Love of the Land: Putting First Things First-Sovling The Arab Refugee Problem

Putting First Things First-Sovling The Arab Refugee Problem

Rael Jean Isaac and Ruth King
Mideast Outpost
September 09

Editors Note: In the September 2003 Outpost we published the first version of this article entitled “Putting First Things Last: The 55 Year Failure to Address the Arab Refugee Problem.” The failure is now 61 years old and we felt it was time to say it again: the integration of the refugees into Arab countries is a prerequisite for any meaningful agreement. We published an updated version of our 2003 article on the Family Security Matters website on August 12, 2009. We reprint that article—slightly expanded—because this issue has been neglected by Jewish organizations almost as badly as by diplomats, Middle East experts and the media. If Jewish organizations, each time the issue of settlements was raised, would say “No, the core issue is refugees, with their claimed ‘right of return,’ What are you doing to resettle them in Arab countries?” they could force a shift in the terms of the debate.

The Rogers Plan of 1969, like all subsequent and ill-fated efforts to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict, tabled the issue of the Palestinian "refugees," leaving it for "final status" negotiations. "It is our hope," said the Rogers Plan, "that agreement on the key issues of peace, security, withdrawal and territory will create a climate in which these questions of refugees...can be resolved as part of the overall settlement."

But this is to put first things last. As the passage of time has made abundantly clear, the issue of "refugees" remains the defining obstacle to any reconciliation in the region. Pretending to negotiate, without addressing this issue at the outset, is like operating on a patient and leaving a growing cancer intact. Had it been confronted in 1949, the prospects for finding a subsequent modus vivendi between Israel and the Arabs would have been vastly improved.

President Obama has promised a fresh perspective on issues, to bring "change" in the old ways of doing things. There is no better place to start than by confronting the core issue of the Arab refugees head on—and putting responsibility for solving it on the only ones who can do so, the Arab states.

When the problem of the Arab refugees was at last put on the table at Camp David in the year 2000, the issue blew up the tattered remnant of the Oslo "peace process." Then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak thought he had a winning formula. Israel would make a virtually total territorial withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines. In return, all that would be asked of the Palestinian Authority was to abandon the "right to return," i.e. to eliminate, via demography, the Jewish state. If the Arab-Israel conflict was susceptible to solution via "land for peace," Barak should have had a deal. But Arafat refused to give up the "right to return" and launched outright war, including the most deadly series of terrorist attacks in Israel's history.

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Love of the Land: Putting First Things First-Sovling The Arab Refugee Problem