Anyone who still isn't convinced that the Palestinians mean every word they say when it comes to their "right of return," that they aren't just paying lip service to the Palestinian ethos and that they won't be satisfied with a symbolic return, will cease to doubt after reading a new book, "The War for Return," by Adi Schwartz and Dr. Einat Wilf.
The book, which came out as tens of thousands of Palestinians were attempting to breach the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, underscores its authors' documented, and sometimes surprising, insights.
Schwartz is a researcher and lecturer who has worked for Haaretz and Israel Hayom and is now finishing his doctorate in conflict resolution at Bar-Ilan University. Wilf, a former MK who represented the Labor and Atzmaut parties and served as chairwoman of the Knesset Education Committee, has spent considerable time researching the Palestinian refugee issue. Both Wilf and Schwartz were raised as left-wing Zionists.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, the authors say their book is aimed "particularly at the thinking Left," but also at the current government, which they criticize for "continuing to protect UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] and prevent any attack on its funding."
They say that UNRWA has not been an arm of the U.N. for some time, and that for years the Palestinian refugee agency has served as a "womb of Palestinian terrorism, and never ceased to foster an awareness of expulsion and return among the Palestinians."
The new book includes a few sentences written by Wilf that are hard to swallow: "Israel is frightened at the possibility of the UNRWA question appearing on the international agenda … It is actually the Israeli government, particularly the defense establishment, that is preventing any actions against UNRWA. Absurd as it might be, it turns out that the Israeli government is the main defender of the Palestinian demand for 'return.'"
Q: Does it go that far?
Wilf: "In the book, we document UNRWA's involvement in raising consciousness of expulsion and return [among Palestinians], its support for terrorism over the years, and what we found is that the [Israeli] defense establishment alone that sets Israeli policy on everything having to do with the possibility of funds to the organization being cut off."
Q: That sounds almost illogical.
Wilf: "I know, but defense establishments don't know how to deal with narratives. They know how to demand and secure quiet right now. If the defense establishment thinks that UNRWA and the funds [it sends] to Gaza are buying it calm, it will do anything possible to ensure that the funds keep flowing, even if that means that the calm is purchased at the cost of a war that will go on for decades."
Q: This is a right-wing government, doesn't it understand that?
Wilf: "A right-wing government naturally tends to hold the status quo even more sacred. I assume that if the government put an end to Palestinian maximalism – which demands right of return to [Israeli towns] Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Haifa – it would also have to put an end to Jewish maximalism from the Right and acknowledge the Palestinian demands beyond the Green Line."
Q: Someone who has been screaming for decades what you're saying now is journalist and researcher David Badin. The establishment portrays him as a nuisance, even though the material he presents seems convincing. Now you come in and document and bolster a lot of his arguments. Why has is it been so hard for so many Israelis for so many years to believe that the Palestinians mean what they say on the issue of return, that they really are serious in their belief that they will return and live here instead of us?
Schwartz: "Because it's not pleasant to discover the truth. I'm not happy about what we found, either. I would like to have found out something else. Very much so. But political stances are not determined by reason alone. People tense to cling to a romantic approach, to assume that all the Arabs want is to get up in the morning, go to work, and make a decent living. That things will eventually work out. But 'we' and 'they' are two different things.
"It's easy for secular Jews to understand that the ultra-Orthodox have a different world of values … that they're willing to raise 13 kids in a two-room apartment, because Torah study is more important to them.
"But it's very hard for people to comprehend that for the Palestinians, it's more humiliating to forgo the land and the [idea of] return than it is to stand for hours at a security checkpoint. They are making their choice, just as the haredim do. I'm not comparing the two sectors, but we do need an analogy to understand what is happening to us and why we've been wandering around in a daze for years on the matter of [Palestinian] return."
Schwartz argues that when it comes to the issue of return, the Left and the Right are the same, "but the Left attacks the Right for recalcitrance, whereas the Right just ignores the refugee problem as if it didn't exist. Since the [1967] Six-Day War, the discourse in Israel has come with internal friction about whether or not to return territory, but all sides in the dispute are completing ignoring the main aspect of the conflict: the refugee problem. Ignoring it keeps us from understanding the true nature of the conflict."
According to Schwartz, "the conflict isn't about borders, or territory that can be split up, but rather the very existence of a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Any discussion of the conflict that doesn't seriously address the refugee story is ridiculous. It's like trying to use makeup to disguise skin lesions on someone who's dying, or plastering a building whose foundations are completely unstable."
An estimate of sentiment
The book reveals for the first time a secret Palestinian document from April 2008 that aimed to provide a scientific tool for the Palestinian leadership to use on the matter of Palestinian return. The document sought to lay out a rational analysis that would support the Palestinians' goal of returning to Israel, as well as account for Israel's capacity to take them in.
"The document investigated three possible [numeric] scenarios of [Palestinian] return, ranging from hundreds of thousands to Israel to 2 million," Schwartz says.
"It claimed that in each scenario, the Jews would remain a majority in Israel, that even in a case of 2 million refugees returning, the Palestinians would only comprise 36% of the population in Israel by 2058.
"That's a piece of paper that the Israeli PR effort should have jumped on. It's one of 1,700 original documents that the Al-Jazeera network published in 2011. It's not a problem to find, and it's the most detailed estimate of Palestinian sentiment on returning to Israel. It unmasks the supposedly calming phrase 'considering demographic needs,' that they are trying to dope us with. But this paper isn't the last word on the matter."
Meaning?
Schwartz: "What the Palestinians actually envision is a return without an end. The documents we have obtained show that they were demanding that an agreed-upon quota of refugees be permitted to enter Israel every year for 15 years, and that [they planned to] keep asking for that after the 15 years. We need to add that the Palestinians see the 'right of return' as a personal right of every refugee of the 8 million people they define as refugees. Their refugeedom is eternal: fathers, sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, great-great-grandchildren. They have no intention of eradicating this refugeedom in any way other than return. The Palestinian Authority demanded in negotiations that every refugee be given the option of returning to Israel."
Q: And Israeli negotiators have been told about this?
Schwartz: "No. It's a real mechanism of deceit. We found another document in which the Palestinian negotiating team explains straight out the meaning of the expression 'an agreed-upon solution to the refugee problem.' It says in the document: 'Wording must be used according to which a [peace] deal will arrive at an agreed-upon solution. This is the best possibility for the Palestinians, since it does not require that they give up the possibility of return for millions of refugees.'"
The end of the 'Arab Moses'
Wilf confesses that she "hated settlers" and believed that they were keeping the peace she longed for, which two prime ministers, Ehud Barak and the late Yitzhak Rabin, had created hope for, at bay. She says she was raised with the assumption that the Green Line separated "legitimate Israel" from a non-legitimate one. The Second Intifada shook up her worldview, Wilf says. In meetings with "moderate" Palestinians, Wilf heard that Jews were nothing more than a religion, lacking any right to self-determination and a country of their own.
Schwartz has spent the last 10 years researching the Israeli-Arab conflict. He found that the problem of the refugees and the right of return are front and center in the Palestinian ethos, but absent from the Israeli discourse about the conflict. This led to his writing the book with Wilf.
One chapter tells the story of Musa al-Alami, a former member of the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee, who in 1948 fled to Beirut and Amman but hurried back to the West Bank because he wanted to work on behalf of his people, whom he saw suffering there.
Alami decided to found farming communities along the Jordan River. He and his people dug 15 wells with their own hands and found fresh water. They grew produce of excellent quality. Alami dreamed of setting up an experimental ranch that would help rehabilitate the uprooted and the refugees and serve as an inspiration and a model. He did not see working on behalf of the refugees as collaboration with Israel or as forgoing the demand to return to it. He only thought that it would be better for his people's dignity and welfare if they lived in humane conditions.
The New York Times dubbed Alami the "Arab Moses." But many displaced Palestinians, who were living in camps around Jericho, refused to cooperate with him. They were afraid his plans were a scheme to keep them from returning to Israel.
In December 1955, thousands of Palestinians attacked and destroyed the ranch. Heads of the clans in the camps incited the masses against the "network of traitors," that they said was headed by the "arch-traitor Moussa al-Alami." The site was set on fire. Orphaned children were undressed and beaten. Women had to be rescued from rape attempts. It was the clearest and most brutal proof yet of the Arab position that any attempt at rehabilitation or to join an economy and lead normal lives was a grave betrayal.
"Given a choice between the humiliation of a life of poverty and distress in the refugee camps or the perceived humiliation of accepting the state of Israel as a fait accompli, the refugees chose to stay in the camps," write Wilf and Schwartz.
At the beginning, they reveal, "the heads of the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee saw the return of the displaced and the refugees to the new state as recognition of its existence and vigorously opposed it. Actually opposed it," they write.
Then UNRWA was founded. The camps the organization set up turned into hotbeds of hatred. The school system it operated worked to exalt the concept of return and tell the story of the "exile." In those early years, UNRWA supplied the physical and social infrastructure from which the Palestinian identity sprouted.
In that same period, UNRWA made a decision that had dramatic ramifications: to include the descendants of the refugees and the displaced for all future generations in the list of "Palestinian refugees." Living in the camps was no longer an existential or humanitarian matter. It had to do in a large measure with Arab countries' discrimination against the refugees. Other than Jordan, they all chose to withhold citizenship from the Palestinians. Wilf says that maintaining the camps became a farce.
Q: How?
Wilf: "The improvement in the refugees' economic situation soon led them to develop a real estate market in the camps. Plots of land and homes were being sold. UNRWA gradually lost control of the camp residents' identity. New residents moved in. The number of refugees registered with the agency didn't match their actual number at all. The elderly who died or relatives who moved to other countries weren't recorded. In the 1960s and '70s, hundreds of thousands of young people moved out of the refugee camps to the Gulf states, but UNRWA didn't report any fewer refugees as a result."
Q: So this is refugeedom on paper?
Wilf: "Exactly. Palestinian refugeehood has lost most of the classic characteristics of refugeedom elsewhere in the world. Anyone who has eyes can understand that the services the international community provides to the refugees via UNRWA in most of the camps is of minor importance compared to the organization's political significance. Over the years, UNRWA has become the most important tool in building a new nation, the Palestinian nation. In UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip, which are funded and supported by Western nations, the children would recite every morning: 'Palestine, our land / Our goal is to return / Death will not frighten us / Palestine is ours / We will never forget it … We have sworn to spill our blood for you.'"
Wilf and Schwartz write that for years, "The PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] tightened its grip on the camps. Armed members started hanging around without any interference. They had a state within a state, and raised generations of terrorists. The dream of return fed terrorism, and the world fed UNRWA, which fostered it."
An eclipse of thought
The book describes how many members of the U.S. Congress visited the office of then-Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon, and later the office of his successor Michael Oren. The congressional representatives were angry that they country was funding an agency that was harming Israel.
"Ayalon presented them with the position of the Israeli government, which did not support attempts to attack UNRWA," they say.
Oren, too, was forced to reject Republican initiatives to turn off funds for UNRWA: "Amos Gilad, [then] head of the Defense Ministry's Political-Military Affairs Bureau, called Oren and made it clear that UNRWA might be a bad agency, but Hamas was worse."
Wilf calls this approach an "eclipse" that has obscured "every level of the Israeli leadership, Right and Left, for years. For many Israelis, it's hard to imagine a reality without UNRWA, but by existing it encourages the [Palestinian] demand for return. Even now, when [U.S. President Donald] Trump is seeking to cut aid to UNRWA, envoys are being dispatched to keep him from attacking it. It's unbelievable."
Q: Everyone is blind? You're the only ones who see this?
Schwartz: "The reason for the ongoing willful innocence is that for decades, it was the accepted view that to make peace, we had to adopt constructive ambiguity and sign agreements that contained vague wording on fundamental issues of dispute.
"[The late] Shimon Peres was famous for promoting the idea that 'peace and love should be made with eyes half-shut,' but keeping our eyes shut allowed the Palestinians to claim to the world that they had accepted the two-state solution and recognized Israel, while not signing any wording requiring them to retreat from their demand for return, which if it comes to pass will mean our destruction. This ambiguity is destructive. Any peace deal must be based on constructive clarity. The Palestinian dream of return is ballooning, defended by Israel and the blindness of the West."
Q: What do you suggest be done?
"First, a clear declaration of a change in policy toward UNRWA and the removal of Israel's 'Iron Dome' over the organization. [Israel must] demand that UNRWA stop working on behalf of Palestinian return and has to present the current truth of Palestinian refugeedom today: that it is a political rather than a humanitarian issue.
"There are a lot of people living in the Palestinian Authority and the Middle East who are registered as refugees but haven't been [refugees] for a long time. Nations that donate to them should transfer money directly to the PA, not via UNRWA, which only perpetuates the lie of Palestinian refugeehood. All UNRWA does is make it clear to the 80% of Gazans who are registered with it as refugees from 'Palestine' that Gaza is not their real home, that their real home on the other side of the fence was forcibly taken from them. Is it any wonder that they [Gazans] use the cement they receive to build tunnels to Ashdod and Ashkelon rather than building permanent housing in Gaza?"
Wilf and Schwartz urge the establishment of a new umbrella organization whose only mission will be to rehabilitate Gaza. They propose that Israel announce far-reaching steps to rebuild Gaza but make them conditional on all UNRWA activity being transferred to the new organization, which would be humanitarian.
"These steps and others we are proposing cannot be taken as long as the Israeli public is not aware of how deeply an organization that fosters [the concept of] right of return is defended by Israel and its defense establishment," they write.
"Israeli policy on this issue, which lies at the heart of the conflict, cannot be decided by four people in the hallways of the Kiryah [IDF headquarters] and the Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories. The question of the heavy price Israel pays for the Iron Dome it gives UNRWA must stand up to the test of public discussion."
