Most Israelis, especially those who are 50 or younger, know little
or noth¬ing about the Palestinian refugee problem. They ignore
the tragedy of los¬ing one's house, one's orchard, one's land,
of being prevented from return¬ing home after the hostilities
have ended. In short, the Palestinians' plight as a people uprooted
from its homeland is unknown to most Israelis, as far away as an
alien star.
Israelis argue that it is mainly the Arabs' fault if the return of
even part of the Palestinian refugees was made impossible: the Arab
and Palestinian leadership refused, systematically, to engage in
peace talks with the State of Israel and the repatriation of
refugees could only have taken place in the framework of peace and
mutual recognition. "Why should we allow the entry into Israel of
Arab refugees who deny our right to national existence and are
openly advocating the destruction of our state?" asked Israeli
offi¬cials in the 1950s and 1960s.
Moreover, it was argued that in view of the arrival of hundreds of
thou¬sands of Jews who had fled the Arab countries, an
"exchange of popula¬tions" had actually taken place. This is
highly questionable. An exchange of population, with all the
hardships and distress such an exodus entails, did take place, for
example, between Turkey and Greece following World War I. Turkey
expelled most of its Greek minority while Greece expelled most of
its Turkish minority. But there was no exchange between Israel and
Iraq, Israel and Egypt or Israel and Morocco. Why? Because the
Palestinian refugees could not and would not "return" to those Arab
countries where neither they nor their ancestors had ever lived and
"replace" the Jews who had departed for Israel.
Israeli officials state: "If the Palestinian leadership of 1948 had
not reject¬ed the U.N. partition plan and had not preferred
war over negotiations, there would have been no refugee problem."
This standard Israeli argu¬ment may be of interest to
historians and political scientists but is irrele¬vant to the
present situation. Peoples have forever been the victims of their
leaders' shortsightedness or folly. This is nothing new.
The Real Problem
One could continue the list of arguments and counter-arguments, to
no avail. The real problem is: what can and should be done, today,
about the plight of the Palestinian refugees?
Most Palestinian leaders acknowledge that to demand the return to
Israel of some 2.5 million people (refugees and their descendants)
is high¬ly impractical. They propose that the Israeli
government recognize the principle of the refugees' right to return
or to compensation (U.N. Resolution 194) but that the
implementation of that right be hammered out in Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations.
Palestinian and Israeli leaders, nowadays, tend to agree that the
two peoples should start afresh from the present geopolitical
reality. For exam¬ple, Jews should stop dreaming of returning
to Hebron, where a Jewish community had lived on and off, for
centuries, until the 1929 massacre; and Palestinians should stop
dreaming of returning to Haifa or Jaffa, where their fathers and
forefathers had lived prior to the 1948 war. Only such a pragmatic
approach may lead to compromise, facilitating the emergence of a
Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.
The envisioned compromise will no doubt be a far cry from "full
jus¬tice," long demanded by the Palestinians. It will also
revolt many Israelis convinced that the land promised by God to
their ancestors belongs exclu¬sively to the Children of
Israel.
What is considered total justice by one side, means total injustice
for the other side and vice versa. Only a compromise, inevitably
resented as unjust by both peoples, can be a correct, "just"
solution, as it will take into account not impossible dreams, but
the minimum vital national interests of both parties to the
dispute.
However, it is not enough to find a practical, mutually acceptable
solu¬tion to the Palestinian refugee problem. There are deep
psychological wounds, which have been inflicted on both nations,
that must be, if not healed (that will take time) at least
recognized as such by both sides. That must be done, if one is to
achieve not only a peace signed by leaders, but reconciliation
between the Palestinian and Israeli man and woman in the street.
There is a need for mutual recognition, not merely of each other's
national rights, but of each other's wounds and sufferings as
well.
The Palestinians, as a nation, became the victims of the
Arab-Israeli war of 1948. They lost much more than homes and
property. They lost a home¬land. And Palestinian national
consciousness - even of those who were not expelled or did not flee
during the war - has been permeated, mold¬ed by this terrible
tragedy.
Two Catastrophes
The great tragedy of the Israeli Jews was the World War II genocide
per¬petrated by Nazi Germany, whose henchmen exterminated one
out of every two European Jews, a third of the Jewish people
worldwide. Following the war, hundreds of thousands of European
Jews had been uprooted, becoming displaced persons herded into
camps in liberated Europe. Most of those homeless Jewish refugees
came to the newborn State of Israel, soon to be joined by hundreds
of thousands of Jews fleeing Iraq, Egypt and Morocco, where they
were looked upon and often treated as potential traitors, following
the state of war proclaimed by all Arabs against the state of the
Jews.
Israeli Jews, even those who did not, themselves, experience Nazi
persecution (those who were born after 1945 as well the Jews who
had come from Arab countries) have been forever marked by the mass
extermination of their European brothers. This unspeakable horror
is imprinted upon the Israelis' national consciousness, just as the
refugees' tragedy is imprinted upon the national consciousness of
the Palestinian people.
In all truth, the Palestinians are not responsible for what Nazi
Germany did to European Jewry, while the Palestinian refugee
problem was the result of the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, which
followed the proclamation of the State of Israel in May 1948.
In a remarkable article, published by the Hebrew daily Ha'aretz
under the title: "Peace between Victims," the Israeli writer Tom
Segev notes: "In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one national
identity is confronted by anoth¬er national identity; one
catastrophe faces another catastrophe. Prior to the ability to live
peacefully side by side, Israelis and Palestinians must
inter¬nalize each other's national tragedy, recognize the role
of these tragedies in shaping the national identity of each
people."
The negotiation of mutually recognized borders is indispensable for
peace; the elaboration of a mutually agreeable solution to the
refugee prob¬lem is indispensable for peace. But accepting
each other, as they are, in flesh and soul, seeing and
internalizing the other's misfortunes and suffer¬ings; showing
empathy for the tragic experiences of the other side, only this
will pave the way to Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.