The War of Return

March 2, 2020
Palestinian refugees’ claims to a “right of return” have prevented a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to this clearly articulated but less-than-convincing polemic from a pair of self-identified members of the Israeli left. Wilf, a former Labor Party politician, and Schwartz, a journalist, argue that Jewish leaders had no plans to expel Palestinian Arabs prior to the 1947–1949 war of independence, and that there were no systematic efforts to do so during the conflict—though hundreds of thousands did flee to neighboring Arab territories. Postwar objections to their assimilation back into Israel were in line with international norms and meant to prevent further conflict, according to the authors, who blame the UN for legitimizing the “nonexistent” right of return, “vastly inflat” the number of refugees by including all descendants of Palestinian males displaced during the war, and operating schools that indoctrinate children in “the illegitimacy of the Jewish state.” Schwartz and Wilf don’t address how the evolution of Israeli settlement policies may have contributed to Palestinian revanchism, and their claim that invalidating the right of return will lead to peace seems farfetched. This one-sided argument appears destined to spark debate rather that change minds.

March 15, 2020
A controversial manifesto against the one-state, two-peoples approach to peace in the Middle East. Since 1950, Israel has had a Law of Return, granting Jews the right of Israeli citizenship. The Palestinians, however, want to have a Right of Return--not to their own country, but into the State of Israel. Schwartz, a one-time correspondent for Haaretz, and Wilf, a former Labor MP, count themselves among peace-inclined Israelis on the political left. However, they mount a vigorous, methodical argument against such a Palestinian Right of Return. Their disillusionment with the process begun at Camp David and came with the realization that the Palestinian leadership did not want the two-state solution but instead demanded a "right to return" to what is now Israel and form a political majority. "We no longer want to throw the Jews in the sea," they quote one Fatah official as saying, "but 'to live together' "--shorthand, the authors hold, for "one state, with no right of self-determination for the Jews." The authors argue that the majority of Palestinians are no longer refugees properly speaking, as they were after the partition of 1948, but instead citizens of neighboring states as well as Germany and the U.S. "In Jordan," they write, "there exists a situation unlike anywhere else in the world, whereby citizens of a state, most of whom were born in that state, have lived there their entire lives...are designated as refugees from a different state." Even so, the UN gives refugee status to descendants of displaced Palestinians, and by supporting the agency that issues such a designation, the authors write, the West tacitly endorses the Palestinian goal of a wholly Arab nation "from the River to the Sea." For this reason, they charge, the Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) should be dismantled. A book certain to fan the flames of a seemingly unquenchable fire.

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