Thursday, July 31, 2008

A problem that wouldn't go away

July 31, 2008

A problem that wouldn't go away

A move by the Israeli parliament (Knesset) to se up a cross-party caucus dealing with the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees is a positive turn. It is the first time since Israel was created in 1948 that the issue of Palestinian refugees has been given that kind of Israeli attention.
In order to emphasise the Jewish presence in Palestine, Israel for long has resorted to minimising and denying the presence of others in the region and engaging in periodic announcements of archaeological findings designed to reinforce the cooked-up theory that Palestine was always Jewish.
It even created a "historical image" that projected Palestine as largely unpopulated when Israel was created there and suggested that the land was voluntarily abandoned by its Arab residents in 1948.
For former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, there was no such thing as the Palestinians.
However, the reality that stared Israel and indeed the rest of the world in the face in the last 60 years and continues to do so is the existence of some 4.5 million Palestinians categorised as refugees. They live in camps in the Middle East and are looked after by a special UN agency created for the purpose, the UN Refugees and Works Agency (UNRWA).
It is also known and widely accepted by all — except of course Israel — that there would never be peace in the Middle East without a just and fair solution to the Palestinian refugee problem — that is through the implementation of UN Resolution 194, which upholds the right of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their ancestral homes that they were forced to abandon in 1948 or to receive compensation in lieu of that right.
Of course, any respect for the "right of return" of the Palestinian refugees is a nightmare for Israel since any large-scale influx of non-Jews would demographically negate its claim as "the Jewish state."
The official Israeli line had always been a refusal to accept any responsibility for the problem and suggestions that the Palestinian refugees be settled in the countries where they reside.
The newly formed Knesset caucus includes parliamentarians from across the political spectrum, including MKs from Labour, the Likud, Shas and other parties.
The move comes at a time of parliamentary activities led by the US and Canada to rechannel funding from UNRWA toward the resettlement of some of the refugees and their descendants in other countries.
It is not clear how the Knesset group — the Caucus for the Rehabilitation of Palestinian Refugees — intends to proceed. But it says it would work with UNRWA.
Let us hope that this move reflects realistic thinking on the part of the Israeli political establishment and the acceptance that side-stepping and ignoring the Palestinian refugee problem would only impede all efforts for peace in the Middle East.