The settlements, East Jerusalem, water, the war on terrorism are all vital subjects in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. However, there is another crucial subject that will make or break any future settlement between the sides: the right of return. And financial and economic matters will play a key role on this subject.
For the Palestinians, at least at the declarative level, it is their cassus belli since 1948: the right of the refugees, whether voluntary or forced, from Israel’s War of Independence to return to their homes. For Israel, both at the declaratory and practical levels, it is a matter of existence: the return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Israeli territory would undermine the country’s demographic balance to the point of threatening its Jewish majority within a generation or two.
Is there a way to bridge such a chasm? On the face of it, the only solution would be Israeli financial compensation for the Palestinians’ conceding the physical right of return. On this point, Israel must stand up and state categorically: We too have claims for compensation in exchange for conceding the right of return - those of the Jews from Arab countries. But Israel does almost nothing to prepare for this critical point in the negotiations.
There is what to talk about. “Globes” investigations have found that private Jewish property in four Arab countries - Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon - amounts to $10 billion. The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) estimates the total value of private and communal Jewish property at $30 billion. For the sake of comparison, that is 20 time the amount won in the Swiss banks affair by Holocaust survivors and their heirs.
In recent months, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) under secretary general Avi Becker has energetically campaigned the issue in Europe and the US. At the last four WJC conferences, expert committees revealed the hardships that were the lot of Jews in Arab countries since Israel’s independence in 1948. Torture, executions, arrests, show trials, looting: the descriptions are all too frequently reminiscent of the Holocaust. At times, it has seemed that only Israel’s existence prevented genocide in the Arab world.
Becker’s central argument is that there was a comparable exchange of peoples in 1948: 800,000 Palestinians fled Israel, and over 900,000 Jews fled Arab countries. However, while the Arabs, with the support of the UN, relegated the Palestinians to refugee status as a political weapon, Israel made an immense effort to absorb hundreds of thousands of immigrants. It was hard, traumatic, and full of mistakes - but it was done.
The US media and public are echoing these events. The subject has been put of the Congressional agenda, and that is probably only the beginning. But Israel has been silent. Although the Ministry of Justice announced a campaign to register the claims of immigrants from Arab countries, no practical measure have been taken. The Prime Minister’s Office and Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense discuss every possible aspect of the Road Map, but utterly ignore the clear affinity between the Palestinian right of return and the rights of Jews of Arab countries.
If Israel truly hopes and believes that it can soon return to the negotiating table with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbad (Abu Mazen), it must now have at the ready the books, figures, claims, and proof regarding Jewish property in Arab countries. Firstly, this is a paramount diplomatic tool, and secondly, and just as important, it is a matter of historic justice.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on May 20, 2003