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Peace Plan Peril

T

he Trump Administration has
made it very clear that it intends
to pursue a Middle East Peace
agreement — “the ultimate deal” in the
president’s own words. This is certainly
a laudable goal, as were all the previous
initiatives launched by numerous previ-
ous presidents. These all had one thing
in common — they failed. While the
outcome of the Trump initia-
tive remains to be determined,
it is not likely to succeed either
without a sober recognition and
realization of the single most
important obstacle to a lasting
peace agreement: namely the
Palestinian insistence on a so-
called “right of return.”
Gil Kapen
This is an assertion that is
not made lightly. There are cer-
tainly numerous issues of con-
tention between Israelis and
Palestinians and all are thorny. But the
official and popular belief in the “right”
to return — not to a future Palestinian
state, but to Israel proper — is the ulti-
mate poison pill that will doom any
negotiation.
At the Camp David talks in 2000, stren-
uous, even desperate efforts were made,
with the personal and intensive partici-
pation of President Bill Clinton, insanely
eager to cement a positive legacy, to
achieve a historic Israeli-Palestinian
accord. These efforts failed, nevertheless,
because Yasser Arafat refused to sign a
document ending the conflict and fore-
going further claims. Clearly, the price
demanded by the American mediators —
renouncing forever the dream of a single
Palestine — “from the River to the Sea”
(replacing the State of Israel) — was far
too high for Arafat.
Arafat’s successor as Palestinian
President, Mahmoud Abbas (or Abu
Mazen), is no more likely to be amenable.
When Abbas was interviewed on Israeli
television in 2014, he seemed to be signal-
ing to the Israeli people that he would no
longer insist on “the right of return.” He
stated that although he was born in the
ancient city of Safed, he realized that he
would never return to live there. “Palestine
for me is the ‘67 borders, now and forever
… I believe that the West Bank and Gaza
are Palestine and the rest is Israel.”
These remarks caused a sensation in
Israel and an explosion of optimism. A
few days later, after facing a firestorm
of outrage and fierce criticism in the
Palestinian media and by Hamas, Abbas
clarified. Appearing on Egyptian televi-
sion this time, he said, “My statements
about Safed were my private opinion and
do not mean giving up the right of return.
Nobody can give up the right of return …
the issue of the refugees is sacred.”
In point of fact, there is unanimity
among the Palestinian factions on this

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October 5 • 2017

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point. Hamas, of course, rejects the
existence of Israel and advocates its
destruction by force (to be replaced with
an Islamic Palestine). But the Palestinian
Authority, dominated by Abu Mazen’s
Fatah party (widely considered “moder-
ate”) is obviously just as committed to
the demand that 5 million Palestinians
have the “right” to inundate and overrun
Israel. Together with the 1.5 mil-
lion Israeli Arabs, they would then
threaten Israel’s Jewish majority
and, by way of democratic elec-
tions, Israel would quickly become
a majority Arab Palestinian state.
Of course, Israel will never agree
to this. But many Palestinians
truly believe that time is on their
side, and the international com-
munity will eventually compel
Israel to accept this. Their role
model for this scenario is apart-
heid South Africa. Just as the internation-
al community and the United Nations,
eventually, after many years of pressure
and sanctions, compelled South Africa
to surrender, so, according to this logic,
will it do to Israel (in their minds, also an
apartheid state).

PALESTINIAN REFUGEE STATUS

The notion of a “right of return” is
indeed treated as a “sacred” one, using
President Abbas’ word, across wide
swaths of Palestinian society. It is pro-
moted in the media, in the mosques,
and — significantly — in Palestinian
schools run by UNRWA (the United
Nations Relief Works Agency). This
is a refugee agency dealing only with
Palestinians. All other refugees in
the world fall under the rubric of the
United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR).
Unlike all other refugees, Palestinian
refugee status is passed on from genera-
tion to generation. Fewer than 50,000
Palestinians who originated in Palestine
and became refugees after the 1948
Israeli War of Independence are st ill
alive today. Yet, the UNRWA refugee
rolls number over 5 million — the chil-
dren, grandchildren, great-grandchil-
dren, and great-great grandchildren of
the original refugees.
Making this situation all the more
absurd, the vast majority of “refugees”
serviced by UNRWA in fact live in Gaza
and the West Bank, not only areas of
historic Palestine, but the very territories
intended to form a future Palestinian
state. Nowhere else in the world are
there refugees living within the borders
of their own country. At UNRWA schools,
children are taught that Israel usurped
their homeland and that they will one
day return to their homes in Jaffa, Haifa,
Acre, Tiberias, etc. (cities situated today
within the 1967 borders of Israel).

UNITED NATIONS SUPPORT

The very continued existence of UNRWA
in fact, perpetuates the myth that the
refugees will return to a Palestinian
state supplanting Israel. But in addition
to UNRWA, the United Nations itself
has, since the mid-1970s, given official
sanction and support to this extremist
demand. The infamous Nov. 10, 1975,
resolution equating Zionism with rac-
ism was widely condemned (and it was
repealed in 1991). What is certainly
less known is that the U.N. General
Assembly, at that same 1975 session,
established two U.N. bodies that, in
the name of the United Nations, give
sanction and recognition to the most
extreme Palestinian positions, including
the demand to implement “the right of
return.”
These two institutions are the
Division on Palestinian Rights and
the Committee on the Exercise of the
Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian
People (CEIRPP). They are reauthorized
every year by large (although dimin-
ishing) majorities at the annual U.N.
General Assembly. The entire range
of activity of these offices consists of
defaming Israel, organizing conferences
and disseminating information con-
demning Israel, and otherwise spread-
ing one-sided propaganda consistent
with the most extreme Palestinian posi-
tions.
Tellingly, the mission statement of the
CEIRPP asserts that its goal is “to enable
the Palestinian people to exercise their
inalienable rights to self-determination
without external interference, national
independence and sovereignty; and to
return to their homes and property from
which they had been displaced.”
This is an understood reference to
U.N. General Assembly Resolution
194, passed near the end of the 1948
war. The relevant section states that
the General Assembly “Resolves that
the refugees wishing to return to their
homes and live at peace with their
neighbors should be permitted to do
so at the earliest practicable date and
that compensation should be paid for
the property of those choosing not to
return.”
On this basis lays the claim of a
Palestinian “right of return.” There are
several problems here, however. First,
the resolution also was meant to apply
to Jewish refugees expelled from Arab
countries. Furthermore, all six Arab
League members then represented at
the U.N. General Assembly voted against
it (although it passed, nevertheless).
And, finally, General Assembly resolu-
tions (unlike Security Council resolu-
tions) are not binding — they are only
recommendations. Resolution 194 was
clearly overtaken by events.

THE PROBLEMS POSED

More troubling than the negative role
played by the U.N., however, is the lack
of understanding among well-meaning
people in Europe and in the U.S. of the
central problem posed by the continued
championing of the “right of return.”
The tendency to sweep this problem
under the rug and to assume that the
Palestinians will, in the context of nego-
tiations, magically give up this “right” —
so ingrained through several generations
and so much a part of the Palestinian
narrative — is a dangerous self-delusion.
Bill Clinton did not have this problem.
After the collapse of the Camp David
talks, he published the so called “Clinton
Parameters,” now widely considered to
be the solid basis for a potential future
Mideast peace agreement. These clearly
spell out the solution for the refugees: a
mechanism for compensation for those
choosing to resettle elsewhere; return of
refugees to the Palestinian state; recogni-
tion by Israel of Palestinian suffering; and
no return of any refugees to Israel proper
(without the consent of Israel). But when
former Secretary of State John Kerry
made his famous hour-long speech on
the Middle East last December, he made
no mention whatsoever of the “right of
return.” For too many, this is an inconve-
nient truth.
It was reported that at a recent meet-
ing with a group of interns, presiden-
tial adviser Jared Kushner wondered
out loud about why so many previous
American peace initiatives have failed
and even whether “the ultimate deal”
is really possible. He is right to be cau-
tious about this and to try to compre-
hend why this dispute, among all world
national conflicts, seems so insoluble.
He would be even wiser to understand
that without confronting the “right of
return” head-on, he’ll be doomed to
repeat the failures of his predecessors.
The eloquent Israeli former Knesset
Member and academic Einat Wilf
accurately summarized the problem:
“Holding on to the ‘right of return’
enables the Palestinians to continue to
believe that even if they lose a battle, the
war isn’t over. And if the war isn’t over ...
[they] can still dream of defeating Israel
by turning it into an Arab majority state
via the ‘right of return.’“
The best thing the new Trump
Administration mediators can do for
their mission — and for Israelis and
Palestinians — is to make it abundantly
clear the war is indeed over, and that the
“right of return” is not a right at all. •

Gil Kapen is a special adviser to the American
Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI) in
Washington, D.C., and a former senior Republican
staffer of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He
is originally from West Bloomfield.

