The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace

by Adi Schwartz, Einat Wilf

Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return."

In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group—unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts—has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region.

In The War of Return, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf—both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution—reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees - gave in to Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. They argue that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal or moral basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

A runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.

Genres: Israel, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Jewish, Middle East, Judaism

304 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 28, 2020

About the author

Mr. Adi Schwartz is a researcher, lecturer and author, focusing on issues relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is the author, together with former Member of the Knesset Einat Wilf, of The War of Return, a Hebrew bestseller which will appear in 2020 in English by St. Martin's Press (Macmillan).
Schwartz is an expert on two of his main research topics - the Palestinian refugee problem and the history of Jews from Arab countries (Mizrahim). He is currently writing his PhD dissertation at the department of Political Science in Bar-Ilan University on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has a BA in European History from Tel Aviv University, and an MA (with distinction) in Political Science from Bar-Ilan University. He is a Fellow at the Center for International Communications in Bar-Ilan University.
Mr. Schwartz is a published author in both English and Hebrew. A former staff writer and senior editor for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he has published articles in the Israeli press, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The Forward, The Tablet and The Jewish Chronicle.

Reviews

[Joe Krakovsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The War of Return" is a book I wish I would have had when I was in school and Palestinian terrorists were high-jacking planes and showing how brave they were like throwing a defenseless old Jewish guy in wheel chair off a cruise ship. Many of my pot-smoking friends found sympathy with plight the Palestinian refugees and thought they were oppressed. They imagined the refugees living in squalor in leaky tents with barely enough to eat like starving Somalian refugees. That illusion is still perceived buy many today. In reality many are well off and living in foreign countries, like American women who live with the father of their children but are not married in order to collect government aid for single mothers. 

This book explains how the Palestinian problem came about and why it has never been solved. Though it sounds like it is written from the Israeli viewpoint, the arguments given are fully documented with references and notes. And it is for this reason that it makes for dry reading at times. However, if you want to learn about history, read this for information. If you want entertainment, read Harry Potter.

What the Arab leaders want is for ALL the refugees to have a right to return to the homes they left when Israel was fighting for its existence. The reason being, they want a massive Fifth Column inside Israel for the next war. They do not want to live with the Jews but drive them into the sea. After reading this book I have little sympathy for their cause. As cold hearted as this sounds, read this book and then ask why of all the millions of refugees in the world, why these people are treated so much differently? 

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I hear a solid stance from one side, I usually do my best to find people who think otherwise and ask them for their input. And in this case, after around 10 conversations on this with different Palestinians and pro-Palestinians, I'm forced to conclude that The War of Return has a solid argument. I've yet to hear a strong Palestinian counter-argument to this book's thesis. If anyone has one, please share!

Written by two prominent Israeli leftists, it suggests that the Palestinian right of return is (a) not a real right, (b) a result of Arab states being humiliated cause *the Jews* beat them in wars and (c) an attempt to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. Their conclusion is that UNWRA is prolonging the conflict and at this point, is a Palestinian organization and not an international one. Therefore, it must be reformed or dismantled.

If we accept two states as the solution, someone born in Gaza whose grandparents lived in Haifa is not a refugee- they're living under the sovereignty of their own people and in what will/should/ kind of is their own country. Moreover, an East Jerusalamer can very literally return to live wherever they want in Israel as well as sometimes claim an Israeli citizenship (or Jordanian and Palestinian)- how can that possible count as being a refugee?

(seriously, maybe I need to talk to more nationalistic people cause at this point, every Palestinian I spoke to went "well, then East Jerusalemers aren't refugees")

According to the UNHCR (yeah, I know, ironic), a refugee ceases to be a refugee when they get a new nationality. Or, in other words, how can there be third generation refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria? This is because these countries refuse to give those Palestinians citizenship. It seems like a refugee crisis manufactured in order to put political pressure, using present day suffering in the hopes of future day political resolutions.

The authors claim that Palestinians want to turn the clock around. This is something I've often heard. Palestinians will shrug and say, "the Zionists should just go back from wherever they came from". This, of course, is ridiculous and yet, the romanization of the Ottoman Empire is very prevalent. There's a perception across the Arab world that Israel won't stay here for long, that it's only a matter of time. In this sense, the refugee identity is because the Palestine they seek does not exist- it is a refugee status of a future state.

There were a lot of "aha" moments here. For example, Israelis often claim that the Nakba was a result of the seven invading Arab armies. Palestinian then usually respond that the Nakba started in 1947 while the armies invaded in 1948. However, I hadn't realized that a form of a civil war was waging throughout the entire period. Besides the fact that this is yet another failure of the British Mandate, this pinpoints why the entire period was so chaotic. It was fought by militias. Way before the Arab countries attacked, there was a brutal war and this is somehow ignored by both sides.

I'm also realizing how important it is for Israelis to learn about the Nakba. This might be the most left-wing thing I've ever written here but at the end, it seems the facts are complicated. Currently, Israelis wrap it up by going, "the UN approved the partition, we won the war, case closed" while Palestinians lament over every detail of those years. We, as Israelis, need to come to terms with horrors like the Deir Yassin massacre and all other war crimes and own up to them but we also need to be able to understand better what happened when Jews were kicked out of Jerusalem during 1948. We have an obligation to look into these things, face our fucked up history and demand of our neighbors to face their mistakes as well.

And I never realized that Israel declared independence in the middle of the war. Thanks, Israeli education system for not doing the bare minimum. This makes our pleas for cooperation and peace with the Arab countries so loaded- they knew the country would be attacked and they still did it.

I accepted the Palestinian "Plan Dalet was a plan for ethnic cleansing" argument as but hadn't really bothered to learn what was the background. Plan Dalet was written in 1948. It was written while the civil war was being fought as a back-up plan after Israel's defensive methods didn't work. Plan Dalet was meant to be only towards civilians who fought which again, makes sense when you realize this was fought by militias. Ethnic cleansing is never ever right but the context is relevant and I was missing it. Before plan dalet, there were other plans.

This was also the first time I read the UN resolution 194 fully. And yes, it does say that refugees should be able to return but it also says that free access to religious sites must be protected (ahem, Temple Mount) and that the refugees must be willing to live in peace and with the agreement of the governments. This means a deal between Israel and Palestine. It's not a right that stands up individually, it needs to be settled with Israeli agreement. Alas, cherrypicking of UN resolutions is a hobby of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Resolution 194 was opposed by the Arab countries and by Palestinians because it recognizes Israel. I'll repeat that- resolution 194 was opposed by the Arab countries and by Palestinians. Israel offered right of return to a number of Palestinians back in 1949 and it was rejected by Palestinians (cause again, they refused to acknowledge Israel). This was fascinating to learn.

Israelis often let their hate of the UN blind them. On one hand, I get it because ugh, UN, how many times can you let us down? On the other hand, Palestinians tend to make their case by relying on the UN and there's a lot of room for Israelis to make a similar case or at least point out that the UN resolutions contradict each other nowadays. How can there be a Jewish state *and* right of return?

I was also very interested to learn that the US sided strongly with the Arab countries during the initial parts of the Cold War. They put much pressure on Israel to let the refugees in. Israel agreed for some and indeed, there were refugees who returned. However, as a whole, despite much pressure from the UN and from the US in particular, Israel refused for everyone to return. In the words of Ben Gurion, "We can be crushed but we will not commit suicide". Seeing how Israel early on was capable of simply standing its ground was very interesting- I often feel that currently we lack leaders with a backbone like that, like the days of visionaries like Ben Gurion are gone.

It was also interesting to realize that the US only started to side with Israel due to an Arab refusal. Somewhere, there's an alternative reality where Israel is allied with Russia (which would have made more sense in those socialist days). Golda Meir fucked up in a lot of ways (yay, racism towards Mizrahim) but the way she essentially created Israeli-American cooperation is remarkable.

And this book digs deep into the failures of UNRWA. I'm used to hearing about UNRWA schools harboring weapons even from the last war but I've never considered that it makes little sense for UNRWA to be unable to remove refugees from its list. In this sense, the Palestinian refugee crisis can only grow. The idea that someone like Gigi Hadid can be considered a refugee seems to be an insult to all the actual refugees out there.

The Palestinian response recently when the US claimed it would only fund UNRWA if it would guarantee that money wouldn't go to militias and that the school curriculum would be monitored is also very telling. Like, no one is even denying it- money spent on UNRWA is going into militias. Which means that I can say that by proxy, a UN organization launched rockets at me.

I'll conclude with this: As refugees, the right of return is ridiculous- no refugee has a right to return to their exact home or even area. Rights of return are to the country. If a Palestinian country exists in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem (?), Palestinians must relinquish their rights to Israel. If we go for two states, this must be said as clearly as we oppose settlements in Palestinian land.

All this said, I still support the right of Palestinian descendants but for a different reason. As I see it, Jews are perhaps the last people on earth who can deny other's their ability to come back to what they see as their land. We returned after 2,000 years. Jews weren't refugees for all those 2,000 years and yet, I support our right to return on the basis of "this is where our culture and peoplehood came from, Jews are indigenous to Judea". Where are we from if not here?

In the same way, I recognize that Palestinians come from here as well. And if we came back, why not them? If we revived our culture, built a new country, came back to our heritage, why not them? I cannot deny the Jewish connection to Hebron- how can I deny the Palestinian connection to Haifa?

It is baffling to me that Palestinians opt for the refugee argument and not this one. I mean, who understands yearning for this land better than Jews? Who else really truly understands what it means to be a stranger in the diaspora? How can we support arbitrary borders that tear us apart from our historical land?

To conclude, The War of Return is a pro-Israel book and its biases are clear. I'm not a fan of all of the language used but at the same time, the argument here is a strong one. I recommend reading this, especially if you lean more towards the Palestinian side. I felt that this was pretty well researched.

What I'm Taking With Me
- In some ways, knowing Jews did it makes it inspiring for Palestinians. I mean, we did here something that no other diasporic people have done to this extent. We came back after being expelled. We kicked out two empires (with lots of help and good historic timing). And if we did it, I do not blame any Palestinian that yearns to do the same. As Hertzl said, if you will it, it is no dream.

- I keep saying that I need to stop focusing on ip but ack, that's probably never going to happen, like literally nothing in this world is as interesting as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

- Although fuck, it kind of sucks to know that I'm probably not going to be alive to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolved. Like, that's pessimistic but I had a pretty depressing conversation with a friend earlier where I realized that all we do is ready the ground, we are trying to push reality to an improved situation but that's it. We simply work to make things easier for the future and ack, sometimes I wish I could just grab the entire conflict with my two hands and mold it.

-------------------------
There are 2 morally coherent stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and neither one is very popular:

1. the "fuck the Europeans and their international law" approach: The Palestinians' refusal of the 1948 partition plan was justified as the UN doesn't have legitimacy to split up borders without the people's consent. Therefore, Israel-Palestine should be one piece of land. Settlements are completely just since their illegal status is based on the assumption that 1967 borders are Israel's borders and well, Israel and Palestine are from the river to the sea. Any Palestinian and Israeli should be able to live wherever they want, including right of return. The next step is to find a political system that allows Israelis and Palestinians self determination and self governance without splitting up the land (federation!!).

2. the "two states" approach: Palestine's borders are the 1967 borders. No Palestinian has any right to return to anywhere in Israel's borders while no Israeli has a right to live within Palestine's borders (as resolution 194 says, living in peace). We must fight settlements and the right of return, as both hurt Israeli and Palestinian territorial and demographic rights. Both nations must recognize each other's borders- this means that Palestinian organizations that do not recognize 1967 Israel as a Jewish country (as the UN promised) are equally a threat as Israeli organizations that do not recognize 1967 Palestine. BDS, for example, is a threat to the two state solution.

I lean towards (1) because neither Israelis nor Palestinians are actually that invested in the two state solution (and did you see how ugly the map looks?) but I'm very tired of the lack of consistency. You can't quote international law but only when it suits you.

And no, one state of Israel or of Palestine isn't a solution because self determination is pretty much a basic principle in an ethnic-national conflict. I don't see a one state happening without a huge war and/or ethnic cleansing.

Review to come, hopefully soon

[Arthur Read · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lies, Damn Lies, and This Book

The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as Displaced Persons as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.

— President Harry S. Truman, July 1947

For 2,000 years [the Jews] have claimed that might conveys no right…Driven from country to country as refugees, they have suffered everywhere from the persecution of military powers, and have everywhere denounced their persecutors and looked forward to an age when justice will replace armed power. But now, placed for the first time in a position to persecute others, they suddenly announce that military conquest is the true basis for settlement between nations.

— John Bagot Glubb, quoted in Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians by Rosemarie M. Esber (2008)

Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf's The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace is a truly terrible work, one of the very worst ever written about the Israel/Palestine conflict — which, considering the ocean of sewage that has been published on this topic, is a remarkable achievement. To refute all the historic distortions, outright falsehoods, and vile injustices proposed in here would be a Herculean undertaking.

I took extensive notes while reading and could conceivably post a running commentary which overturns in granular detail every dishonesty contained within - but a task of that magnitude would quickly balloon into an unwieldy monstrosity many times the length of this book.

However, refuting the book's central thesis is easy enough.

The authors contend that rather than any trivialities such as specific negotiated borders, the Palestinian demand to return to their ancestral homes and properties and/or receive recompense for their farmlands, businesses, and personal belongings that were stolen or destroyed by the squatters who call themselves "Israelis" (after their non-Jewish neighbors were conveniently driven out through terrorism and resultingly reduced to homeless misery overnight) is the primary issue obstructing a peace settlement in the Middle East.

This is correct enough.

After all, there is a much stronger ethical, legal, and moral case for Palestinians returning to their violently usurped country than there is for the Jewish communal consensus that an endless number of random Third Worlders be imported into America and Europe to live on taxpayer-funded welfare and social services simply because they're poor, or for reasons which reach the height of absurdity such as barely perceptible changes in the weather.

But they also go further and astonishingly dispute that the Palestinians possess any such right at all, because they started the 1948 war (untrue), because of tendentious legalistic misreadings of various United Nations resolutions such as 194, and other similar nonsense as justification.

This pernicious idea accordingly springs from their ludicrous assertion that Zionist ideology did not carry with it any inherent proclivity for expelling the Arabs of Palestine. They write:

Other statements by Yishuv leaders also show that when the Israeli leadership accepted partition, it had no advance plans to expel the Arabs from Israel, and that were it not for the Arab rejection of partition and the war they waged to prevent it, they could all have remained in their homes. The Palestinians would later argue that Zionism was by its nature a movement geared toward population transfer and that it could not have achieved its objectives without expelling the Arabs from Palestine. In this thesis, the war was just an excuse: the expulsion would have happened anyway.

Further buttressing this, one of the authors, Einat Wilf, appeared on a Jewish podcast to discuss the book. In response to her interlocutor's question on whether the inextinguishable and intergenerational Palestinian demand to return to their homes mirrors the Jewish longing of "return to Zion" nursed over the last two millennia (around the 42:00 minute mark), she claims:

"So here is where the intent is key. Zionism - and you can blame the early Zionists for being naive - but Zionism was never about dispossessing another people. As much as the Palestinians want to establish this claim, they cannot, because it's very clear: until the Palestinians chose to wage war against partition, no one was dispossessed; if anything, quite the contrary. Zionism meant to build, meant to construct, and in the worldview certainly of Herzl and others, there was room for everyone … Zionism was never about dispossessing the Arabs of the land."

THIS IS FALSE!!!

There is a veritable mountain of evidence in this day and age decisively proving the authors wrong, that dispossession was the foundational premise of Zionism. Zionist leaders deliberately disregarded the majority Arab population of Palestine from inception, either treating them as of no consequence or as a collective nuisance to be removed at the first opportunity.

To begin, Stephen Sniegoski, PhD, gives us a helpful summary in his February 2003 article "The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel":

Despite public rhetoric to the contrary, the idea of expelling (or, in the accepted euphemism, "transferring") the indigenous Palestinian population was an integral part of the Zionist effort to found a Jewish national state in Palestine. Historian Tom Segev writes:

The idea of transfer had accompanied the Zionist movement from its very beginnings, first appearing in Theodore Herzl's diary. In practice, the Zionists began executing a mini-transfer from the time they began purchasing the land and evacuating the Arab tenants… "Disappearing" the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence… With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced transfer — or its morality.

However, Segev continues, the Zionist leaders learned not to publicly proclaim their plan of mass expulsion because "this would cause the Zionists to lose the world's sympathy."[4]

The key was to find an opportune time to initiate the expulsion so it would not incur the world's condemnation. In the late 1930s, David Ben-Gurion wrote: "What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out — a whole world is lost."[5]

The "revolutionary times" would come with the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, when the Zionists were able to expel 750,000 Palestinians (more than 80 percent of the indigenous population), and thus achieve an overwhelmingly Jewish state, though its area did not include the entirety of Palestine, or the "Land of Israel," which Zionist leaders thought necessary for a viable state.

Now I will present but 5 contemporary quotes that will be more than enough to firmly convince the average person and consign this reprehensible polemic to the trash heap where it belongs:

1.) The King-Crane Commission of 1919, established following the Paris Peace Conference that came after the Great War and tasked with the mission of ascertaining how the peoples of the former Ottoman Empire wished to be governed, alarmingly concluded:

For "a national home for the Jewish people" [as written in the Balfour Declaration] is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's conference with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase.

2.) Nur Masalha writes in his sharply focused 1992 masterpiece Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948:

Already at the time of the Balfour Declaration, apprehensions concerning the fate of the "non-Jewish communities" had been voiced in British establishment circles. Edwin Montagu, a Jewish cabinet minister at the India Office, had expressed in 1917 his belief that the Zionist drive to create a Jewish state in Palestine would end by "driving out the present inhabitants." Even the enthusiastically pro-Zionist Winston Churchill had written in his review of Palestinian affairs dated 25 October 1919 that "there are the Jews, whom we are pledged to introduce into Palestine, and who take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience."

3.) Luigi Barlassina, the Vatican's pugnacious Latin Patriarch in Palestine, saw forced expulsion looming and loudly tried alerting anyone who'd listen about the danger on the horizon. The Vatican and Zionism: Conflict in the Holy Land, 1895-1925 by Sergio I. Minerbi (1990) elaborates:

At the end of April 1922, a few days after Weizmann's visit, Barlassina arrived in Rome. The Osservatore Romano published excerpts from the lecture he delivered there:

Having entered a truly active phase following the well-known Balfour Declaration, Zionism intends, in fact, gradually to expel the present inhabitants of Palestine, in order to seize the entire country and to erect on it the Zionist kingdom.

De Salis sent a report about Barlassina's lecture to Foreign Secretary Curzon and attached a clipping from L'Italie that stated that for an hour and a quarter Barlassina explained, complete with facts and figures, the acts of dispossession, the wrecking of morality, and the de-Catholicization being carried out by the Zionists in Palestine. The newspaper reported Barlassina as saying:

The avowed aim of Zionism is the resettlement of the Jewish people on the land of its forefathers and the expulsion of all other nationalities. Under the pretext of establishing a Jewish national home, Zionism is actually seeking to take the conquest of Palestine. With the help of the British authorities—Sir Herbert Samuel, the high commissioner, and almost all the high officials are active Zionists—the Zionist leaders are in effect the lords of Palestine … The Zionists intend to gradually dislodge the Arabs and the Christians and to settle in their place.

4.) In her brief but extraordinarily important 1973 book Palestine Papers, 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict, Doreen Ingrams uncovers this nugget among many:

Allenby had a new Chief Political Officer, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, appointed in July 1919. He had been with the British Delegation in Paris, and had served in the office of the Director of Military Intelligence. Weizmann described him as "an ardent Zionist … And that not merely in words. Whenever he can perform a service for the Jews or Palestine he will go out of his way to do so".

Meinertzhagen reported on the situation in Palestine to Curzon, who was now Foreign Secretary, on 31 March 1920:

[…]

I should like here to point out, that during a prolonged tour I recently made in Palestine, I was convinced that only one motive prompts anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine…The knowledge that the eventual dispossession of Arabs by Jews in Palestine is inevitable during the course of time, and that Jewish immigration spells an eventual Jewish state not only in Palestine but in Syria, very naturally frightens the Arab. I cannot conceal from myself that Arab fears regarding Zionism are not groundless - though Zionism at present contemplates nothing more than being allowed to found a National Home for Jews in Palestine. The very factors which constitute that Home and the methods which H.M.G. will be compelled to grant for its successful establishment, can only lead to predominant Jewish influence and possession in Palestine if not throughout the Near East.

5.) In his detailed 1921 article "Will Jewish Zionism Bring Armageddon?" published in the Dearborn Independent, Henry Ford (yes, THAT Henry Ford) acidly observed:

The mark of disorder perpetrated by the Jews is all over the place, the "persecuted" turned persecutor, and lest this should be charged to the general wildness of the people in Palestine let it be said that the rioters were only expressing in deeds what cultivated American and English Jews have expressed in words—namely, that the lawful inhabitants of the land ought to be driven out, in spite of governmental promises to the contrary

***

Mind you, the above quotes are just the tip of the iceberg that I recalled off the top of my head. If I actually spent a little time perusing the abundance of extant material on the subject — this is, after all, one of the most widely studied conflicts in human history, with a vast body of documentation — I could easily triple the number of examples without difficulty.

Clairvoyance or Common Sense?

Were all these people gifted with a supernatural ability to predict the future with uncanny accuracy? Or were they simply deducing logically from the Zionist program and what many Zionist leaders were barely making an effort to conceal? The answer is, of course, the latter.

As Jewish writer Peter Beinart admirably admits in his new book:

The harsh truth is that Zionist forces had to expel large numbers of Palestinians in order to create a Jewish-majority state. The prewar Palestinian population was simply too large. In November 1947, when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab countries, Jews were only one-third of the population. Thus, even the state earmarked for Jews—which would have encompassed 55 percent of Mandatory Palestine—would have been almost half Palestinian. Since Jews lived largely in urban areas, Palestinians also owned 80 percent of the Jewish state's arable land. Zionist leaders knew that a country in which Palestinians were almost half the population and possessed most of the territory wouldn't constitute a genuine Jewish state. Jews would not rule. A month after the UN vote, Ben-Gurion told members of his political party, "Only a state with at least 80 percent Jews is a viable and stable state." So, while Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership—unlike their Palestinian and Arab counterparts—accepted the UN partition plan, they also began expelling Palestinians because that was the only way to create a large Jewish majority that occupied most of the land.

On this point, Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who gained fame for his research into the Palestinian exodus, has been unusually frank. "Ben-Gurion was a transferist," Morris told the Israeli journalist Ari Shavit in a 2004 interview. "He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst." Perhaps taken aback by Morris's directness, Shavit observed, "I don't hear you condemning him." Indeed, Morris was not. "Ben-Gurion was right," Morris continued. "If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade."

Summing Up

In his excellent investigation The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland, Michael Palumbo correctly assesses that the expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs was "the fulfillment of the destiny that was implicit in Zionism from the very beginning."

And there you have the entire ugly story.

POSTSCRIPT

There is one last darkly amusing thing I would like to draw your attention to.

Palestine's three major coastal cities of Acre, Haifa, and Jaffa had been ethnically cleansed of their Arab-majority residents well before the Zionist declaration of a Jewish state on May 14, 1948. Acts of aggression like these were followed by some neighboring Arab states reluctantly declaring war in an attempt to further prevent the depopulation of Palestine.

The authors repeatedly express how scandalized they are that the rightful heirs of the residences and property stolen from them by their covetous Jewish neighbors still have the insolent demand to return home, because those cities are now within the territory of "Israel" proper:

The [Shatila] camp was filled with children of refugees just like him, who twenty years after the war still claimed that they came from Acre, Haifa, or Tiberias, even though they were born in Lebanon.

[…]

Farouk Kaddoumi, head of the PLO's political department, said of the Reagan Plan in the early 1980s: "It restricts the refugees' right of return to the West Bank and Gaza and not their original homes of Jaffa, Haifa, and Safed. Our right applies beyond the West Bank." Arafat himself announced clearly in 1980: "When we speak of the Palestinians's return, we want to say: Acre before Gaza, Beersheba before Hebron. We recognize one thing, namely that the Palestinian flag will fly over Jaffa."

[…]

Palestinians would probably continue dreaming of having Jaffa and Haifa, just as Jews would continue dreaming of having Hebron and Judea—but both these dreams would remain precisely that.

Belazel Smotrich, the latest despicable scumbag to become a rising star in Israeli politics, recently said in a moment of candor during a television interview:

"I heard [the Spanish foreign minister] say you can't do this to people whose homeland is Gaza. For 75% of Gaza's population, it's not their homeland. Do you know what their homeland is? Haifa, Tiberias, Acre, Jaffa. This is a refugee population that has been there since 1948."

I rest my case.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wilf and Schwartz have produced an insightful, well-reasoned, and meticulously and extensively documented treatise zeroing in on one of the stumbling blocks to a permanent peace in the Middle East, the idea that by creating a permanent so-called refugee population, the Arabs could lay claim to the entirety of all of the land west of the Jordan River. The Arab Muslims who claimed the entirety of the former Ottoman Empire sought to extinguish a national liberation movement by a war that they lost in a rather humiliating defeat. When people fled the war as people are often bound to do, the Arab states kept them stateless in camps as a Fifth column of hostility to eventually overrun the newly liberated land. These camps were precisely designed and crafted as an alternative to continuing war on the battlefield.

As the authors explain, then began a great fraud, the endless lists of s0-called refugees, which included anyone who signed their names, be they actual refugees, seasonal agricultural workers, economic migrants who had only lived in the land west of the river for a year or two, or economically deprived individuals who signed up for the welfare benefits offered by the camps. And then, they were classified as no refugees anywhere else ever has been: by offering permanent refugee status to their descendants (even those who became citizens of Jordan and Syria) in an effort to continue the war without end. The authors then trace how the camps under the auspices of the UN became islands fomenting violent terrorism through educational indoctrination as the PLO with the UN's complicit support began a campaign of the most savage and brutal terror at airports, on airlines, at Entebee, and at the Munich Olympics.

Finally, the authors explain how the existence of the so-called refugees (most of whom would not qualify as refugees under any but the most unique definitions) have prevented the Oslo Accords from meaning anything because the goal of Arafat and Abbas has always been to use them to flood Israel and overwhelm it with hostile forces. Indeed, even in areas that the PA and Hamas has autonomy, they have maintained the camps to use to invade Israel with. The conclusion that the authors draw is that there can be no permanent peace unless the PA and Hamas concede that there can be no resettlement of millions of hostile Arabs into Israel proper.

Truly, a well-written book on a difficult and controversial subject.

[Sam Bahour · Rating 1 out of 5]

Palestinian refugees are Israel’s Achilles’ heel

Book Review of The War of Return by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf

What do you get when a disillusioned Israeli politician from the political “Left” links up with a veteran Israeli journalist, also from the political “Left,” to take on the issue of Palestinian refugees, a key element for Middle East peace? Answer: Israeli Hasbara (public diplomacy propaganda) on steroids, with about one-third more words than necessary.

This was my immediate reaction while reading the newly released book The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf. I try to not judge a book by its cover, but its back cover is a different story. Having now read the book, I can confidently claim that this book can be judged by its three back cover endorsements.

The first endorsement is by Benjamin Shapiro, an American conservative political commentator and former Breitbart News editor who penned as far back as in 2003 that “Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution.” (Transfer is not a dirty word, Townhall.com).

The second is by Yossi Klein Halevi, an American-born Israeli author and journalist who panders to Western ears. Mr. Halevi is a conniving writer who excels in camouflaging Israel’s military occupation and his status as a settler living in an illegal settlement in Jerusalem.

The third endorsement comes from none other than Benny Morris. In the article “Israeli historian Benny Morris doubles down on his advocacy for ethnic cleansing,” Jonathan Ofir writes that “the Israeli historian who has documented Israeli-Palestinian history so meticulously, is again bemoaning that a full ethnic cleansing was not completed in 1948.” (Mondoweiss, Jan. 18, 2019).

Run forward

The book is a long-winded frontal attack on Palestinian refugees and reads more as a commissioned assignment from the Hasbara-hub called the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs rather than a truly deep analysis of the issue of Palestinian refugees. If one removes the one-third of the book that is repetitive and honking the state horn, you are left with a third of extremely selective references and statements that attempt to build a seemingly non-controversial case against Palestinian refugees right to return and the international agency overseeing them. The last third comprises of rather useful facts and figures, along with an extensive bibliography that encompasses a chunk of the body of knowledge on the subject matter.

What is missing from the book is as important as what is in it. The missing third is all the other references that Palestinians’ Right of Return is based on, above and beyond the single one, UN General Assembly 194, that the authors pin their entire argument around. More on this below.

The book was originally written in Hebrew. The English publisher’s website notes that the book was a “runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.” I am not sure how many sparks it will produce, but I am happy that it allows us to put Palestinian refugees, and how they became refugees, in the spotlight again.

The book dwells on the assumption that Israel accepted the UN Partition Plan, General Assembly Resolution 181, and the Arabs did not. So now, in their analysis, anything goes by Israel, and Palestinians need to just get over it. The authors use their agenda-based wordsmithing by writing that “…partition would have meant that out of the 11.5 million square kilometers encompassed by Arab states at the time, many of which were also set in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, some fifteen thousand square kilometers (one one-thousandth) would be allocated to the Jewish people…”. How convenient it must be to compare apples with oranges, lumping all Arab states in one bucket, and comparing it to a single intended “state” that became Israel.

There is no space here to do justice to why Arabs rightly said “No” in 1947 but an excellent write up on the issue may be found here by the American researcher Natasha Gill, The Original “No”: Why the Arabs Rejected Zionism, and Why It Matters (Middle East Policy Council).

Whereas the authors make a major deal about Arab rejection of General Assembly Resolution 181, treating it as a sacred text, they dismiss another General Assembly Resolution, 194, that deals with the Right of Return, making the case that it was merely a General Assembly Resolution that was non-binding. On one page, a General Assembly resolution is a justification for aggression and on another, it has zero relevance because it is a General Assembly resolution.

Silver bullet

The co-authors claim to have discovered the silver bullet to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to dismantle the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UN agency created in December 1949 to support the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees, and make it clear to the Palestinians, once and for all, that a return of refugees back to Israel (whatever the boundaries the authors imply) will never happen.

From the outset, it is already clear that the authors have a very political agenda.

Adi Schwartz is a Tel Aviv-based independent freelance journalist with over a decade of experience in leading Israeli and international media outlets. He is a former staff writer for Israeli English newspaper Haaretz and worked for Israel Hayom and is now finishing his doctorate in conflict resolution at Bar-Ilan University.

Einat Wilf is a Jerusalem-born, Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the Labor Party (2010–2011) and Independence Party (2011–2013). She completed her conscription as an Intelligence Officer in the infamous Unit 8200 with the rank of Lieutenant. She then went to Harvard University, receiving a BA in government and fine arts, before earning an MBA from INSEAD in France, and subsequently a Ph.D. in political science at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. She served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres and was a strategic consultant with McKinsey & Company. She wrote in an article titled “Zionism: The Only Way Forward” (The Daily Beast, July 13, 2017) that “I am a Zionist because I am an atheist and a Jew.”

Like so many other self-proclaimed Zionists, the authors seem to totally absolve this ideology from any historic responsibility for planning and executing a strategy that was aware well in advance that dispossessing Palestinians from the land was the byproduct of their premeditated intentions and actions.

Having just read and reviewed two relative books on the matter, I would encourage the authors to become better grounded in their own ideology’s history by reading the works of three professional historians and scholars, all of which happen to be Jewish and two Israeli: What is Modern Israel? by Yakov M. Rabkin, Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron by Israeli professor Menachem Klein, and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe.

In retrospect, the book’s foreword also gave away its Hasbara slant. In the first paragraph the authors write, “Despite the horrific suicide attacks perpetrated by Palestinians on Israeli civilians following the signing of Oslo, and the assassination of Rabin, Israelis kept hoping for peace.” Note how attacks are attributed specifically to all Palestinians, whereas the assassination of a sitting Israeli prime minister is merely a tacked-on phrase, generic at best, assumed undertaken by Palestinians at worst. The authors gave themselves away early on by being unable to identify the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, a Jewish Israeli ultranationalist named Yigal Amir and a product of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, the same Israeli educational institution as one of the authors attends.

Ta-da

On the subject of Palestinian refugees, the authors expose the equivalent of discovering in the year 2020 that the sun rises from the east, by acknowledging that the Palestinians are serious about the right of return for their refugees. “What we discovered actually surprised us both. While hiding in plain sight for decades, one of the core issues in the conflict had been almost totally absent from the consciousness of both Israelis and peace-makers around the world.” They go on, “The issue of Palestinian refugees, and the Arab and Palestinian demand that those refugees be allowed to exercise what they call a “right of return,” attracts scant attention.” Can they be serious? The entire Palestinian national liberation movement (PLO) started as a movement of refugees, long before the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

Couching text in this biased way is not new; it is the hallmark of Israeli Hasbara, much of which has been taken for granted by a well-meaning Jewish Diaspora who would be unable to fathom knowing Israel as it truly is. Israelis themselves have been indoctrinated since childhood to not see the Other as explained in this recent Haaretz article, “In Israel, Indoctrination Starts in Kindergarten” by Noa Limone (Haaretz, Jan. 26, 2020).

Another passage that made this reading a false-start was, “The Palestinian conception of themselves as ‘refugees from Palestine,’ and their demand to exercise a so-called right of return, reflect the Palestinians’ most profound beliefs about their relationship with the land and their willingness or lack thereof to share any part of it with Jews.” I ask if Palestinians are not refugees from “Palestine,” then where were they living before Israel was established, the moon!? And why this obsession with making the repeated argument throughout the book that Palestinians have a grudge against anything Jewish. Nothing could be further from the truth. The political ideology of Zionism, on the other hand, is the ultimate hurdle Israelis must overcome to have any chance of being accepted in the region. Again, I encourage the authors to read the books I noted above.

The book uses a fancy referencing ploy. It extensively footnotes passages using Palestinian sources but being extremely selective and ignoring these sources’ substantive arguments and instead tries to give the impression that even the Palestinians are clear in supporting the authors’ arguments, even if unknowingly. One of these references is to Jaber Suleiman, a Palestinian expert on Refugee Studies, UNRWA, and Protection of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons. Jaber lives in Sidon, in southern Lebanon and happens to be a friend and a colleague. A simple Google search would have given the authors access to Suleiman’s detailed research about Palestinian refugees and their rights.

The more interesting blind spot of the book is its hyperfocus on a single paragraph (№11) of a single UN General Assembly resolution from 1948 (№194) which calls for the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees. The authors want the reader to believe that this is the only reference that is relevant here and make the case that the resolution is flawed, thus removing any “Right” of Palestinian refugees to return home. Any mention of other parts of international law are made only in passing and with the sole goal of absolving Israel from any responsibility whatsoever, be it in creating, even partially, the refugee crisis, or refusing to allow Palestinian refugees to return after the establishment of Israel and the passing of 72 years.

Interestingly, and in perfect style, the authors use an authoritative Palestinian reference multiple times, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Negotiation Affairs Department (NAD). Could it be the authors missed this department’s website? I highly doubt it. NAD prominently lists on their website the text of paragraph 11 of Resolution 194, but it also lists much more on the same page. It states:

“The right of return for our refugees also is well-established under other international law, including:

· The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted in 1948): “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” (Art. 13(2)).

· The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country” (Art. 12(4)).

· The UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons: “All Refugees and displaced persons have the right to voluntarily return to their former homes, lands or places of habitual residence, in safety and dignity” (Art. 10.1)… “Refugees and displaced persons should be able to effectively pursue durable solutions to displacement other than return, if they so wish, without prejudicing their right to the restitution of their housing, land and property” (Art. 10.3).”

Try to find a detailed analysis of these other parts of international law in the book and you will come up empty-handed. They are all brushed away as irrelevant, as is common sense and decency.
www.bdsmovement.net

The book totally ignores the powerhouse Palestinian civil society movement that brought the rights of Palestinian refugees front and center, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement (BDS). The BDS movement launched in 2005 after the clear failure of the Oslo process. It has globally raised three crystal clear demands from Israel:

“The Palestinian BDS call urges nonviolent pressure on Israel until it complies with international law by meeting three demands:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194 [emphasis added]”

I guess noting number three of these demands and acknowledging the resounding success the BDS movement has had worldwide is too inconvenient of a fact, so the authors simply ignored it. They were more interested in making the case that the Palestinians are somehow hiding their real interest in their refugees returning to their homes.

Timing is also used in a premeditated fashion. The authors take statements made in the 1950s, for example, and speak of them in the context of today. A point in case is a single quote by Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi. Using a quote from Khalidi, the authors make another discovery of the sun, “This [Khalidi] admission is the heart of the matter: instead of being a legal or humanitarian issue, then and now, the refugee problem is first and foremost a political problem, reflecting the desire to dominate the entire land.” A “political problem!” How novel. Could it be Palestinians have a separate UN agency for their refugees because this body of refugees was a “politically” motivated one by a direct act of the UN itself, and not one that emerged in the course of a natural disaster or even war?

Those darn facts

At points, it does seem that the authors are trying the best they can to humanize their arguments, such as when they write, “In theory, of course, the Palestinians’ right to self- determination is entirely compatible with the parallel right of the Jewish people to self- determination.” But they can only humanize Palestinians if it is tucked under a false symmetry with the “Jewish people.” The fact of the matter is that there is no symmetry, not in “self-determination” nor in trying to conflate Judaism with Zionism. That noted, the Palestinians formally recognized the State of Israel, but even that major Palestinian political concession is brushed aside by the authors as not being genuine.

Indeed, you will not find anything in this book about Israeli actions over the past seven decades. Nothing about the Palestinian villages of Ikrit and Biram inside of Israel, where internally displaced Palestinians are refused the right to return even after Israel’s High Court ruled that they have the right to. Nothing about the Israeli settlement enterprise which eats away at the land and resources earmarked for Palestine, one of the locations that the authors themselves hope many Palestinian refugees would return to instead of Israel. Nothing about the building of an illegal Separation Wall effectively wiping away the Green Line. Nothing about past and present acts of unilateral annexation by Israel, making the two-state solution more difficult by the hour, and this from authors who claim to be supporters of a two-state solution. All of Israel’s strategic mishaps are conveniently regulated to unavoidable errors in the “heat of the battle,” a battle it seems that only one side was allowed to feel the “heat” and make mistakes.

However, I must give credit to the authors for revealing tidbits of interesting research about the course of events over the past seven decades, missteps in Palestinian strategies, and flaws in UNRWA. The latter is something that has been very known and public for many years and is under continuous structural repair without trying to use UNRWA or Palestinian refugees as pawns in some sick geopolitical game.

All in all, this book serves as a blueprint for actions already started by the Trump Administration to dismantle UNRWA, starting with strangulating it financially. Although the book and Trump (actually the U.S.) aim for the same goal, the authors make clear that how the Trump Administration is operating is “a tragically lost opportunity.” Thus, they compete in who has the “far better and more effective policies that would dismantle UNRWA.”

Upon further reflection on this book, I feel it is the equivalent of two defense lawyers making an argument for the dismissal of the case of a cold-blooded murderer, a person who took

My review on Medium:

https://medium.com/@sbahour/palestini...

[Archer Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

The central argument for The War of Return is that the proliferation of the idea of the “Right to Return” (R2R) has created significant roadblocks in the course of the peace process for Israel/Palestine. Schwartz and Wilf’s premise stands on a global recognition of Israel as a Jewish state with an inalienable right to exist. The creation of Israel is justified on all accounts without any discussion from the writers of opposition to this idea (outside of calling it anti-Semitic.)

While the book covers some of the Palestinian plight during the 47-48 Nakba, most of the focus from this war is on atrocities committed by Arab states and Palestinian actors on Israeli citizens. While these did happen and should be condemned, to write of the time of the Nakba as a catastrophe created by Arab opposition is heinous. “Nothing made war and the loss of life and creation of refugees necessary other than the Arabs' opposition to the partition plan and aspirations of Jewish independence.” A two state solution is already a compromise, the creation of Israel in the Levant was and is already a major imposition on Palestine and Palestinians. Rejecting the imposition is the first reaction, two states is compromise.

In the argument quoted above, the partition plan has always been and always will be. It comes from the United Nations and so is fully legitimate. There is no discussion of the falsehood “A land without a people for a people without a land” or the historical existence of the region as Palestine. Israel is plopped into the Levant and so stands as a bulwark against barbarity, no ifs, ands, or buts. An international organization, pre-global decolonization efforts, split this land because of Britain’s colonial hold on the area.

The creation of states from colonial holdings was not new; all of Africa was split according to those holdings. If the previous argument is to hold then all those that died under King Leopold in the Congo are dead because of anti-colonial sentiment. But no one believes that to be true. The occupying Belgian force placed itself into the Congo and then through international law legitimated their hold on the area.

In discussions of Israeli actions during the Nakba there is no light shone on the massacres and atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers and settlers alike. The destruction of Palestinian villages is justified because of resistance, in whole or in part of the population, to Jewish rule coming from the villages. Palestinians were not expelled in the verbiage of this book, they simply left. Jewish citizens of Arab countries were expelled in the verbiage of this book. The Palestinians who did leave their homes during the Nakba are described as surprising and, in the opinion of one Israeli official cited in the book, likely the result of an Arab collusion to spark outrage about the exiled Palestinians. This claim is not substantiated anywhere else in the text.

The claim for a free Palestine, according to the authors, was one born out of UNRWA. The claim is made that UNRWA is to Palestine what the Jewish Agency for Israel was to Israel; a founding organization. The long-standing mission of UNRWA is a roadblock to peace and teaches the Palestinians to hope and dream of a home in Palestine. “The Palestinians were never encouraged to come to terms with reality and to move on with their lives.” The stories that Palestinian children have told of their parents’ and grandparents’ Nakba experiences are used as evidence that these children are radicalized into a dangerous hope for return to Palestine. To argue that Palestinian identity did not exist before UNRWA is an erasure of the land of Palestine which has been recognized, even when held in occupation, since the 5th century BCE.

On top of that claim, the authors also would like to take another look at Palestinians being given refugee status, especially the transfer of refugee status through generations. They argue that many Palestinians are settled in other countries or so well-established in their camps/villages that they should no longer gain the title of refugee. The authors argue that there are, at most 100,000 Palestinians, who gained refugee status before 1950 and so, should be the last ones to get it. The title of refugee only plays into Arab plans to foment empathy from the West for the plight of Palestinians. I would argue that anyone living under an apartheid regime like that of Israel, as well as those who still wish to have a home in a free Palestine are refugees created by the creation of Israel. Especially in the ongoing conflict, where more than 1/3 of structures have been destroyed or damaged, just about every Gazan is a current refugee.

The argument against the (R2R) is that it is illegitimate and not granted in UN Resolution 194, as is commonly argued. The authors leave out that (R2R) is also present in the fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party. Even if the Geneva Conventions were placed to the side and the focus was on 194 the authors’ argument against its legitimacy is that it was a resolution passed by the UNGA. The same UNGA that approved resolution 181 creating Israel. How can one be legitimate and one not? The authors argue that post-decolonization the new member states of the UN were suckered in by the communist bloc and Arab sympathizers. This causes a shift in the UNGAs position on Israel, becoming much harsher post-decolonization. The authors give credence and legitimacy to UNGA decisions before previously colonized countries were admitted, a time when colonizers made up a majority of the UN. The change in UNGA attitudes toward Israel and the change in the makeup of the UNGA is not a coincidence, but it does not make the positions of the UN less justifiable, as the authors try and argue.

To create a colonial entity on a land, force 750,000 people from their homes, burn villages, rape women and children, and kill any who show the slightest hint of resentment is wrong. It gets worse when any criticism of this is thrown to the side as unjustified sympathy for Palestinians. In the words of some guys on a podcast, “Nobody gets an ethnostate.” Once the balance of power shifts and colonization is on its way out, Israel becomes a 20th-century colony based on 18th and 19th-century colonial frameworks whose flaws and atrocities become ever clearer in the light of decolonization.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

An edifying, in-depth examination of the actions that the rest of the world has taken to keep the Palestinians as permanent refugees.

The book, deeply researched, goes on a little too long and is somewhat repetitive. I read an advance reader copy and note that it is aimed at a US readership. The authors could have included a map or two and added brief explanations for terms that may be unfamiliar to US readers, but overall the book is quite readable and clear.

[Terri Fowler · Rating 1 out of 5]

All you need to know- This is a book which denies that the intent of the 1948 UN Resolution 194 was to ensure the right of return for Palestinians. Like many apologists today, the authors argue “the right of return was not the original intent of Res. 194” quickly followed by “and even if it was, the UN did not hold the power to decide such a thing”.
(<- remind you of anything in our current culture?) if it looks like genocide but smells like apartheid …🤷🏻‍♀️Sigh. Disingenuous and disappointing read.

[Brian Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book. The authors’ focused on the topic of the Right of Return, that is posited as the reason why Western diplomatic efforts have always failed to reach a peace accord in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Based upon the arguments presented by the authors in this book, I agree. When Yasser Arafat walked away from the negotiation table at the 2000 Camp David summit between he and Ehud Barak, one of the reasons cited by Arafat was the failure to consider the Palestinian Right of Return.

The issue that gets me the most frustrated by this whole dispute, is that the Palestinians never have given any deference to the fact that their Sovereign, the Ottoman Empire, started and lost WWI. It is because of this that the international community, through the Allied forces and the Mandatory, the U.K., gave this land to the Jewish people. Nothing could be clearer from an international legal perspective. The Ottomans lost the war and this was one of the reparations imposed by the winner. The Arabs, and specifically the Palestinians, completely ignore this fact in their quest to rid the land of Jews.

I learned a lot about UNRWA, which is the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees. The authors convinced me that this organization is corrupt and needs to be shut down because it perpetuates the idea that the international community favors their right of return, which is false. It funds schools that teach Palestinian children to hate Jews, which is a breeding ground for the training of future terrorists.

After the 10/7/2023 massacre in Southern Israel and the following 8 months, the dispute over land becomes irrelevant. It was never about land, it was always about Islam wanting to remove Jews from this land.

[Aaron Visser · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dreadful book replete with factual inaccuracies. Basically cites every Zionist historical fabrication possible. This starts with its description of 1948, which spends multiple pages on the two massacres of Jews, and only half a page to talk about one of the thirty massacres of Arabs, only to call it “exaggerated.” These lies about 48 form the arch distortion in the book, because it allows the authors to attack a complete strawman of the argument for return. If one doesn’t understand how the Palestinians were expelled and their property confiscated, it won’t make sense why they will go to great lengths to get it back.

This is just an inkling of the standard apologia which runs through this book. The gist of the argument is simple, the Arabs need to just get over it and stop demanding to return. In fact, they never even had a right to return in the first place, and it’s all just hatred of Israel or antisemitism.

However, the Palestinians have always had a clear legal right to return, which has never been disputed argument under international law. The reason this has not occurred is simply that Israel has blocked the return.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

To my pro-Palestine friends: you should read this one. Even if you don’t agree, you should also at the very least be aware of the predictable results of maximalist discourse.

This is a readable, even if somewhat dense, academic book from two moderate Israeli liberals. They argue that Western states obstruct a peaceful resolution (1) by encouraging Palestinians in their allegedly mistaken belief that they have a substantive right to return to Israel within its pre-1967 borders and (2) by funding a totally unique UN agency (UNWRA) that perpetuates the conflict instead of treating Palestinian refugees as normal refugees that are rehabilitated and integrated into new surroundings. The authors trot out a ton of evidence to support these claims. I found some of the evidence to be convincing and often surprising.

This scholarship is invaluable, even if I didn’t agree with many (if not most) of their conclusions. They built out a cohesive analytical framework that American leftists *must* begin to understand and operate within if they seek to have productive conversations or negotiations. The authors also helped me to identify specific pieces of support for positions that I had previously thought were totally unsubstantiated and (thus) that I had previously thought were only driven by some combination of ignorance and/or hatred.

IMO, the pro-Palestine American left needs to have a frank self-reflection acknowledging that the way they discuss the right to return to pre-1967 Israel only perpetuates the conflict.

[Xavier Alexandre · Rating 5 out of 5]

UNWRA is not a asset, but a liability in the long conflict of the middle east. This book demonstrates this very convincingly:

All refugees in the world are taken care of by UNHCR, which aims at supporting them, resettling them in the countries they have arrived to or elsewhere. No refugee son or heaven forbid, grandson, could claim to be a refugee and keep claiming benefits.

Not so with Palestinians. UNWRA provides for them no matter what, even though it's now perfectly clear they have no intention of resettling anywhere, and keep claiming a non existent right of return no other refugee can claim elsewhere in the world

What would help is the dissolution of an agency that has no purpose anymore, except perpetuating the conflict and schooling generations of hate driven youngsters.

[Adam Hummel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating deep dive into the issue of the "Right of Return" the Palestinians insist on having recognized, underlying all their negotiations with the Israelis. This book provides phenomenal context into this so-called "right", the history of UNRWA, the shocking way the Palestinian "refugees" are treated differently than literally every other refugee group in history, and how the Western govts are propping up UNRWA which at the same time undermines their efforts in pushing the parties closer together. Well worth the read.

[Yosef Piperno · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fundamental read for anyone who wishes to understand why the I/P conflict has persisted for so long with seemingly no resolution. Clearly states how foreign interests, coupled with a Western misunderstanding of Palestinian objectives, have been detrimental, going as far as changing what a refugee is. The improvement of Palestinians material conditions in never put ahead of maintaining a Palestinian Lost Cause and trying to set back the clock ex post facto

[Anouk · Rating 5 out of 5]

New drinking game: scroll through my profile and take a shot every time I say I want to own a book on I/P for future reference.

(I want to own this book for future reference.)

[Oren Mizrahi · Rating 3 out of 5]

tl;dr: a manifesto presenting the median Israeli perspective on the Palestinian demand for a right of return. not a history book, disorganized and biased but well-defended thesis

In this book, Wilf presents her thesis of what is at the center of the I/P conflict: the Palestinian demand for a right of return to the territory of Israel. It's clear from the beginning, middle, and end that she is defending a single thesis, without exploring alternative ideas or possible downfalls of the thesis. This has strengths and weakness:

Strengths: it's easy to ready and easy to give to someone if you're trying to prove a point. It's written to be accessible to people with a wide range of background on the conflict.

Weaknesses:

1. It's a manifesto. It's clearly ahistorical at times - omitting important context and details in favor of a narrow perspective. As someone can identify important omitted details, this was clearly done because said details degrade Wilf's point.

2. Unrealistic. Granted - the book is more realistic than many others, leaving me very unhopeful for the future, feeling that the conflict will go on "forever" while reading. However, many of her proposals (defund the UNRWA) seem obtuse, and she doesn't touch on realistic considerations of why governments haven't done this. I think she did a good job of accurately assessing Western idealism, but why does this assessment not apply to her policy recommendations? Why won't the US defund UNRWA? Unclear from the book, though I have my suspicions.

3. Overimagines the role of the UNRWA. Her grand thesis is founded on many pillars: one being the supreme role of the UNRWA in perpetuating the conflict. Her argument is that, had the Palestininans been served by the UNHCR, the right of return wouldn't be demanded. I think this is a tenuous argument, with only a medium amount of evidence. Certainly Wilf hasn't convinced me.

Her evidence that the UNRWA is an ongoing psychological promotor of a Palestinian desire to return (posters around the camps showing the UN legitimizes their national consciousness, educational materials promoting terror + RoR, etc.) is slim and not academically thorough. For example, can't the Palestinians just construct new propaganda mechanisms if the UNRWA is dismantled? I don't expect A/B testing, but this doesn't pass my bar.

Her assessment that the UNRWA is the big issue directly implies leads into her conclusion that dismantling it will (over time) end the demand for a RoR - and eventually solve the conflict. I have doubts. The Palestinians will find a different avenue for their national consciousness, as they already have. The undertone is that this also severely infantilizes Palestinian national autonomy.

General weaknesses:

4. Repetitive. She makes the same points over and over again, in various points in the book. I'm convinced the book could have been 30% shorter.

5. Disorganized. The book has the contours of organization - working chronologically mostly with the exception of large and broad overviews in the beginning and end. This is good, but the chronology is broken up by out of place lectures on topics that clearly had better place elsewhere. The primary example of this is, just when you think you're reaching a short conclusion, Wilf lays on a 10-page listing of the evils of UNRWA, even though many of these were discussed in the beginning, middle and even though they touch on a level of detail better left out of the concluding chapter of a book.

6. Also a small point, but I was surprised Eylon Levy (the English translator) spelled it "anti-Semitism."

[Alan Zwiren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz have written a very important book about what they identify as the prime cause as to why Israel and the Palestinians have not negotiated and implemented a peace agreement; the issue of allowing displaced Palestinians to return to sovereign Israel. The reason for this demand is simple, the Palestinians to this day have never accepted the existence of Israel. The believe that demanding return will eventually undermine and eradicate the Jewish State. Thus, the Palestinians and all the surrounding Arab nations have bred generations indoctrinated with the belief that those displaced in 1948 and 1967 have a right to return to their homes. Finally, the authors demonstrate that this indoctrination is now being carried out by the one agency that is supposed to be helping these people, the UNRWA.

I am a person who believes deeply that although the majority of the cause of the conflict that led to the displacement was not Israel's responsibility, and that although many other "refugees" since WWII have been absorbed and resettled yet the Palestinians were kept in camps and made into pawns, that Israel still has a responsibility to make peace. The simple matter has always been there is no party to make peace with because of this issue.

The book details how the world leaders in the US and Europe contribute to this fantasy of a two-state solution especially by supporting and funding an organization that only perpetuates the problem. The Arabs have manipulated International organizations to segregate Palestinians from all other "refugees" in any other conflict in the world and treat them entirely separately.

It is important to note, the authors who are making these claims are not right wing fanatics. They come from the left wing of the political spectrum. Einat Wilf was a MK in the Labor Party and Adi Schwarz was a long time reporter and columnist for Ha'aretz. I believe this book is important not only in message, but demonstrating that those who have advocated for peace for many many years now realize the obstacles that have to be overcome to engage with a true peace partner.

Although the book is very informative an well researched, I felt challenged with the writing style in some places. For example, in one section there is a discussion about the "Palestinian Declaration of Independence." In this discussion they quote the author, other scholars, and provide their own interpretation without providing full quotes of the section they are analyzing. Yes, it is simple to go out and look up the document and read it. I would have preferred to have the relevant sections being analyzed quoted in the book.

But that is a nit on style whereas the authors do not just highlight and criticize the issue, they make concrete suggestions on how to address the challenges and move forward primarily with replacing UNRWA. This is not a trivial suggestion nor does one approach to replacing UNRWA fit all. So the authors very thoughtfully segmented their recommendations by geography: West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Although their suggestions might not be the ultimate solution, I believe they are a starting point of the discussion.

Anyone wanting to understand why EVERY SINGLE PEACE INITIATIVE with the Palestinians have failed must read this book!

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book systematically dismantles the belief that the right of return can be negotiated at some point between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the belief UNWRA is a moderating force. While the book is convincing, I also found it depressing - I have no faith that necessary steps can or will be taken so that both Israelis and Palestinians can end their long running dispute and get on with their lives, living in peace.

[Dana Ladani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important to read to understand why Oslo and other solutions to the conflict never ultimately worked.

[David Rabinowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The War of Return deals with issues that for so many years have been unspeakable even amongst Israelis. In the 90's many of the the arguments offered in this book were limited to the view of the far right.

It is fascinating to see (in hindsight) the confirmation bias that was at work throughout the Oslo process in particular, but really since 1949, that convinced the leaders and the public in 'the West' to believe that they had a partner for peace when there was clear evidence that the ultimate aim of the Palestinian Leadership and public was the destruction of the state of Israel.

The questions of why the Palestinian refugees, out of all the refugee groups that have come and gone in the 20th to 21st Century, have their own, dedicated branch of the UN and why it is the only perpetually growing group of refugees, are only answerable once you have the pivotal data point of the Palestinian desire to destroy the state of Israel. As the book points out, if you know this, at least Israel knows where it stands and can stop wasting time on efforts that assume both sides really just want the same thing: peace and a good life for their children.

The question the book doesn't deal with is why do the Palestinians want to destroy Israel. It is intimated that this desire has been nurtured since the beginning in 1948 and reinforced by the Arab states for their own purposes but that doesn't quite get at why this issue is so very difficult to solve and what fundamental belief lies at the heart of this issue that makes people willing to live as refugees and not "move on with their lives"?

The only answer I have seen that addresses this is contained in Article 11 of founding charter of Hammas:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that...This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement."
(https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_cent...)

I don't know if this view is shared broadly across Palestinian society but it would make sense because fundamental religious principles and Sharia Law (as I understand) cannot be compromised round a negotiating table. So this brings into question how practical some of the book's suggestions are in the last chapter. The Abraham Accords, however, are good evidence that progress can be made. Perhaps the honest conversations that are now being held, can cut through the rhetoric and protest signs and provide a way to the clearing at the end of the path.

[ᛋᛏᛁᛁᚾ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, the question of Israel and Palestine. Such a great, non-provocative topic which people can discuss rationally without any shouting and gesticulating.

This book attempts to answer the short and easy question of why peace is so hard to achieve in the so-called holy land? Why cannot jews and Arabs live peacefully side by side?

In that regard, this book delivers a highly polemic text taking the side of Israel. The authors attempt (and rightly so) point out that Palestinians have been offered statehood several times, but consistently rejected peace. Why? What is it that Palestine wants, beyond a two-state solution (which is oddly enough, the international community’s preferred solution but apparently not one of the directly involved parties).

After having read this book, the answer is clear enough, the Palestinians wants a “right to return”, i.e., Palestinians wants Israel to allow millions of Palestinian to immigrants to Israel proper, and not just return to a Palestinian state in Gaza or the West Bank. Israel, on the other hand, (and rightfully so) considers this to be a demographic suicide where the Jewish character of the state of Israel would be erased in a couple of generations (lest Israel actually turn into an apartheid state where Arab Israeli citizens lack the right to vote etc.).

The book’s core message seems to be that Palestinians should just “get over it”, move on with their lives, and integrate in their place of residence, accept that the state of Israel exists, and accept peace through a two-state solution.

One question you could ask to the authors in that case, is why didn’t the Jews just “get over” the expulsion of Jews from Israel? I’m sure the authors of this book would point out that has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for 2000 years, that wide-spread European antisemitism culminating in the Holocaust, and in Arab countries after 1948 culminating in forced Jewish exodus from Arab countries necessitated a Jewish state.

I find it difficult to argue against this, so if the book’s message is that the Palestinians should accept a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank on the post-1967 borders (and this is only where the right of return applies to), and the remainder of the land is allocated to Israel, then I agree that this is a fair, balanced and equitable land partition that gives both peoples the possibilities of prosperity. The only problem, the Palestinians have consistently rejected this repeatedly. So, if this is how “get over it” is to be understood, I cannot help but agree. However, it needs also to be said that the descendants of the original refugees should be compensated for their lost properties, analogous to compensation offered to persons whose property has been expropriated. But this should be bundled into a comprehensive peace treaty.

Some other interesting topics in the book that deserve some mention/discussion:

- That deportations and physical separation of groups of people are legal, moral, and just. In the fourth Geneva convention of 1949, which came after the horrors of World War 2, has a prohibition against deportation of the resident population by the occupiers. This prohibition came around exactly due to the cases mentioned in the books as legal and just (for example the deportation of ethnic Germans from Poland in 1945). The authors here are simply wrong and mistaken.
On “double standards”. The authors state they see it as unfair how uneven standards are applied, a strict standard is applied to Israel, and lax standards are applied to states like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, etc. Well, is it really that unfair? Should we not hold a democracy to higher standards than blood-thirsty tyrannies or theocracies? Is Israel really so bad that the standards apply to Syria also holds for Israel? Is it really unfair double standards, or do we expect more from Israel when it comes to human rights and the protection of civilians than we expect from Bashar al-Assad who used chemical weapons. I mean, come on…

- On how refugee status can be inherited. Through some perverse mechanisms, Palestinians are able to inherit refugee status. This is so because the working definition of a Palestinian refugee is “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict” and their descendants. However, the 1951 Refugee Convention defines any refugee as anyone, who owing to a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”. This naturally leads one to think that since Palestinian who are registered as refugees by the UN are being persecuted, whereas one who lives a comfortable life in Jordan (mind you, a middle-income country) and who holds Jordanian citizenship, can also be a refugee. This does not make sense. Even the 1951 Refugee Convention states that anyone with double citizenship has to seek protection in other country of nationality: “In the case of a person who has more than one nationality, the term “the country of his nationality” shall mean each of the countries of which he is a national, and a person shall not be deemed to be lacking the protection of the country of his nationality if, without any valid reason based on well-founded fear, he has not availed himself of the protection of one of the countries of which he is a national”. For that reason, I also agree with the books authors’ that the system of UNRWA needs a serious re-work.

In conclusion, I gave this book 5 stars not because I wholeheartedly agree with this book, but because this book has reasoned and interesting arguments that deserve discussion.

[Shira · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books that I've read describing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, obstacles to peace, and practical solutions to implement.

[Marina the Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it. It is clear, articulate, comprehensive.

[Adiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edit: my views have changed a great deal since I wrote this review. While I do still think that one of the drivers of the conflict is the rejection of Israel’s legitimacy, I don’t believe that Palestinians need to believe that for the conflict to end. Schwartz and Wilf miss what Jabotinsky correctly noted: that is that when Palestinian elites realize that Israel is implacable (because of its strength), they will stop leading the next generation of Palestinians into a war against Israel. Unfortunately, the longer this persists, the more that Israeli society is also radicalized (see the current government in 2025 with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir who consistently enable settler terrorism in Judea & Samaria / West Bank. I should note this is the same government when I first wrote this review.) The more that both sides are radicalized the more the conflict will move from territorial to existential which is a lose/lose for both sides. I made this edit because of Wilf’s new Oz party which I don’t think will help end the conflict, rather prolong it. I have kept the text below of my original review, but it should be read with a solid amount of skepticism.

Part of the failure of the international community to understand the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the greater Arab/Israeli conflict has been a failure to understand the Palestinian narrative: that is, the Palestinians have suffered a historical injustice that no other peoples have experienced and that they must retake the land of their forefathers and not allow any type of Jewish and sovereign presence in Eretz Yisrael/Palestine. The failure to understand this narrative puts to question why the two-state solution was ever even considered viable if the narrative of Palestinians has been absolute rejection of any presence of Jewish sovereignty. The question of return that is a policy that would disrupt Israel's sovereignty and claims to rewind the clock on the Nakba and the establishment of the state of Israel.

Schwartz and Wilf expertly demonstrate the failures in the establishment of the Relief Works Agency, which was meant to be a temporary refugee agency to handle the 700,000 Arab refugees created by the '48 war (note that Israel was able to handle the Jews that were expelled once Jordan occupied the West Bank/Judea & Samaria), but instead has lasted for 75 years and has not successfully resettled a single refugee. What follows are multiple failures: 1. the Arab rejection of handling the refugees and keeping them in perpetual refugee-dom; part of this is an overall unwillingness by the Arab world to accept Israel as legitimate leading these refugees to continually be pushed as pawns in the greater Arab/Israeli conflict 2. the west deciding to essentially pay 'protection' money to UNRWA buy the Arab world's favor during the Cold War and 3. the decision by UNRWA to not accept the results of the '48 war, continually keeping the dream of return alive and delegitimizing Israel. 4. UNRWA's deceptive refugee status that it automatically provides to any descendants of the original refugees of the '48 war leading to the number of refugees continually rising since 1948 instead of it lowering by engaging in proper resettlement efforts into countries with similar ethnic and cultural character and finally 5. UNRWA's very deceptiveness by claiming itself to be an international organization when 99% of its employees are Palestinian. This sends a signal to the Palestinian community that the world still supports their cause of destroying the state of Israel 6. the claim of refugees in Gaza and the West Bank when these are the supposed territories of a future Palestinian state (Note that this is not considering the current war in Gaza).

Schwartz and Wilf claim that the first step for peace (in a long-term manner) is for UNRWA to be defunded. They accept that criticism of the settlements by the West is important, but they must be even-handed, that means defunding UNRWA who actively educates Palestinians to not view Israel as legitimate and dehumanizes Israelis/Jews. These services should instead come under the PA, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as a state-building effort for the Palestinians. Perhaps more could have been added to the final section, but ultimately it is clear that only the acceptance of the paradigm: "two States for two Peoples" will lead to a substantial peace in the region.

[Perlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to this on audio book. Wilf narrates her co-authored work. She presents the facts in a clear and calm manner, citing statistics, historical evidence, and logic to build a convincing case that the 'Palestinians' are not interested in building their own state, and that their entire raisin d'etre is destroying the only Jewish country in the world. I would subtract half a star for her nonsensical non-sequiteur at the very end, suggesting that Israel give up Chevron. Nonetheless, this is a worthwhile work that sheds important light on one of the most burning issues of today, and her insights should guide any 'negotiations' with the numerous terrorist groups who claim to be fighting for freedom.

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and necessary book. Does not purport to solve the Palestinian dilemma, but does clear away a lot of flotsam and jetsam currently gumming up the works. More than once the Palestinians have been brought to the bargaining table, and even offered a two-state solution, only for them to walk away from the very thing they claim the want? Why is this? One reason is that if they did so, they would end their claim for millions of "refugees" to return to the parents' or grandparents' homes in Israel. The PA would much prefer these "refugees" to hang like the sword of Damocles over the entire region.

They aren't really refugees at all, not in the typical sense. They are descendants of those who initiated, and then lost, a war over seventy years ago. They live in settled communities in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. The ones in Jordan even have citizenship. But they are being used as pawns in the long game of wiping Israel off the map. They are a breeding ground for discontents and thus terrorists. All paid for by western monies, of course.

It is important to recognize that the two authors are hardliners. In Israel they would be considered liberals, and they support a two-state solution. But they recognize the absurdity of calling over two million Palestinians "refugees" just because the PA wants to resettle them in Israel and seed the country's destruction from the inside. The authors offer helpful solutions. Those in Jordan classified as refugees are in fact citizens and should be considered Jordanian. Those in the West Bank should have all services transferred from the UN to the Palestinian Authority. Those in Lebanon and Egypt should be transferred to the UN agency that actually knows how to handle displaced persons and give them a home, much like the Nepalese expelled from Bhutan about twenty years ago, who were resettled around the globe, much to their better prospects.

Once this took place, a peaceful two-state solution (not necessarily my own goal) would be much more possible, and sustainable.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will no longer argue with anybody about the Middle East. I will only ask that they read this book and challenge them to find an equivalent well-documented and well-researched publication that tells a different interpretation of the historical facts. Twenty-five percent of the book is notes and a bibliography. Though written by Israeli academics, the book is an unbiased account that gets to the heart of the matter. It was never about the land - it's about the existence of Jews living on what is perceived as exclusively Arabic lands.

I can relate quite clearly to the Palestinian situation as my parents were ethnic Germans, two of twelve million, who were expelled from Eastern European countries and lost land, homes and businesses. However, although there was an equivalent Germanic movement, "Heimkehr," the notion of reclaiming your homeland, the Right of Return was quashed to keep the peace and avoid future conflict. Under a similar UNRWAS perception, I would still be considered a refugee with a claim to return to either Hungary and Czechia. In my mid-sixties, such a notion is ridiculous. My parents have moved on and I have moved on and have created a new life filled with accomplishments instead of languishing in thoughts of what would have been.

The factors which lead to the two different outcomes are indeed different and were influenced by factors of the Cold War initially. However, at the end of the day, the results must be the same. Palestinians will have to negotiate with Israelis in good faith in order to achieve permanent peace in a two-state solution. There is no right of return for any of the hundreds of millions of refugees throughout history. The Palestinians have no special exemption or extra privilege in this arena.

Anybody who thinks they know what Palestinians really want or seek during negotiations should check out the reference made by the authors of "west-splaining". Give them some credit. They know what they want but they cannot be humoured to think it's an all or nothing game.

[Polina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insightful.

[Ayali Hawa Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book explores some major detriments to the peace process in this I/P conflict, which the author argues largely has to do with the question of the law of return. She is explores what is stake, what is the history of peace process and ultimately what does Return really mean as Return means different through the lens of different perspectives.

[Peggy Walt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear, concise, rational and a straightforward thesis, with suggestions for a way forward. An important book and a "must read" for those interested in untangling Israel-Palestinian history and its current status. Dr. Einat Wilf is a former Israeli politician, and a wonderful speaker. Also that rare thing, a secular Zionist. Highly recommended.