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Palestinians Do Not Have a "Right of Return" into Israel under International Law

(Twitter) Dr. Einat Wilf - The events that led to the creation of the original Palestinian refugees have no connection to the existence of Palestinians who claim to be "refugees" today. Tens of millions of people who became refugees throughout the 20th century are not refugees today. No others have insisted on perpetuating their status. The reason why there were Arab refugees at all in 1948 is simple - the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine and Arab armies waged an entirely unnecessary war against the partition of the land into a Jewish and an Arab state. Then as now, they chose to forfeit having their own state if it means that the Jews would have one too. The Palestinians have worked to maintain their inter-generational refugee status for one reason only: to avoid accepting the outcome of the war of 1948 in the form of a Jewish state in any part of the land. Palestinians do not have a "right of return" into the sovereign state of Israel under any kind of international law. There is no precedent of a country being forced to accept a group of people against its will, and Palestinians, despite impressive efforts, cannot make up laws that gives them something that does not exist. The modern "nakba-catastrophe" narrative seeks to erase any memory of Arabs waging an unnecessary war and to turn Palestinians into innocent bystanders rather than people who pursued a clear objective of denying another people a state, and failed. The writer, a former IDF intelligence officer and Knesset member, is the co-author of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (2020).
2023-07-13 00:00:00
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