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Restitution vs. Resettlement
The Palestinians have an excellent case for suing for
reparations - that is, if they were suing the Arab states
whose advancing armies created the vast majority of
Palestinian refugees in 1948. Instead, they are claiming
exorbitant sums from Israel.
Payment for pain the sky is the limit
McMaster University economics Professor Atif Kubursi,
for example, claims that Israel is directly responsible for
compensation for Arab losses in real estate, moveable
property, lost opportunities, and psychological damage
stemming from the 1948 war. In a lengthy study supported by
charts he arrives at the astronomic sum of $281 billion. To
lend credence to his study Kubursi adds detailed lists of
lost Arab livestock and crops.
Should he wish to weigh these small losses against the Palestinian systematic pilfering and plunder of Israeli farmers, Kubursi would soon find his fledgling state well in the red. So, too, if he were to put the 1,284 Palestinian vehicles he claims were lost in 1948 against the 30,000 Israeli vehicles stolen by Palestinians in each of the past several years.
Fellow Arab academics, Yusuf Massad and Rashid Khalidi, use similar tactics in drawing up wildly imaginative figures for Israel's "debt" in terms of today's dollars.
Not only is this preposterous, it is as if Japan were
demanding compensation from the US and the countries it had
attacked early in WWII.
Massad, assistant professor at Columbia proposes the
"German model" of restitution and speaks of $253 billion
(at the rate of 1994) to be paid by Israel.
Khalidi maintains "that the refugee issue is so
central to the national narrative of the Palestinians that
any approach which tries to sweep history under the rug
will fail entirely." He calls on the Israeli government to
pay reparations rather than compensation - because the
former assumes responsibility.
Khalidi's solution covers reparation payments for all
those not allowed to return, and compensation for those who
lost property in 1948.
These sums, for property losses alone, range from $92
billion to $147 billion at 1948 prices. In addition to the
above, he comes up with a reparation figure of $20,000 per
person for an arbitrary 2 million refugees, totalling $40
billion. When it comes to Arab claims, the sky appears to
be the limit.
These Arab claims are disproportionate when compared
with the reparation payments for the devastation of a
continent and the toll of milions of lives, levied by the
Allies on Germany and its partners in the Treaty of
Versailles of 1919. Germany had to pay 132 billion gold
Deutsch Marks; and sums varying from 125 million pounds
sterling to $360 million were imposed on Finland, Bulgaria,
Hungary, Italy and Romania for being on the side of the
aggressor.
Return of the Sheikh?
Certainly there was Palestinian property appropriated,
destroyed, lost, or unclaimed. But, in negotiating this
thorny issue, both sides will have to face a reality much
changed since the events of 1948.
Implementing the "right of return" today would mean
dismantling and destroying the elaborate infrastructure
built over the past 50 years, which includes housing for
millions of Jews - as well as hospitals, universities, and
industrial areas that have benefitted Jew and Arab alike.
Anyone expecting Israel to undo all that is asking the
state to start all over again.
Take, for example, the return to Sheikh Munis, a
village within the boundaries of Tel Aviv. The campus of
the Tel Aviv University now occupies this site. To raze
this institution of higher learning and make the land
available to the families of the refugees of that village
who demand the "right of return" would be unthinkable
today.
That is merely one of innumerable instances throughout
Israel.
Most Palestinians recognize that this is not feasible
and suggest that Israel swap land for those locations that
were abandoned in 1948.
This is obviously an attempt to use demographic
pressure to destroy Israel. The essence of the Zionist idea
was to establish a Jewish state, in which a clear Jewish
majority was guaranteed. The influx of Palestinian
refugees, and the high natural growth of that population,
would guarantee the loss of Israel's Jewish majority
within the space of two generations, at most.
A study by Professor Arnon Soffer of Haifa University
estimates that by 2020 the population covering the area
between the Jordan and the Mediterranean will comprise 42%
Jews and 58% Moslems and others. Professor Sergio de la
Pergula of the Hebrew University forecasts an Arab majority
as early as 2010.
Because of the enmity for Israel on which the
Palestinians have been raised, their entry into Israel en
masse would create an immediate terrorist threat - it would
be an act of national suicide.
Some argue that all the refugees do not really mean to
realize "the right of return" in practice, they just want
the Israeli recognition of it. But the moment Israel
recognizes this "right," it will lose control of its
borders, because the Palestinian refugee will be the one
who decides today or in the future whether to actualize
that "right."
Besides the political motive, the economic incentive
is enough to inspire Palestinian refugees - or other Arabs
claiming to be Palestinian refugees - to flood into Israel.
After all, who wouldn't prefer to live in a country where
the per capita income is 15 times higher than in the Arab
states?
Arab demands - how far and how much
But even such arbitrary use of economic factors and
creative assumptions regarding Arab wealth in Palestine
before Israel's establishment cannot top the gumption of
the Arab states. When, after the breakdown of the Camp
David talks in July 2000, US President Bill Clinton floated
the idea of establishing a reparations fund to be supported
by the US, Europe, and Japan, several Arab states hurried
to demand compensation for the years they have "hosted"
Palestinian refugees.
Lebanon's claim is said to amount to $7 billion.
Jordan's formula is based on an annual payment of $2
billion for "hosting" the largest number of refugees since
1947. Syria is sure to follow suit. These claims are an
ugly exercise, nothing short of extortion.
Going from the ridiculous to the grotesque and
malicious, Palestinian leaders and academics have used the
Holocaust - when not denying it - as a model for the
reparations they hope to receive from Israel. To put
hundreds of thousands of refugees, most of whom fled from
their homes because of the exhortations of their fellow
Arabs, on the scale opposite 6 million slaughtered European
Jews is downright atrocious.
Who owned the land?
Before the termination of the British Mandate in 1948,
8.6% was owned by Jews and 3.3% by Arabs within the Green
Line.
Another 16.9% was owned by those Arabs termed
refugees. Plus 71.2% was State-owned land, mostly barren
state owned land.
-Kubursi, Yussuf Massad Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return, Plato Press, London, 2001
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Arab states hold the key
At the negotiations held in Taba on January 22, 2001,
it was stipulated by the Palestinians that Israel is solely
to blame for the creation of the refugee problem.
They advocated that the "right of return" be
implemented under the supervision of a special
international committee including representatives of Arab
states. (The Palestinians, mindful of the disproportionate
sway of the Arab-Islamic bloc in the UN, have always held
to a strategy of internationalizing the Arab-Israeli
conflict.)
There is an alternative - settlement and freedom in
Arab lands.
Before the Palestinians initiated hostilities in
September 2000, they had attained a reasonable standard of
living that approached or even exceeded that of many
sovereign Arab states, thanks to the Israeli policy of
allowing them freedom of movement and the opportunity to
work in Israel - rights that most Arab states have withheld
from their homeless brethren.
The Palestinians would be best served by absorption
into surrounding Arab countries. They share the same
language, religion and culture. In fact, seventy percent of
Palestinians are third generation offspring of immigration
from these countries due to economic considerations.
However, not only do the 22 Arab countries have no
interest in aiding the Palestinians, they prefer to wield
them as a political weapon against Israel. |
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