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May 4, 2001/Iyar 11, 5761, Vol. 53, No.31
Columnist's take on 'right of return' is wrong
PAUL ECKSTEIN
Contributing Editor
Jewish News Contributing Editor Paul Eckstein wrote to Arizona Republic columnist O. Richard Pimental in response to Pimental's recent column about the Palestinian claim to a "right of return" to the State of Israel.
I found your April 26 column suggesting that if Israel did not agree to accept several million hostile Palestinians as citizens, it "would continue to all the world to look more like those fake homelands the South Africans carved out for blacks in apartheid's last days," both disappointing and sadly misinformed.
If the failed attempts of the Clinton Administration to dictate a peace in the Middle East demonstrate anything, they demonstrate that the Palestinians do not want peace, they want Israel.
In July of 2000 Israel offered the Palestinians virtually all of the land in the West Bank and Gaza and sovereignty over Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. All Israel wanted was peace and recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the areas not put on the table. By demanding that Israel accept the "return" of the descendants of several million persons who chose to leave when five Arab nations attacked Israel in 1948, Arafat and his ilk have made clear to the world what they have taught their children for 53 years - whatever must be done and however long it takes, the Jewish State of Israel must be eliminated. Just as Cato the Elder concluded every speech with the words: "Carthago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed), so every Palestinian leader who hopes to live another day ends every thought about Israel with the belief that "Israel is but a temporary and illegal occupant of Arab lands."
For a complete discussion of the "right of return," I recommend Efraim Karsh's article entitled "The Palestinians and the 'Right of Return' " in the May 2001 issue of Commentary magazine. In that article Professor Karsh makes clear that the Palestinians' claim to a "right of return" ignores history and international law:
"Indeed, if one were to insist on the applicability of international law, here is one instance where it speaks unequivocally. In 1948-49, the Palestinians and Arab states launched a war of aggression against the Jewish Community and the newly proclaimed state of Israel, in the process driving out from their territories hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews and seizing their worldly goods. Ever since, these same aggressors have been suing to be made whole for the consequences of their own failed aggression. Imagine a defeated Nazi Germany demanding reparations from Britain and the United States, or Iraq demanding compensation for losses it suffered during the 1991 Gulf war. Both legally and morally, the idea is grotesque."
More significantly, to insist that Israel seriously consider the Palestinian demand for the return of those who believe that it is their political and religious right and obligation to liquidate the Jewish State and the Jews who live there is to ask Israel to sign its own death warrant. When you say that you "understand the seeming inconsistency with establishing a Jewish state and then inviting non-Jews to return," I hope you understand the full implications of that inconsistency and are prepared to accept the elimination of Israel. If you are, so be it, but you ought to say it more directly.
Only when the Palestinian leadership and people come to accept the legitimacy of the State of Israel and its right to exist within secure borders will there be peace in the Middle East. Sadly, that day had not yet dawned.
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