential
or humanitarian matter. It had to do in a large measure with Arab
countries' discrimination against the refugees. Other than Jordan, they
all chose to withhold citizenship from the Palestinians. Wilf says that
maintaining the camps became a farce.
Q: How?
Wilf: "The improvement in the refugees'
economic situation soon led them to develop a real estate market in the
camps. Plots of land and homes were being sold. UNRWA gradually lost
control of the camp residents' identity. New residents moved in. The
number of refugees registered with the agency didn't match their actual
number at all. The elderly who died or relatives who moved to other
countries weren't recorded. In the 1960s and '70s, hundreds of thousands
of young people moved out of the refugee camps to the Gulf states, but
UNRWA didn't report any fewer refugees as a result."
Q: So this is refugeedom on paper?
Wilf: "Exactly. Palestinian refugeehood has
lost most of the classic characteristics of refugeedom elsewhere in the
world. Anyone who has eyes can understand that the services the
international community provides to the refugees via UNRWA in most of
the camps is of minor importance compared to the organization's
political significance. Over the years, UNRWA has become the most
important tool in building a new nation, the Palestinian nation. In
UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip, which are funded and supported by
Western nations, the children would recite every morning: 'Palestine,
our land / Our goal is to return / Death will not frighten us /
Palestine is ours / We will never forget it … We have sworn to spill our
blood for you.'"
Wilf and Schwartz write that for years,
"The PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] tightened its grip on the
camps. Armed members started hanging around without any interference.
They had a state within a state, and raised generations of terrorists.
The dream of return fed terrorism, and the world fed UNRWA, which
fostered it."
An eclipse of thought
The book describes how many members of the
U.S. Congress visited the office of then-Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.
Danny Ayalon, and later the office of his successor Michael Oren. The
congressional representatives were angry that they country was funding
an agency that was harming Israel.
"Ayalon presented them with the position of the Israeli government, which did not support attempts to attack UNRWA," they say.
Oren, too, was forced to reject Republican
initiatives to turn off funds for UNRWA: "Amos Gilad, [then] head of the
Defense Ministry's Political-Military Affairs Bureau, called Oren and
made it clear that UNRWA might be a bad agency, but Hamas was worse."
Wilf calls this approach an "eclipse" that
has obscured "every level of the Israeli leadership, Right and Left, for
years. For many Israelis, it's hard to imagine a reality without UNRWA,
but by existing it encourages the [Palestinian] demand for return. Even
now, when [U.S. President Donald] Trump is seeking to cut aid to UNRWA,
envoys are being dispatched to keep him from attacking it. It's
unbelievable."
Q: Everyone is blind? You're the only ones who see this?
Schwartz: "The reason for the ongoing
willful innocence is that for decades, it was the accepted view that to
make peace, we had to adopt constructive ambiguity and sign agreements
that contained vague wording on fundamental issues of dispute.
"[The late] Shimon Peres was famous for
promoting the idea that 'peace and love should be made with eyes
half-shut,' but keeping our eyes shut allowed the Palestinians to claim
to the world that they had accepted the two-state solution and
recognized Israel, while not signing any wording requiring them to
retreat from their demand for return, which if it comes to pass will
mean our destruction. This ambiguity is destructive. Any peace deal must
be based on constructive clarity. The Palestinian dream of return is
ballooning, defended by Israel and the blindness of the West."
Q: What do you suggest be done?
"First, a clear declaration of a change in
policy toward UNRWA and the removal of Israel's 'Iron Dome' over the
organization. [Israel must] demand that UNRWA stop working on behalf of
Palestinian return and has to present the current truth of Palestinian
refugeedom today: that it is a political rather than a humanitarian
issue.
"There are a lot of people living in the
Palestinian Authority and the Middle East who are registered as refugees
but haven't been [refugees] for a long time. Nations that donate to
them should transfer money directly to the PA, not via UNRWA, which only
perpetuates the lie of Palestinian refugeehood. All UNRWA does is make
it clear to the 80% of Gazans who are registered with it as refugees
from 'Palestine' that Gaza is not their real home, that their real home
on the other side of the fence was forcibly taken from them. Is it any
wonder that they [Gazans] use the cement they receive to build tunnels
to Ashdod and Ashkelon rather than building permanent housing in Gaza?"
Wilf and Schwartz urge the establishment of
a new umbrella organization whose only mission will be to rehabilitate
Gaza. They propose that Israel announce far-reaching steps to rebuild
Gaza but make them conditional on all UNRWA activity being transferred
to the new organization, which would be humanitarian.
"These steps and others we are proposing
cannot be taken as long as the Israeli public is not aware of how deeply
an organization that fosters [the concept of] right of return is
defended by Israel and its defense establishment," they write.
"Israeli policy on this issue, which lies
at the heart of the conflict, cannot be decided by four people in the
hallways of the Kiryah [IDF headquarters] and the Coordinator for
Government Activities in the Territories. The question of the heavy
price Israel pays for the Iron Dome it gives UNRWA must stand up to the
test of public discussion."
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/05/25/israel-keeps-the-palestinian-dream-of-return-alive/
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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