Dr. Salman H. Abu-Sitta, a Palestinian academic, is renowned for his extensive work documenting Palestine’s land and people. He has created a practical plan for Palestinian refugees to exercise their right of return – and it’s neither difficult nor intrusive.
Israel’s ban on UNRWA would leave hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees without education, jobs, or essential services. But the real reason it is going after the UN agency lies in Israel’s political and territorial ambitions.
As some support Trump’s plan to move Gazans elsewhere, and others oppose such an expulsion almost no one mentions the third option – the one obvious, option for most of them: return to the lands from which they were violently expelled by Israeli forces in its founding war…
Basic collective human rights – self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity, and sovereignty without outside interference – are essential and universally legitimate.
76 years later, Palestinian return to the homes and lands we were expelled from in 1948 is feasible and, of course, legal. To Palestinians, it is also sacred and inevitable.
Israel resumed the deliberate use of excessive and lethal force against Palestinian protesters in Gaza, killing one and injuring eight
Prominent commentator Peter Beinart writes in NY Times: Jewish people cling to their right of return, but deny Palestinians the right to do the same. The longer justice is delayed, the longer the Palestinian Nakba – and the Jewish moral exile – will continue.
When Americans were asked hypothetically whether, after expulsion from their land, they’d prefer the right of return or an economic development plan, 68% chose return.
A FAIR study finds that major US news outlets rarely mention the Right of Return, although it is a primary part of the Israel/Palestine issue. In the last ten years, only 0.01 percent of coverage of Palestinians or Palestine in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post informs its audience about the right of return or even mentions it at all. When they do mention it, they generally imply that it is not a legitimate, UN-conferred right; or they describe the exercise of that right as an act of aggression/national “suicide” for Israel.
Palestinians have always had just 3 wishes: a capital someday in Jerusalem, a return to the 1967 borders, and the Right of Return. Between Trump and Israel, there’s nothing left to even dream of: the barest minimum is disappearing – food, medicine, the title of “refugee.”