- Vast majority of Palestinians (90%+) in Jordan have citizenship. And 80% of Palestinian refugees reside in either the West Bank, Gaza, or Jordan. Those in Syria and Lebanon - especially - lack rights, it's true. In Lebanon, they live in conditions akin to those under Israeli occupation, with limited housing rights, employment rights, and no citizenship.
- When the issue has come up in peace talks, the formulas are more modest. Abbas in 2008 asked for 150,000 to be allowed to return. (Olmert had offered 5000.) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_Conference)
The suggestion is to try to recreate the Lebanese experiment in israel. Lebanon was created with a slight Christian majority and now it's dominated by Hezbollah, the Islamist terror group. Two separate states is fine.
I may be naive, but why couldn't Jordan give a section of its territory to match up with the West Bank territory and declare that the Palestinian State? It would require the Palestinians currently living in Gaza to move to this area, but it would give the Palestinian State a fairly large area and it would be theirs. The Jewish settlers would have to move, of course. I find it somewhat ironic that the only place that even resembles a Palestinian state is the West Bank and Gaza, both recently part of Israel. No one else in the mid-east is giving the Palestinians even a semblance of a state except Israel.
Umm, because Jordan is a sovereign country with its own people, even if the majority of them (including the citizens, not just the refugees) are Palestinian.
The issue is not that the Palestinians want their rights in a land; the issue is that the Palestinians want their rights in their land.
To me the only way to do that is a peaceful settlement with Israel, but Israel clearly has no intention, or incentive, to accommodate that legitimate desire, and the events of the past two weeks make that even more unlikely.
I have been following the long and complex thread of the comments, which leaves me with more questions than answers. For instance what is "Palestinian land"? Is it the land that is shown on the map developed in 1947, which looks to me as quite substantive, relative to the land that is "Israeli/Jewish land". While it is probably too late for that, what would Palestinian land actually be now -- show me on a map. Some country has to give Palestinians a land that has some links to "their land". For now, it seems that the only country willing to do that is Israel , which imperfect though it is is some measure of accommodation of that legitimate desire. But that is definitely not a solution that is working for either Palestinians or Israelis. What land would provide a more full measure of accommodation of that legitimate desire. Where is it? And the answer cannot be, the current state of Israel.
Of course not. The international consensus, such as it is, is a state around the 1967 borders (i.e. the West Bank and Gaza) - I think a truly viable, sovereign nation along those lines would be acceptable to the majority of Palestinians.
You’d have to find some sort of accommodation for Jerusalem (perhaps following the Vatican model), and compensation for the for refugees and the diaspora, but on paper this is all doable, or at least was 30 years ago before the expansion of settlements rendered this moot.
The right of return is intractable, and Matt is right in pointing out all the reasons that’s the case, so Palestinians are deluding themselves if they believe they are going back to the parts of Palestine from which they’re from that are now Israel-proper – and which is why most of them don’t actually expect to.
But “viable, sovereign nation” is really the operative term here, and that has long been off the table, so the only two remaining options are either the status quo ante of occupation and apartheid, or a single state that has the potential to be radically transformative (in a good way) – I would say that Edward Said and Peter Beinart are probably the two most eloquent proponents of the latter, and I certainly agree.
Is the "viable, sovereign nation" truly off the table, even now, when it is becoming increasingly obvious that the states quo is truly impossible. I am a great fan of Edward Said, but do not know Peter Beinart, but I will look at their writings to understand how a single state could work. So far, everything I have read says that a major issue in a one state solution is the credible risk that there could be a situation that if a majority of the population is Palestinian, that they would vote for a Hamas-like solution which is to wipe out their fellow Jewish citizens. This may be under estimating the power of democracy and/or the ability of the Palestinians to act faithfully, but it seems to be a serious issue. And I don't think the settlements cannot be addressed. This is Israel's responsibility and should never have been allowed in the first place. But each side is going to have to give.
I think this article gives an interesting summary of the intractability of the refugee problem. It fails to mention the expansion of settlements though. Its much more likely that Palestinians would have accepted a compromise on right to return if it weren't the case that Israel were expanding settlements in the land that - by every interpretation of internaational law - should have been Palestine's. Worrying about an intractable problem when a very tractable one is right there can appear to leave Israel off the hook. The key part of the conflict is quite simple - Israel has all the power so won't compromise on anything, whether or not it has existential implications for their state.
Crimes against humanity are bad, citing that they happened big time after WW2 and since... Well, yes, they have. And were many worse than what was done to the Palestinians, well yes, they were.
Should the Jews have been expelled from various Arab nations? No. At the same time they had someplace to go; Israel wanted them and gave them a home and citizenship.
Seventy-five years later Palestinians remain refugees and conditions of life are terrible. No one wants them or will take them in or will give them citizenship. Even if their grand-parents were complicit in bad acts in 1947 (many were, but not all), it is important not to punish children for the sins of their fathers. Sucks to be you is never a moral sentiment.
The sadness of empathetic, nuanced, and inclusive observations and rhetoric and proposals on this conflict is that there is no meaningul constituency for them. Meaning anyone's or any government's willingness to actually shape the conflict by providing a resource, imposing a cost, taking a risk to themselves, bearing a cost, coercing any actor economically or militarily via social ostracism, is almost always correlated with how one-sided their view of the conflict is. Those who 'care' enough to do something, care in all the wrong ways. Bless those self-selected few for whom this is not the case, who have really put their skin in the game, lives or fortunes on the line, for a peace without victory, but a peace of coexistence.
Intelligent and wise words from Matt Y. I think it is fair to say he makes a laudable attempt at 360 degree empathy, although his prioritization of certain Israeli/Jewish bottom-line interests is also apparent and is not the same as a disregard for Palestinian peoplehood and survival.
How many living *personal* survivors of the 1948 Nakba (flight/expulsions, whatever the mix was) are still alive today? Is this figure in the 1,000s, 10s of thousands? It could not be be approaching the ballpark of 100K by this point. How many of their primary caregivers (likely their children, and likely women) are of childbearing age or, to get medical about it, pre-menopausal? *Personal* rights to literal home town return would be far more accommodatable at 70 plus years, compared with descendants right of return. People granted that right may regard it as meaningless if it is not a family legacy, but just putting that out there.
The interesting thing is that basically very few of the commenters have read any of the "new historians" work but seem quite sure about the history of israel. As a result, we see a lot of really dumb analysis in this thread. Rather unfortunate. This is generally a smart, if somewhat blinded, group. But man, this topic has people way for off.
Even Matt's Dennis Ross mentions are sort of disproven by the academic literature on Camp David II.
The quality of this comment section is great. Thankful that there is a place where people can talk about complex, emotional topics in a way that is informative.
One historical omission here, which is at best lazy: There is a lot of passive language in this analysis which hides the fact that Arab states and palestinians were the ones who rejected partition and tried to annihilate Jews in Israel in 1948.
One ridiculous aspect of this analysis is to frame this about Israeli Jewish public opinion of fear of immigrants. If Oct 7 showed anything is that Isralis fear terrorists and rejectionists, not just having lots of ppl come in.
The conditions seem to be in part due to what the governing entity chooses to spend their money on. Of course, it's a win-win for them if the poor living conditions also get people radicalized.
"Seeking new funds, Hamas raises taxes in impoverished Gaza"
"The government offers few services in exchange, and most aid and relief projects are covered by the international community. The funds help Hamas operate a government and powerful armed wing."
I recognize that Israel has done horrible things to Palestinians. However, some of the horrible things are due at least partly to Palestinian actions.
Why impose a blockade? Because otherwise Hamas will import (even more) weapons for killing Jews. Why have “humiliating “ checkpoints? To try to stop suicide bombers before they can kill Jews. Why authorize artillery strike against civilian population centers? Because Hamas insists on using civilians as human shields.
There’s an echo of “boy who murdered his parents pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan” in this whole situation.
As others have pointed out, the real “nakba” was the Arab rejection of the 1947 UN partition. Talk about alternative histories, there would have been no refugees, and no wars in ‘56, ‘67 and ‘73. Israel would exist on a footprint well within even the 1967 borders and all the “occupied” regions would have always been under Arab control.
I see this type of opinion a lot, and it's only correct in hindsight.
According to UN estimates, on the eve of 1947 the population of Palestine was around 1.8 million, of which 600 thousand were Jews; so it was a 67/33 split.
The partition plan was going to allocate the land, including the majority of the Mediterranean coast, 40/60 in favor of the Jewish populations - please tell me which group of people could be reasonably expected to take that deal?
Sure, the Palestinians never waste an opportunity to waste an opportunity, but the 1947 partition plan wasn't one of them.
Nobody knows for sure what would have happened had the partition plan been accepted by the Arabs but I am pretty skeptical that it would have prevented war and displacement. The borders did not make a whole lot of geographic sense and neither party would have been committed to them. (In our own history, the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine was not.)
OK. Based on Matt's math if every single Palestinian refugee returned there would be 7.1m Jews and 7.8m Palestinians in the new combined state.
How about a deal that:
- Includes compensation for taken land
- Additional money to sign away the right of return ($25,000?) to maintain Jewish majority in Israel.
- Includes agreement with neighbors & US & other takers to accept (no longer penniless) Palestinian refugees.
- Deal stipulates Israel becomes a secular state
Note: Apparently the Palestinian birthrate no longer exceeds the Jewish Israeli birthrate.
I fully understand this is far from what Israel would accept, and since Israel is far more powerful this can be dismissed as a flight of fancy. I put it forward as something that reasonably respects the various claims and could at least theoretically resolve the solution.
Is there any external factor that would force an end to the current situation?
If Israel just keeps bottling up Gaza and taking bites of the West Bank until the remaining Palestinian West Bank territory is the size of Gaza, what would happen? Nothing? Is there any obvious reason this can't go on for the next 50 years?
Those aren't rhetorical questions, I'm trying to think if there's any reason the situation has to change. Will the Gaza population eventually get so high that it's impossible enough to ship them enough food? Something like that maybe?
Good article. I am not familiar with the history of this conflict beyond the typical partisan slogans of each side, and it's hard to get a balanced (non-superficial) overview from most of the news coverage I've seen. Is there a book that you would recommend that offers a reasonably unbiased account of the history?
Late to this, but a couple notes.
- Vast majority of Palestinians (90%+) in Jordan have citizenship. And 80% of Palestinian refugees reside in either the West Bank, Gaza, or Jordan. Those in Syria and Lebanon - especially - lack rights, it's true. In Lebanon, they live in conditions akin to those under Israeli occupation, with limited housing rights, employment rights, and no citizenship.
- When the issue has come up in peace talks, the formulas are more modest. Abbas in 2008 asked for 150,000 to be allowed to return. (Olmert had offered 5000.) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_Conference)
The suggestion is to try to recreate the Lebanese experiment in israel. Lebanon was created with a slight Christian majority and now it's dominated by Hezbollah, the Islamist terror group. Two separate states is fine.
I may be naive, but why couldn't Jordan give a section of its territory to match up with the West Bank territory and declare that the Palestinian State? It would require the Palestinians currently living in Gaza to move to this area, but it would give the Palestinian State a fairly large area and it would be theirs. The Jewish settlers would have to move, of course. I find it somewhat ironic that the only place that even resembles a Palestinian state is the West Bank and Gaza, both recently part of Israel. No one else in the mid-east is giving the Palestinians even a semblance of a state except Israel.
Umm, because Jordan is a sovereign country with its own people, even if the majority of them (including the citizens, not just the refugees) are Palestinian.
The issue is not that the Palestinians want their rights in a land; the issue is that the Palestinians want their rights in their land.
To me the only way to do that is a peaceful settlement with Israel, but Israel clearly has no intention, or incentive, to accommodate that legitimate desire, and the events of the past two weeks make that even more unlikely.
I have been following the long and complex thread of the comments, which leaves me with more questions than answers. For instance what is "Palestinian land"? Is it the land that is shown on the map developed in 1947, which looks to me as quite substantive, relative to the land that is "Israeli/Jewish land". While it is probably too late for that, what would Palestinian land actually be now -- show me on a map. Some country has to give Palestinians a land that has some links to "their land". For now, it seems that the only country willing to do that is Israel , which imperfect though it is is some measure of accommodation of that legitimate desire. But that is definitely not a solution that is working for either Palestinians or Israelis. What land would provide a more full measure of accommodation of that legitimate desire. Where is it? And the answer cannot be, the current state of Israel.
Of course not. The international consensus, such as it is, is a state around the 1967 borders (i.e. the West Bank and Gaza) - I think a truly viable, sovereign nation along those lines would be acceptable to the majority of Palestinians.
You’d have to find some sort of accommodation for Jerusalem (perhaps following the Vatican model), and compensation for the for refugees and the diaspora, but on paper this is all doable, or at least was 30 years ago before the expansion of settlements rendered this moot.
The right of return is intractable, and Matt is right in pointing out all the reasons that’s the case, so Palestinians are deluding themselves if they believe they are going back to the parts of Palestine from which they’re from that are now Israel-proper – and which is why most of them don’t actually expect to.
But “viable, sovereign nation” is really the operative term here, and that has long been off the table, so the only two remaining options are either the status quo ante of occupation and apartheid, or a single state that has the potential to be radically transformative (in a good way) – I would say that Edward Said and Peter Beinart are probably the two most eloquent proponents of the latter, and I certainly agree.
Is the "viable, sovereign nation" truly off the table, even now, when it is becoming increasingly obvious that the states quo is truly impossible. I am a great fan of Edward Said, but do not know Peter Beinart, but I will look at their writings to understand how a single state could work. So far, everything I have read says that a major issue in a one state solution is the credible risk that there could be a situation that if a majority of the population is Palestinian, that they would vote for a Hamas-like solution which is to wipe out their fellow Jewish citizens. This may be under estimating the power of democracy and/or the ability of the Palestinians to act faithfully, but it seems to be a serious issue. And I don't think the settlements cannot be addressed. This is Israel's responsibility and should never have been allowed in the first place. But each side is going to have to give.
I think this article gives an interesting summary of the intractability of the refugee problem. It fails to mention the expansion of settlements though. Its much more likely that Palestinians would have accepted a compromise on right to return if it weren't the case that Israel were expanding settlements in the land that - by every interpretation of internaational law - should have been Palestine's. Worrying about an intractable problem when a very tractable one is right there can appear to leave Israel off the hook. The key part of the conflict is quite simple - Israel has all the power so won't compromise on anything, whether or not it has existential implications for their state.
Crimes against humanity are bad, citing that they happened big time after WW2 and since... Well, yes, they have. And were many worse than what was done to the Palestinians, well yes, they were.
Should the Jews have been expelled from various Arab nations? No. At the same time they had someplace to go; Israel wanted them and gave them a home and citizenship.
Seventy-five years later Palestinians remain refugees and conditions of life are terrible. No one wants them or will take them in or will give them citizenship. Even if their grand-parents were complicit in bad acts in 1947 (many were, but not all), it is important not to punish children for the sins of their fathers. Sucks to be you is never a moral sentiment.
The sadness of empathetic, nuanced, and inclusive observations and rhetoric and proposals on this conflict is that there is no meaningul constituency for them. Meaning anyone's or any government's willingness to actually shape the conflict by providing a resource, imposing a cost, taking a risk to themselves, bearing a cost, coercing any actor economically or militarily via social ostracism, is almost always correlated with how one-sided their view of the conflict is. Those who 'care' enough to do something, care in all the wrong ways. Bless those self-selected few for whom this is not the case, who have really put their skin in the game, lives or fortunes on the line, for a peace without victory, but a peace of coexistence.
Intelligent and wise words from Matt Y. I think it is fair to say he makes a laudable attempt at 360 degree empathy, although his prioritization of certain Israeli/Jewish bottom-line interests is also apparent and is not the same as a disregard for Palestinian peoplehood and survival.
How many living *personal* survivors of the 1948 Nakba (flight/expulsions, whatever the mix was) are still alive today? Is this figure in the 1,000s, 10s of thousands? It could not be be approaching the ballpark of 100K by this point. How many of their primary caregivers (likely their children, and likely women) are of childbearing age or, to get medical about it, pre-menopausal? *Personal* rights to literal home town return would be far more accommodatable at 70 plus years, compared with descendants right of return. People granted that right may regard it as meaningless if it is not a family legacy, but just putting that out there.
The interesting thing is that basically very few of the commenters have read any of the "new historians" work but seem quite sure about the history of israel. As a result, we see a lot of really dumb analysis in this thread. Rather unfortunate. This is generally a smart, if somewhat blinded, group. But man, this topic has people way for off.
Even Matt's Dennis Ross mentions are sort of disproven by the academic literature on Camp David II.
The quality of this comment section is great. Thankful that there is a place where people can talk about complex, emotional topics in a way that is informative.
One historical omission here, which is at best lazy: There is a lot of passive language in this analysis which hides the fact that Arab states and palestinians were the ones who rejected partition and tried to annihilate Jews in Israel in 1948.
One ridiculous aspect of this analysis is to frame this about Israeli Jewish public opinion of fear of immigrants. If Oct 7 showed anything is that Isralis fear terrorists and rejectionists, not just having lots of ppl come in.
This is absolutely counter-productive for peace but I have empathy for how living in such terrible conditions is radicalizing
The conditions seem to be in part due to what the governing entity chooses to spend their money on. Of course, it's a win-win for them if the poor living conditions also get people radicalized.
"Seeking new funds, Hamas raises taxes in impoverished Gaza"
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-israel-middle-east-6620afdda34acc62ffa7fd822a749e8b
"The government offers few services in exchange, and most aid and relief projects are covered by the international community. The funds help Hamas operate a government and powerful armed wing."
I recognize that Israel has done horrible things to Palestinians. However, some of the horrible things are due at least partly to Palestinian actions.
Why impose a blockade? Because otherwise Hamas will import (even more) weapons for killing Jews. Why have “humiliating “ checkpoints? To try to stop suicide bombers before they can kill Jews. Why authorize artillery strike against civilian population centers? Because Hamas insists on using civilians as human shields.
There’s an echo of “boy who murdered his parents pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan” in this whole situation.
That works the other way too though, which is the problem. Everyone uses the other side's horrible things to justify or explain their own.
As others have pointed out, the real “nakba” was the Arab rejection of the 1947 UN partition. Talk about alternative histories, there would have been no refugees, and no wars in ‘56, ‘67 and ‘73. Israel would exist on a footprint well within even the 1967 borders and all the “occupied” regions would have always been under Arab control.
I see this type of opinion a lot, and it's only correct in hindsight.
According to UN estimates, on the eve of 1947 the population of Palestine was around 1.8 million, of which 600 thousand were Jews; so it was a 67/33 split.
The partition plan was going to allocate the land, including the majority of the Mediterranean coast, 40/60 in favor of the Jewish populations - please tell me which group of people could be reasonably expected to take that deal?
Sure, the Palestinians never waste an opportunity to waste an opportunity, but the 1947 partition plan wasn't one of them.
And what was the Arab counteroffer to the proposed partition?
A fully independent Palestine with a sizeable Jewish minority, de facto, but I think that's besides the point I was making.
Nobody knows for sure what would have happened had the partition plan been accepted by the Arabs but I am pretty skeptical that it would have prevented war and displacement. The borders did not make a whole lot of geographic sense and neither party would have been committed to them. (In our own history, the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine was not.)
OK. Based on Matt's math if every single Palestinian refugee returned there would be 7.1m Jews and 7.8m Palestinians in the new combined state.
How about a deal that:
- Includes compensation for taken land
- Additional money to sign away the right of return ($25,000?) to maintain Jewish majority in Israel.
- Includes agreement with neighbors & US & other takers to accept (no longer penniless) Palestinian refugees.
- Deal stipulates Israel becomes a secular state
Note: Apparently the Palestinian birthrate no longer exceeds the Jewish Israeli birthrate.
I fully understand this is far from what Israel would accept, and since Israel is far more powerful this can be dismissed as a flight of fancy. I put it forward as something that reasonably respects the various claims and could at least theoretically resolve the solution.
Is there any external factor that would force an end to the current situation?
If Israel just keeps bottling up Gaza and taking bites of the West Bank until the remaining Palestinian West Bank territory is the size of Gaza, what would happen? Nothing? Is there any obvious reason this can't go on for the next 50 years?
Those aren't rhetorical questions, I'm trying to think if there's any reason the situation has to change. Will the Gaza population eventually get so high that it's impossible enough to ship them enough food? Something like that maybe?
Good article. I am not familiar with the history of this conflict beyond the typical partisan slogans of each side, and it's hard to get a balanced (non-superficial) overview from most of the news coverage I've seen. Is there a book that you would recommend that offers a reasonably unbiased account of the history?