For Peace Talks To Work, Abbas Must Address The Issue Of JEWISH Refugees

It's time for Abbas to act like a real peace partner. Instead of greedily demanding that concessions be granted him with little or no exertion on his part--it's time for some quid pro quo.

First of all, if Israeli settlements are to be frozen--even in those areas that are destined to be in Israeli hands--the same goes for the Palestinian Authority: all construction in Rawabi should be stopped immediately.

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And secondly, those Arab countries who want to see these peace talks succeed--and support Abbas's core demand for the "right of return" for the descendants of Arabs who fled before the re-establishment of Israel--must also recognize the equal right of return for Jews who were forced to leave Arab lands. At the very least, those Jews and their descendants must be compensated.

Danny Ayalon, Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is himself the son of Algerian refugees who were expelled in 1948, writes I Am A Refugee:

While those Arabs who fled or left Mandatory Palestine and Israel numbered roughly 750,000, there were roughly 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Before the State of Israel was reestablished in 1948, there were almost one million Jews in Arab lands, today there are around 5,000.

An important distinction between the two groups is the fact that many Palestinian Arabs were actively involved in the conflict initiated by the surrounding Arab nations, while Jews from Arab lands were living peacefully, even in a subservient dhimmi status, in their countries of origin for many centuries if not millennia.

In addition, Jewish refugees, as they were more urban and professional, as opposed to the more rural Palestinians, amassed far more property and wealth which they had to leave in their former county.

Financial economists have estimated that, in today’s figures, the total amount of assets lost by the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, including communal property such as schools, synagogues and hospitals, is almost twice that of the assets lost by the Palestinian refugees. Furthermore, one must remember that Israel returned over 90 percent of blocked bank accounts, safe deposit boxes and other items belonging to Palestinian refugees during the 1950s.

More importantly, the unresolved issue of the Jewish refugees who were expelled from Arab lands is no rhetorical abstraction--it is recognized both by the UN and by the US:

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, still seen as the primary legal framework for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict asserts that a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement should necessarily include “a just settlement of the refugee problem.”

No distinction is made between Arab refugees and Jewish refugees.

In fact, one of the leading drafters of the resolution, Justice Arthur Goldberg, the United States’ Chief Delegate to the United Nations, said: “The resolution addresses the objective of ‘achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.’ This language presumably refers both to Arab and Jewish refugees.”

In addition, every peace conference and accord attended or signed between Israel and its Arab neighbors uses the term “refugees” without qualification.

During the famous Camp David discussions in 2000, president Clinton, the facilitator and host of the negotiations said: “There will have to be some sort of international fund set up for the refugees. There is, I think, some interest, interestingly enough, on both sides, in also having a fund which compensates the Israelis who were made refugees by the war, which occurred after the birth of the State of Israel. Israel is full of people, Jewish people, who lived in predominantly Arab countries who came to Israel because they were made refugees in their own land”.

In 2008, the US Congress passed House Resolution 185 granting, for the first time, equal recognition to Jewish refugees, while affirming that the US government will now recognize that all victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict must be treated equally.[emphasis added]

The Arab countries, who back the peace process, must demonstrate their dedication to the resolution of what they believe to be the core issue that is creating instability in the Middle East--by ponying up and helping to address that refugee issue by resolving the Jewish side of the equation.


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