Love of the Land: Peace Plans and Palestinian Politics

Peace Plans and Palestinian Politics

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
10 March '10

Writing in the widely circulated Israeli newspaper Yisrael Hayom (“Israel Today”), Israeli journalist Dan Margalit reviews the prospects for the new peace process. The article is in Hebrew, but is summarized by the Israel Foreign Ministry:

The author recalls that in 2000, at Camp David, “Ehud Barak agreed to discuss the division of Jerusalem and the Palestinians fled the negotiations,” and adds that “In 2009, Ehud Olmert even offered to soften on the principle against ‘the right of return’ and again they fled.” The paper speculates that “In the current round, Israel is in a more complex position. Benjamin Netanyahu cannot offer Abu Mazen what came up in Ehud Olmert’s plan and if Ramallah rejected the previous move, what will it accept now?” The author notes that the Palestinians will, apparently, proffer a plan of their own in the hope that an Israeli rejection will draw the Obama administration to their side.

Presenting a plan they know Israel will not accept — to generate a condemnation of Israel for not accepting it – would be, in the weird world of the peace process, a step forward: at least the Palestinians would be proffering a plan. The last three times Israel offered the Palestinians a state – at Camp David, in the Clinton Parameters, and in the Olmert offer – the Palestinians rejected the offer without making a counterproposal.

If the process plays out as Margalit predicts, here is one way to determine the seriousness of the Palestinians’ plan: will they release it to their public before July 17? July 17 is the date set for local elections in the West Bank – coincidentally (or maybe not) a week after the four-month period the Palestinians have set for the new indirect talks.

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Love of the Land: Peace Plans and Palestinian Politics

Love of the Land: In favor of the right of return

In favor of the right of return

Karni Eldad
Haaretz
17 February '10

In 1948, scores of families were expelled from their homes in Jerusalem. The city was divided and squatters took over their houses and built on their properties. These refugees prayed to return to the homes they purchased legally in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1967, legal proceedings began for the restoration of ownership to those refugees. The squatters pursued every possible means, in every court, to delay the implementation of the possession by the legal owners. Every such legal proceeding lasted for decades, until an appeal was made to the High Court of Justice.

In 2009, the High Court of Justice had its say too - the squatters must be evicted and they must also pay compensation to the owners of the land for all the years they made use of it. The proceedings against all the squatters has not yet been completed, but this year dozens of Jewish families are slated to return to their homes.

Jewish? What? Yes, yes. These are families that are now purchasing, for the full price, their own properties in the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, better known as Sheikh Jarrah.

Is anyone on the left standing by the side of these robbed families and against the Arab squatters? Not a single one of them. All the morality melts away when the actors change. Where can the (supposedly) moral left be found? In demonstrations against the police and against the old-new settlers who have returned to their stolen homes.

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Love of the Land: In favor of the right of return

Love of the Land: Land swaps and right of return

Land swaps and right of return

Fresnozionism.org
13 February '10

News item:

Israel and a future Palestinian state should agree to land swaps that would make settlement blocs part of Israel proper and certain Arab towns now in Israel part of a future Palestinian state, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in an interview published on Saturday.

Ayalon also said that the Palestinian demand to stop settlement construction as a precondition to negotiations was unrealistic, and would be like Israel demanding that the PA, as a precondition to talks, give up its demand for a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.

In an interview with the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat, Ayalon said Israeli Arabs “would not lose anything” by joining the Palestinian state as part of a land swap.

“If Israeli Arabs say that they are proud Palestinians, why should they not be proud in the Palestinian state?” the Israel Beiteinu minister asked. This population could contribute to building the Palestinian state due to its high socioeconomic status, he said.

I don’t know how much of the above was simply rhetorical, but a few comments:

A) Israeli Arabs have always been violently opposed to land swaps, for two reasons. One is that they know that they are far better off economically and more secure physically as citizens of Israel than of ‘Palestine’. The other is that they believe that the land of Israel belongs to them and that ultimately they will control it. Here’s my favorite quotation to demonstrate this:

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Love of the Land: Land swaps and right of return

Love of the Land: A right of return to what?

A right of return to what?

Seth Frantzman
Terra Incognita
29 December 09

One of the holy grails of the Palestinian movement is the "right of return," and it is one that always haunts any peace agreement. Alongside it is one of the most vilified pieces of Israeli legislation, the Absentee Property Law, which has provided more grist for the academic mill of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than anything else. Even after 60 years of conflict, there is very little understanding by Palestinians or others of either the concept of "return" or that of absentee property - which together represent an idea and the thing to which people might return.

It is important to begin with something that should seem undisputed. Why is there such a dispute as to the total number of Palestinians who became refugees in 1948? The UN claimed, based on British estimates, that there were 1,076,000 Muslims, 13,500 Druse and 145,000 Christians in Palestine in 1947. After the War of Independence there were 32,000 Christians, 90,000 Muslims and 14,000 Druse. Some 507,000 people lived in the West Bank and Gaza before 1948. No more than 592,000 people could have become refugees, and that is using the Mandatory government's population estimate, which was probably an exaggeration. It is the descendants of those people who today claim a right of return.

THERE ARE many Palestinians who, clinging to their ancient keys and documents relating to some property in Israel, have come to visualize a return to a place that is a fantasy. I've spent enough time traveling around the country with educated Palestinians to come across this distortion of memory. Palestinians have an attachment to things that they believe relate to their ancestors, such as old mosques that remain in many places. But they also have an attachment to things that they assume are Palestinian, such as Nahlaot in Jerusalem. The area, built from stone, seems to many Arabs to remind them of the Old City, and they wrongly assume that it must have been an Arab area. Thus some of the "right of return" relates to areas that were never Arab, but which Arabs imagine must have been Arab because of the way they look.

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Love of the Land: A right of return to what?