Is it reasonable for Palestine to expect all descendants of refugees to be allowed to migrate to Israel?
There are 3 main demands that the Palestinians are making.
1. Return of previous borders.
2. Return of East Jerusalem
3. Migration of all descendants of refugees into Israel.
You may think of 2 as part of 1, but it is being treated by both sides as a separate issue. The first two items are reasonable and doable. The third would put a huge strain on Israel. The migration of a few hundred thousand Arabs would be highly disruptive, to put it mildly. We could go back and forth on the ethics and legality of such a move, but it is just not going to happen. By giving up on the third demand, the Palestinians have a chance of getting their country back. They would definitely gain support in the international community.
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6 Answers
I wish both sides nothing but success in this process and hope that a settlement can be reached for the worlds sake, for Isreal’s sake, and for the palastinians sake. When I heard Netenyahu on meet the press I was quite alarmed to hear that they are on the verge of war if they cannot come to an agreement.
To have the Vatican come out and demand anything in this process is very destructive, but typical. They could have said that “they are praying for a peaceful solution to centuries of conflict between two peoples that have the right to exsist” but that would be Christlike and we wouldn’t want that would we.
My understanding is that most of the refugees wouldn’t actually migrate back, they just want the right. It is, in a sense, symbolic. However, I think a large number would migrate back, which could still cause some disruption.
I don’t see an end in sight to this. Even if the leaders can come to a compromise, a very unlikely scenario, its even less likely the people will accept it.
@thekoukoureport what Netenyahu means by war is extermination, the term war is inappropriate.
It Is not a question of whether Palestinians refugees and descendants have the right to return to Israel, it isn’t for Israel to allow or not allow. And yes it is more than reasonable. These kinds of human right issues are elementary.
I can understand why Israel won’t allow them back but if you are forced to leave your home because of war then when do you cease to have a right to return? The Jewish people kept alive their hopes of a return for 2,000 years after all.
@flutherother is right. If Jews from all over the world have a “right of return” even though they or none of they’re close ancestors never lived in that area of the world, I see no treason that the Palestinians shouldn’t have the same right..
Israel was not created because the world thought that the Jews had a legitimate claim to the land. It was created because, firstly, Zionists legitimately purchased the land piecemeal and, secondly, because the rest of the world felt guilty about the Holocaust. The right of any Jew to migrate to Israel is a national policy that the rest of the world has nothing to say about.
If there is no resolution to the conflict in ,say, five generations, the claim to legitimacy for the right to return is going to start to wear thin.
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