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Refugees In And From Arab Lands

By Bahija Réghaï

08 August, 2008
Countercurrents.org

In the last few months, Irwin Cotler has had a number of commentaries - in Israeli as well as in North American newspapers - about Jewish refugees from the Arab World and has appeared in various fora speaking on the same issue, alongside the US-based coalition Justice for Jews from Arab
Countries. He consistently tries to merge two issues into one: Palestinian refugees, recognized under a special regime – UNRWA - and Jewish refugees from Arab states who come, like all other refugees, under the High Commission for Refugees.

He also negates Israel’s responsibility in the existence of the
Palestinian refugees by assigning blame to the Palestinian and Arab leadership for “rejecting the UN resolution calling for the establishment of both a Jewish state and a Palestinian-Arab state” – an argument that ignores a few hard facts that must be mentioned, since it is premised on events that took place in 1948.

First, the indigenous Palestinian people were not consulted prior to the Balfour Declaration and the partition of their homeland; therefore they accepted neither. Shortly after the Balfour Declaration had been incorporated into the terms of the 1922 Mandate for Palestine, the international lawyer, Quincy Wright, reported that Palestinian Arabs considered the Balfour Declaration "a gross violation of the principle of self-determination proclaimed by the Allies" (John Quigley, The Case for Palestine, 1990).

They considered the partition resolution unjust and illegal, because the UN failed to consult the majority of the Palestinian population, and gave the Jewish minority about 56% of the land, most of which was located at the fertile coastal areas and only 43% to the Palestinian majority, mostly inland. Lilienthal described this as the "original sin" which "underlies the entire Palestine conflict" (Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection II).

Second, consistent with the view that the partition was a political
decision that strayed from the accepted norms and from the Charter of the United Nations, the Arabs requested that the International Court of Justice give its legal opinion on the powers of the General Assembly regarding the partition, and on the international status of Palestine upon the termination of the mandate. The Arab draft resolution was rejected by 20 votes to 20, with 8 abstentions.

Third, even before the British withdrew on May 15, 1948, and before they declared the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, before any possible intervention by Arab states, Zionists had taken and occupied most of the Arab cities in Palestine. By contrast, no city or area allocated to the Jewish state under the partition resolution was taken by Palestinians.

Fourth, getting Jews, both Zionist and Arab, out of Arab countries and into Israel , either voluntarily or by coercion, after the establishmentm of the Jewish state, was a key part of the Zionist agenda. David Ben-Gourion stressed the need “for mass immigration in swift tempo,” stating “We have conquered territories, but without settlements they have no decisive value. Settlement… is the real conquest.” (Quigley) The notion that Jews from Arab states were refugees developed long after that Jewish exodus took place, and only began to take an increasingly prominent place on the Zionist agenda when Israel and its supporters felt threatened by the demand of Palestinians to be allowed to exercise their right of return.

Writing in 1966, Jakob J. Petuchowski commented in Zion Reconsidered : “Obviously, the very existence of the State of Israel had placed Jewish survival in the Arab world in jeopardy. This is the real price paid for the establishment of the Jewish State,” and concluded that “not only is the dissolution of Jewish settlements in the Diaspora something which needs not be regretted, it is actually part of Zionism's 'fulfillment.'… It was the pressure of the Jews themselves...that finally forced the hand of the [Iraqi] authorities.” (Jerusalem Post, July 21, 1964).

Fifth, the international community has recognized its responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, a consequence of the UN partition of Palestine , through Resolution 194(III) which mandates the return of refugees and restitution and compensation for their properties, a resolution which has been reaffirmed more than 100 times.

Sixth, in an article entitled “Hitching a Ride on the Magic Carpet”,
referring to "Operation Magic Carpet" that brought more than 40,000 Yemeni Jews to Israel in 1949, Yehouda Shenhav argues: “Any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is folly in historical and political terms”. To support his argument, he cites Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu who declared in 1975: "We are not refugees.
[Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations".

Shenhav also mentions that “Ran Cohen stated emphatically at a Knesset hearing "I have this to say: I am not a refugee..... I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee." (Ha’aretz, August 15, 2003)

According to Michel Abitbol, “the colonial situation had caused
insuperable rifts among various religious and ethnic groups, as they adopted different strategies vis-à-vis the French. This meant that the rate of the North African Jews’ departure reflected not only the course of Arab-Israeli relations, but the specific vicissitudes of decolonization in their countries of origin.” (Yale French Studies, No. 85, Discourses of Jewish Identity in Twentieth-Century France, 1994, pp. 248-261). By the early Sixties, there were 250,000 North African Jews in France.

As king of Morocco , Hassan II has encouraged a return of Moroccan Jews, either to settle back or visit. Most Moroccan Jews have actually maintained relations with their Moroccan homeland and are still grateful to the late King Mohammed V for his answer to the Nazi commander who demanded a list of the Jews in Morocco: “We have no Jews in Morocco , only Moroccan citizens.”


In Transitional Justice and the Right of Return of the Palestinian
Refugees (2004), Yoav Peled and Nadim N. Rouhana state that all peace efforts have failed to seriously address the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, and without addressing this issue, peace cannot be achieved. They argue that a morally and politically sound basis could and should be established for a workable solution and that such a basis can be provided through "transitional justice," which include two necessary major steps: recognition - historical truth about injustices - and restitution
– which is also a form of recognition.

Israel, shielded by friends such as Cotler, has still to admit
responsibility for the uprooting of the majority of Palestinian society in 1948. There is no question that all refugees, including Jews from Arab countries, must be able to exercise their right to return to their homeland and receive compensation. Support for Jewish rights should not blind one into attempting to diminish or undermine Palestinian rights.

With regard to recognition and restitution: recognition entails revealing the historical truth about the injustices committed and according the victims their rightful dignity and respect as human beings, while restitution is meant to alleviate some of the material deprivation suffered by the victims.

In the Israeli-Palestinian case, recognition by Israel of the right of
return would entail its assumption of responsibility for the uprooting of the majority of Palestinian society in 1948. This would satisfy a central demand that has become a fundamental element in Palestinian national identity. Such recognition would then enable the two parties to enter negotiations over restitution and how best to address the right of return issue.


Bahija Réghaï is a Canadian Human Rights activist based in Ottawa.



 


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