You asked me the other day where I stood on right of
return. Between you and me, for a long time I minimized it…or didn't
fully get it. Then one night in December of 2000 I was in Khan Yunis refugee camp with family members and friends of my Arabic teacher. It was that night I finally got they did not want to live in a refugee camp or even in Gaza
all their lives. They had homes and land not far from there and knew
it. I began recognizing that there were many Palestinians who wouldn't
simply settle for two states because of the injustice of the 1948
ethnic cleansing.
Later that night (I don't think I'm conflating two
nights in my mind) the IDF made its first real incursion of the second intifada
into a refugee camp. Young people went to repel the attack. But I
also saw parents with small children fleeing as the bullets flew over
our heads. I remember an old man coming to the door of his home,
vomiting, and going right back inside. I remember being more scared
than I had ever been in my life. I just didn't know what was going to
happen next. Later that night one of the young men I'd been with
earlier in the evening came back into the home covered with blood. He'd
dragged back two dead Palestinian police officers. And he was totally
unnerved– a high-pitched voice that had not been there earlier in the
evening. He was emotionally on edge by what he had just witnessed.
children must have been unbelievable. People tell me you get
accustomed to such things, but I don't think you ever totally can. You
might not get the shakes, but the mental strain of what you're facing
is enormous. I was in as a witness for one day but they endured the
tensions — and worse — day in and day out. Some of them were
determined not to run. Said their families had done that in 48 and they
wouldn't do it again. I remember one man saying to me he'd fight with
his hands if he had to. Bravado? Probably, But determination too.
Ma chasing after somebody with a chicken in one hand and an ax in the
other and getting mixed up which was which and bludgeoning the man with
the poor chicken. And then there's Grampa and Muley who don't want to
leave the land no matter how bad it is. Grampa dies within hours
of leaving. I saw a film in Jerusalem about Palestinians trying to
secure a little bit of earth from their 1948 home villages to be buried
in when they die in the West Bank. Preacher stays
up nights "figgering" about what's going on in the land and what can be
done about it. I wonder how many people are staying up nights
figuring out how to address the expanding occupation. I'm sure quite a
few are. I'm reminded of the depressing Palestinian joke: What two
things expand when frozen? Water and settlements.
So I support right of return. But I also support finding
out how many want to return and how many would take compensation. And
I believe that Israel's settlement activity makes right of return more
likely and not less. Because settlement activity hastens apartheid.
And when the apartheid becomes clear enough then enough people will
have their eyes opened to the fact that something has to be done. At
that point, one state comes front and center as the other alternatives
are what Mearsheimer said the other night at Yale: ethnic cleansing or the more likely apartheid. Once there's one
person, one vote, there's a good chance the law of the land will be
changed to allow Palestinians to return.
I've said I'll give two states till the end of the Bush administration.
Time is ticking. I suspect there are others like me. Can you imagine
how long it will be before an Obama or McCain administration is serious
about tackling Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking? And what does it tell
you about the parties when both use language that actively advances
ethnic cleansing? Here is the Democratic Party platform language about Palestinian refugees
returning to the new Palestinian state and Israel being a Jewish
state. What does that mean for the rights of the 20 percent of
Israel's population that is Palestinian? It's a disgrace. It's open
racism. And I don't know enough about the workings of the parties to
know if they just don't get what the words mean or if they're actively
ok with promoting such racism. I tend to think most people don't begin
to fathom what the words really mean. I hope that's the case anyway.
really begin to wonder if I'll see it in my lifetime. I first went to
Gaza 15 years ago. I would never have imagined we'd have made so little
progress. I hope the bodies don't pile up more than they have, but I think they might. I keep clinging to South Africa,
where I was convinced, as was my college mentor (and I probably because
of him), that there was going to be a blood bath before anything
changed. There were terrible moments, but not like what I thought
might come to pass. Americans got on board with calling apartheid
grotesque. Too often, on Israel/Palestine, they defend Israel's
discrimination. And I think it's very easy for people to miss the
overall picture because they're revolted — as they should be — by the
suicide bombings. I've often thought somebody should go to Zogby
polling and have him ask the question: Have more Palestinian civilians
or Israeli civilians been killed in the last eight years of fighting?
I bet most Americans would say more Israeli civilians. Is that, then, a
failure of the media? I think a strong case could be made.
