No More Right of Return

For as long as we can remember Palestinians have insisted on a "right to return” to what they consider their ancestral homeland. Do not even consider that the Israelites were there first.

Palestinians claim that Palestinians and their descendants who left Israel when it was founded seven decades ago have a right to return to their "illegally" confiscated lands.

Beyond the fact that, as Heraclitus famously said, you cannot step in the same river twice, the truth is, the land that Palestinians left is no longer the same land. And what about everything that the Israelis have built on that land? Do they claim a right to the Israeli economy and Israeli prosperity? Are they good socialists claiming the right to spend and squander what others have earned?

Moreover, the count of Palestinian refugees has been wildly exaggerated by the United Nations agency that works to feed the Palestinian illusion.

Surely, the notion that the Jews are going to hand the country that they built over to Palestinians, as a reward for ceaseless terrorism, is absurd. Now, apparently, the Trump administration is about to deflate the illusion of the right to return… by removing the topic from consideration in any future negotiations.

The Times of Israel reports:

According to the Hadashot TV report Saturday, the US in early September will set out its policy on the issue. It will produce a report that says there are actually only some half-a-million Palestinians who should be legitimately considered refugees, and make plain that it rejects the UN designation under which the millions of descendants of the original refugees are also considered refugees. The definition is the basis for the activities of UNRWA, the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

Rick Moran offers some sage commentary:

The Palestinians have been playing the long con with the "right of return" issue, which was always more of a fantasy than reality. They conned the UN for years about the number of "refugees," when in fact, the vast majority of Palestinians in refugee camps have no "right" to return to anything. Many were urged to leave by Arab leaders in 1948, others were abroad and never lived in Israel.

As for how the number of refugees is tallied, the Anti-Defamation League explains:

UNRWA, classifies Palestinian refugees as those who left Israel in 1948; those who left the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967; those who were abroad but were subsequently not allowed to return to Israel; and all of their descendants. According to UNWRA, this totals five million Palestinian refugees. UNRWA’s statistics include those residing in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (Note: UNRWA’s policy of including the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who left in 1948 and 1967 into the refugee population for demographic and aid purposes is unique among refugee populations, and is not a done for any other refugee group.)

Many Palestinians have been living in squalid refugee camps, but, Moran continues, whose fault is that:

Arab nations refuse to grant Palestinians in the camps citizenship, preferring to pen them up in rancid conditions and treat them as non-people. The UNRWA facilitates the misery and the UN and international community are accessories to the crimes as the Palestinian people are under the delusion that a "right of return" will be part of any settlement with Israel.

Arab nations wanted to use Palestinian misery as a weapon against Israel. It has not worked. By now, important Arab nations have tired of the Palestinian cause. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and even Egypt have far more to gain by allying themselves with Israel than with sacrificing their national interests to a lost cause.

If the Trump administration squashes the illusion of a Palestinian right to return, you can be fairly certain that it has done so in coordination with Arab allies.

I would add that if the administration makes such a strongly pro-Israel gesture, you can feel certain that the mainstream media will fill the airways with cries of: Trump is worse than Hitler.