Rami Khouri, Lebanese editor, speaking on NPR, and Michael Steinhardt, the funder of several neoconservative outlets, writing in the Wall Street Journal, say that the big issue is not borders, it’s refugees. I can’t get the Steinhardt because it’s behind a fire wall, but it begins, "settlements are no longer the real issue that separates Israel and the Palestinians. The real issue is refugees." And Khouri says:
The land issue is not the point. The land issue is one element of a comprehensive piece that should not be made the only element, as your Israeli guest said, because the crux of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is over the refugeehood of the Palestinians from our side, the exile, displacement and refugeehood, and from the Israeli side, it’s the acceptance by the Arabs of an Israeli state that is predominately Jewish.
That’s where the tradeoff is going to come and where the agreements have to satisfy the core needs of both sides. West Bank and Gaza is an important piece of land that will hopefully become the core of a Palestinian state or the territorial element of a Palestinian state, but the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict needs much, much wider parameters, and the refugee issue has to be resolved in a manner that is negotiated by both sides and acceptable to both sides on the basis of international law.
I don’t know where these men come down on the full implementation of the right of return, which is addressed beautifully in this video Adam posted. But this core injustice has to be addressed at last. And Khouri seems to be suggesting, you can keep your Jewish state, if you just let the Palestinians who want to come home, come home.
Of course, if you let the Pals come home, Israel as Israel (as Richard Witty likes to put it),
will allegedly cease to exist. How to get around that?
But of course, when you talk to racists like Witty, that’s not an option because unless Israel is “Jewish AND democratic” — that is, unless Jews have tyranny of the majority, Jews-only roads, Jews-only communities, and all the other special privileges Zionism affords his chosen people — he doesn’t want democracy.
He values Zionism even more than he values democracy.
And as I have pointed out, there is nothing to Israel besides the ethnic cleansing and the military occupation. Literally, nothing. Israel does not subsist without the oppression and slaughter of native Palestinians at the hands of European Jews. The rhetoric of Zionists like Witty proves that.
And as far as I know, he still hasn’t had any comment about this article. Forever the coward.
RE: “Israel does not subsist without the oppression and slaughter of native Palestinians at the hands of European Jews.” – KAOS
CONTROL: European Jews? Nowadays, more likely American Jews.
Hey, I’m from European stock, myself, and I’m still American. That’s the sense of the term I use when I refer to them as European.
Couldn’t a pretty good case be made right about now, that Israel is the worst place in the world to be a Jew? Anywhere else where Jews are conscripted at 19(?) and have to serve military duty into their 40′s? Anyplace else a Jew faces such a confusing tangle of regulations and prejudice every time he elects to associate with anyone other than his group?
Sometimes the entire thing seems like an insane dream, Judaism killing itself for a 19th century British Public-school Biblical geography.
Don’t insult British Public Schools like that.
RE: “Sometimes the entire thing seems like an insane dream, Judaism killing itself for a 19th century British Public-school Biblical geography.” – Mooser
MY COMMENT: It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
MUSICAL INTERLUDE (sponsored by today’s Ziocaine™):
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(We care a lot) about the wars you’re fighting gee that looks like fun
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Oh, it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it
Oh, it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it…
Faith No More – We Care A Lot 1985 (Original) 03:57 (audio only) – link to youtube.com
Faith No More We Care A Lot Live@ Bizarre Festival August 16, 1997
link to youtube.com
What is most interesting to me in the debate over a right to return is the extraordinary (indeed, unique) double standard.
Jews who may have no traceable connection to Israel at all (except the vague assertions based on claims about the ancient, traditional homeland of the Jews) nevertheless have a right of return — all Jews, everywhere — according to Israeli dogma. But, Palestinians born in what is now Israel are expressly denied that right.
The list of double standards in the Israel-Palestine debate is long, but this is beyond a doubt the most extreme instance.
Phil, fyi Khouri is Palestinian. of this i am absolutely certain because his sister Raghida is a very good friend of mine for over 20 years. he may have his Lebanese citizenship (he is/was editor of Beirut’s Daily Star) but he is most definitely 100% Palestinian, family from Bethlehem as i recall.
i am fairly certain what khouri said was “comprehensive peace”, not “comprehensive piece”. yes, every palestinian i ever talk to says the refugees is the issue. ROR is basically the most valuable thing the palestinians have and they are not giving it up. it is their right under international law. palestinians are not that gang ho about their own state, they want to go home. if they can’t go home israel is going to have to offer them something really really big, otherwise the way they see it they have held on this long, they will just hold out longer. time is on their side, that is how they see it as it has been communicated to me. of course khouri knows this, he is palestinian, that is what all the palestinians say except the PA puppets&co.
Sadly, its only a rhetorical question, one of feelings only, but fraught with fears.
The fears are of the maximalist approach to right of Palestinian return, which is the “right” to dispossess.
Stated vaguely, it allows for fears. The right of return is not a given right.
The right to a day in court should be the application of the rule of law. The right of descendants of Palestinians from anywhere to reside in Israel is not the same as individuals that lived in Jaffa to return to somewhere in Jaffa.
The hopefulness was of good neighbor relations, based on prior experience of willingness to be good neighbors. That should be encouraged.
It doesn’t happen by prohibitions from interaction as is implied in the BDS isolation movement.
The right of return is not a given right.
do you mean ‘god given’ right? it refers to palestinians rights afforded in the geneva convention.
The right of return is guaranteed to refugees by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, in Article 13, states that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his country,” and by the Fourth Geneva Convention among many other basic human rights instruments [for a more detailed discussion of the right of return in international law, see appendix, pg. 20]. Following their expulsion in 1948, it was specifically applied to the Palestinian refugees through UN Resolution 194, which demands 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 and for loss of or damage to property….”The Resolution is explicit in leaving it up to individual refugees to choose whether they wish to return to their homes or accept compensation instead. The United States voted in favor of Resolution 194 every year until 1993 and this Resolution has been reaffirmed every year at the United Nations with near unanimity.
As a condition of being admitted as a member state of the United Nations, Israel agreed to implement the right of return laid out in UN Resolution 194. Resolution 273, which grants Israel membership is explicit about this requirement. Despite this commitment, Israel has consistently denied the right of return and passed laws in the late 1940s and early 1950s forbidding the return of refugees and expropriating their property.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the renunciation of rights …. Drafted in the aftermath of World War II, the Convention recognizes that a conqueror is often able to force a subjugated people to sign away their rights. Therefore, Article 8 forbids any renunciation, in whole or in part, of any of the rights it guarantees, including the right of return.
Again, the need for specifics, rather than vague rhetoric.
Resolution 194 refers to individuals displaced, not classes of those that name themselves as national “Palestinians” regardless of where they were born and/or lived.
Oh, so now we have to prove that “Palestinians” deserve human rights?
How come you don’t use the same critical eye to “Israelis?” You and your children could snap your fingers and BOOM! you’d be Israelis. So you honestly believe that Right of Return belongs to Jews and Jews alone?
what did you mean by ‘given right?’ are you denying the children of palestinian refugees are not refugees? 194 refers to refugees does it not?
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), an organ of the United Nations created to aid the displaced from the 1948 and the 1967 war defines a Palestinian refugee as a person “whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, or June 1967, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict”. UNRWA’s definition of a Palestinian refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948[3] regardless of whether they reside in areas designated as refugee camps or in established, permanent communities.[4]
UNRWA is an organ of the UN, are you asserting 194 is in contravention of UNWRA/UN definition of palestinian refugees which includes their descendants?
I think I would deny that the child of a refugee that is now 40 years old, that lives in Lebanon, is not a refugee from Israel/Palestine, but from Lebanon.
I would severely question UNRWA’s definition of a Palestinian refugee.
There has to be a legal path to reconcile individual claims. The maximalist definition prohibits that.
I know there is no current handshake offered by a reasonable Israeli policy, but at some point there will be, and the maximalist approach will make that handshake impossible.
Abbas blames Iran for thwarting Palestinian reconciliation
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, winding up a visit to Tunisia, on Saturday blamed Iran for blocking reconciliation between his Fatah organization and rival Islamist faction Hamas.
Tehran’s leadership did not want Hamas to sign the Egyptian-brokered reconciliation plan, Abbas charged. After Hamas had initially agreed to the plan, it was now citing a number of objections for not signing it.
link to haaretz.com
But you wouldn’t deny the “right” of “return” for Russian Jews like Avigdor Lieberman?
You can’t distract us from the real issues, you racist bastard. Yeah, let’s talk about Abbas and who he works for.
link to vanityfair.com
Abbas works for the best interests of the Palestinian people, as he understands it.
A very reasonable and hopefully effective leadership role.
Witty’s personal Uncle Tom.
The right of descendants of Palestinians from anywhere to reside in Israel is not the same as individuals that lived in Jaffa to return to somewhere in Jaffa.
witty, descendants of palestinian refugees are refugees, certainly you know that. otherwise obviously any country could simply ignore the geneva convention Article 13 until such time as all the original refugees are dead. i don’t imagine anyone imagined this was going to be going on for so many decades but it has. that doesn’t lesson the burden of honoring those rights, it only makes the burden tougher the longer it is not honored. instead of devaluing that right, israel should place a deserving value, one that refelects their own value of their homeland. do not pretend the land of israel has more value to jews than the region of palestine has to palestinians.
Witty’s a racist. He refuses that right to “brown” Palestinians even while he venerates the right of “white” Jews to emigrate to Israel when their family has nothing to do with that land at all.
He want Jewish privilege. He wants himself and his kids to enjoy a right that “undesirables,” in his opinion, shouldn’t have. He wants Jews-only gated communities and beaches and country clubs, and for all he cares the Palestinians can live as refugees into perpetuity.
I don’t regard children and grandchildren of a military conflict 62 years ago as refugees.
That is severely stretching the meaning of the term. That the UNRWA (funded by voluntary contributions, a de-facto charitable organization rather than a relief vehicle of the UN, serves the population that it defines is its own business.
The exageration is in defining the UN role in that as “official”. The people served deserve a good life. They don’t deserve it necessarily in Israel.
Again, the maximalist definition of a “refugee” is a destroyer of reconciliation. It has in the past, and will continue to be in the future.
Applying a pendulum swing approach to definitions, does not make it more possible, or more just.
A more specific and moderate definition makes peace, whereas the maximalist makes war.
But you do regard white Russian Jews as refugees?
I wouldn’t rest the existence of peaceful co-existing state on the “Jewish refugee status” of Russians, no.
If they are Jews, within Israel, it is up to Israel to define its immigration policies.
The claims of “international law” in this case are exagerated. It is not a good basis of hope for dissenters to support what is impossible.
So how come PALESTINIANS don’t get to define immigration policies? How come they didn’t get to define those in the 1940′s? No! In your opinion, if a Jew squats on a plot of land anywhere in the Middle East, that’s Jewish land now as far as your concerned.
Or has your stance that the Palestinians must accept existing settlements on their land changed?
Yeah, keep trying to debase and destroy international law, Witty. It shows your true colors.
Don’t call the Israeli Left anti-Zionist
By Yossi Sarid
link to haaretz.com
Emmanuel Sivan / So what does the Arab and Muslim street really think?
By Emmanuel Sivan
link to haaretz.com
Where are you when it comes to commenting on this article, Witty?
link to mondoweiss.net
Whats your point Chaos?
Isn’t it clear by now from my repetition of what I advocate for, that I confidently advocate for equal civil and legal rights of Palestinians and other minorities within Israel?
And, isn’t it also clear that I favor and support efforts at integration, rather than segregation and isolation?
I’m a liberal. NOT a radical left, NOT a radical right.
You’re no liberal, Witty. You’re a liar and a racist. You endorse ethnic cleansing just so long as its Jews wearing the jack boots.
I’d like to have seen what you were really lobbying for in your comfy white New York suburb back in the ’60s. Because if it’s anywhere consistent with your attitudes on Israel, it’s that JEWS ONLY get special privileges.
You don’t give a flying fuck about Palestinian rights. You’ve even gone so far as to put “Palestinian” in air quotes — the old “Palestinians don’t really exist / land without a people” canard.
Hypocrites like you are think you will succeed in destroying American progressivism and that that will save your judenreich.
You are wrong.
Now, those are all lies.
I don’t live in New York suburbs, or any. I did live in New Rochelle until 1972, and lived in Croton in 1979. My parents lived in New Rochelle until 1990.
New York is a state as well as a city, dumb ass.
But anyway, like I’ve said. The fabrication that you were ever a supporter of equal rights in the United States is bullshit.
Phil lives in New York state. I live elsewhere. You think you embellished your standing by “dumb ass”.
You, Witty, advocate a double standard in application of the law of return. Any Jew anywhere in the world, and those born anywhere in the future, has an absolute right of return, whereas you cut off the
law of return for Palestinians, allowing its application only to direct Nakba survivors, and then, only as a possible claim on real estate subject to some manner of compensation in lieu of actual return, except for perhaps a handful who you’d
allow actual return.
You also dispute the authority of international law and the UN, although Israel
itself uses the UN Partition resolution as authority from the world for its physical existence, and relies on the US Sec Council veto to avoid world accounting for Israel’s actions.
I’m a liberal. NOT a radical left, NOT a radical right.
Whatever you are, it doesn’t change the fact that your an active proponent of a brutal military occupation, a medieval siege, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.
Actually, I’m primarily a critic of brutal military occupation, siege, apartheid-like policies and practices and ethnic cleansing.
But, I’m also a critic of maximalist radical formation of otherwise resolvable conflicts.
“Which side are you on?” is the wrong side if you are a humanist in this.