Loaded designations
The Palestinians' right of return is inalienable and unnegotiable, writes Mustafa El-Feki*
In his speech during the Sharm El-Sheikh summit in June 2003, President Bush referred to Israel as the "Jewish state". That was no accident -- the speech was a written one -- and it requires little effort to understand the reason behind using this phrase, especially under the current circumstances.
Israel had just formally agreed to the roadmap, albeit after attaching 14 reservations. However, it was obvious that Israel intended to return to these reservations at a later stage, because to Israel the roadmap is little more than a negotiating card rather than a package deal for arriving at a final settlement, which is how the Quartet and the Arabs understand it. But then, Israel always asks for a lot in return for the paltry concessions it occasionally makes and generally reneges on.
The fact that Bush used the phrase "the Jewish state" when speaking in an official capacity at a major international event is significant, since up to then the use of the term had been restricted to Israeli officials and Jewish circles in the West and the US in particular. The term thus elevated to the status of Washington's official rhetoric has important bearings on two fundamental issues: the Palestinian people's right to return and Jewish immigration to Israel.
The right of return is the core issue with regard to post-1948 Palestinian refugees and Palestinians displaced since 1967. Palestinian-Israeli negotiations have always run aground on two fundamental issues, namely the right of return and the status of Jerusalem. As sensitive as the latter issue is, in view of sanctity of the Holy City to adherents of the three divinely revealed religions, and in view of that city's special place in the hearts of the Palestinian people, it now appears that this issue might be easier to solve than the right of return. The right of return is particularly complex and emotionally laden, even though it has far less of an impact on reality than theory would suggest. While the right of return in theory means that millions of Palestinians would have the right to return to the homes they occupied before 1948 or 1967, the reality remains that the number of Palestinians who would actually choose to do this is far less.
How many of the millions of Palestinians who have made their homes in the Gulf, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt and who have become citizens of the US, Canada, Australia and various European countries, would want to uproot themselves again? Moreover, the actual number of people who stand to benefit from the right to return, as stipulated in Security Council Resolution 194, would not exceed a few hundred thousand.
For the larger Palestinian diaspora, however, the right of return would have great symbolic and psychological value. It would offer a form of historical vindication. It would afford a Palestinian the opportunity to visit his native or spiritual homeland, to search for the old family home -- assuming it had not been demolished by the Israeli war machine -- or to stake out a burial plot on the cherished land of his ancestors. The right of return, therefore, is fundamental and non- negotiable.
However, the reference to the "the Jewish state" made by Bush in Sharm El-Sheikh represents a deliberate attempt to reduce a "right" to a "demand", thereby belittling the essence of the Palestinian cause. It is noteworthy that Camp David II and the subsequent meetings between the Palestinians and Israelis in Sharm El-Sheikh and Taba collapsed over the issue of the right of return. Indeed, I believe I am not mistaken in saying that the Israelis were prepared to show some flexibility on the question of Jerusalem in exchange for jettisoning the right to return. At one stage of the talks, the US espoused a cunning Israeli notion that went as follows: if there are to be two states, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, this would remould the understanding of the right to return. The Palestinians would have the right to return only to the Palestinian state while the Jews would retain the right to migrate to Israel. This thinking is fallacious and particularly foreboding for the future of both states, since it effectively demeans the Palestinian right of return by transforming it into another promotion for Jewish immigration to Israel.
Jewish immigration to Palestine still poses a great threat to the region because it will lead Israel to devour more Palestinian territory, build more settlements and displace more Palestinians from their homes. Israel also seeks to promote immigration to ensure that at no point in the future will the Jews constitute a numerical minority vis-à-vis the Palestinians, both within Israel proper, or in occupied West Bank and Gaza. It was, therefore, remarkable that the US president should lend himself to such a contentious notion amidst an appeal to peace, a roadmap and a new future.
Throughout the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, indeed the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel encouraged waves of Jewish immigrants to Israel from Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, the Arab world and Ethiopia in order to shore up the edifice of the state. The waves of immigrants, moreover, were used as a pretext for territorial expansion at the expense, of course, of native Palestinians who discovered that perhaps thousands of the newcomers, especially those from the Soviet Union, were not Jews at all, but had masqueraded as such in order to seize the chance to escape the harshness of life back home before the collapse of the communist regime in Moscow.
Israeli officials have always been consummately pragmatic in their use of religion for political gain. This applies as much to the question of Jerusalem as it does to Jewish immigration at the expense of the Palestinian right of return. However, to encourage Jewish immigration at this phase in particular will only further obstruct any serious attempt to reach a just solution to the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. More immigration means more land grabbing, more aggressive expansionism and more of the belligerence at which Israel has excelled in recent years. It is for these reasons that, although there has always been a certain level of Jewish immigration to Israel, we are very wary of a possible attempt to promote a major influx.
But there is another significant dimension to Bush's use of the term "Jewish state" at a time when he was supposedly appealing for peaceful coexistence. It is especially peculiar to designate a state in a manner that extols its religious purity, as though it did not contain a significant Muslim and Christian element among its populace. To describe Israel as "Jewish", moreover, harks back to the theocratic state, a phase mankind has supposedly transcended through the transition to the nation state which embraces the principle of diversity in ethnic and religious affiliations.
This makes it all the more invidious that Washington should aid and abet Israel in its ongoing attempts to turn religion to political advantage, particularly in light of the complications already associated with the negotiating process. At the end of the day, the Palestinians may well obtain the bare minimum of their legitimate rights, but the chances of even that will remain remote so long as Israel maintains a policy of dispossessing the Palestinian people of their land, homes, water resources and the fields they have tilled for countless generations.
* The writer is chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the People's Assembly.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 18 - 24 September 2003 (Issue No. 656)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/656/op31.htm