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Will peace cost me my home?
Any Mideast pact must give Palestinians the right to return
home.
By Ghada Ageel
12/03/07 "ICH" --- - Sixty years ago, my grandparents lived in
the beautiful village of Beit Daras, a few kilometers north of
Gaza. They were farmers and owned hundreds of acres of land.
But in 1948, in the first Arab-Israeli war, many people lost
their lives defending our village from the Zionist militias. In
the end, with their crops and homes burning, the villagers fled.
My family eventually made its way to what became the refugee
camp of Khan Yunis in Gaza. We were hit hard by poverty,
humiliation and disease. We became refugees, queuing for tents,
food and assistance, while the state of Israel was established
on the ruins of my family's property and on the ruins of
hundreds of other Palestinian villages.
Some people may tire of hearing such stories from the past.
"Don't cry over spilled milk" is one of the first sayings I
learned in English. But for me, the line between past and
present is not so easily broken. I raise this story today
because it remains profoundly relevant to the Middle East peace
process -- and to help convey the deep-seated fears of
Palestinian refugees that we will be asked to exonerate Israel
for its actions and to relinquish our right to return home.
That cannot be allowed to happen. All refugees have the right to
return. This is an individual right, long recognized in
international law, that cannot be negotiated away. Palestinian
refugees -- and there are more than 4 million of us registered
with the United Nations today -- hold this right no less than
Kosovar or Rwandan or any other refugees.
Of course, I understand that the clock cannot be turned back.
Most of the Palestinian villages inside what is now Israel no
longer exist. And experience shows that when the rights of
refugees are recognized and backed by international communities,
only a small portion opt to return.
But the option should be open to us. If a refugee decides to
return, he or she should not be hindered. Anything less would be
unacceptable to Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are refugees.
Those who choose not to return must be fairly compensated for
their losses.
My fear is that in the months ahead, enormous financial and
political pressure may be brought against our fractured
leadership to concede the rights of refugees.
In 2000, Yasser Arafat was castigated internationally for his
refusal to accept what was perversely termed a "generous offer"
from then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, even though it made
no provision whatsoever for the return of refugees. However,
Arafat was greeted as a hero by Palestinians for his principled
unwillingness to sanctify ethnic cleansing.
Seven years later, we will perhaps be confronted with another
"generous offer" aiming to formalize our dispossession.
Tragically, world powers have little stomach to battle Israel
for what they view as bygone peccadilloes.
There are real consequences for being stateless and weak. For
two years, I have been unable to return to my home in Gaza. In
2006, I was stranded in the Sinai with my two small children,
unable to get through the closed border from Egypt into Gaza. It
is perhaps madness to want to enter such a prison, but it is
where my family and loved ones live. I eventually gave up. Last
summer, I tried and failed again.
Yet my ultimate destination is not Khan Yunis but Beit Daras. It
is fundamentally unjust -- even all these years later -- that
the world stands by and countenances the Israeli decision to
expropriate my family's land.
And it is fundamentally racist to believe that I would pose a
threat to Israel if I were to move back to my family's village
(which I would do if I were given the option). The notion of a
Jewish state that must always retain a Jewish character -- so
that people of other ethnicities can be barred from living in
their ancestral homes and minorities groups are treated as
second-class citizens -- is frighteningly similar to the
apartheid state of South Africa, where different ethnic groups
were treated unequally under law.
If black and white South Africans could resolve their
differences on the basis of equality, why is it inappropriate to
insist that Israelis and Palestinians do the same? Surely all
modern conceptions of justice and equality must decry a system
that places Jews above Palestinians.
Both peoples have suffered enormously over the last several
decades. Resolution, however, will not come by the powerful
dictating to the weak, but only through insistence on equality
between the two peoples.
Ghada Ageel is a third-generation Palestinian refugee. She grew
up in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza and teaches Middle
Eastern politics at the University of Exeter in Britain.
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