On the 66th anniversary of the Nakba, on the day Israel was founded in 1948, Israel continues to deny the right of return to 7.4 million Palestinians, a profound injustice which makes Palestinian refugees the largest remaining refugee population in the world. In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians, or 65 percent of the population, fled or were expelled by force from their homes and prevented from returning. Many settled in the neighboring West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Tens of thousands more were displaced in the 1967 war in which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, lands that Palestinians seek for a state. Today, some 1.5 million refugees remain in the region's 58 camps, where the UN Relief and Works Agency has provided education, medical care and food since it was created in 1950 to help uprooted Palestinians. Both in principle and practice, the right of return is a necessary condition for achieving peace. International law endows Palestinian refugees with the right of voluntary return to their homes, to restoration of their properties and to compensation. This inalienable right is not subject to negotiation, bartering, surrender or expiration, and can only be fulfilled when an individual is able to exercise his or her free choice. The transition of the refugee crisis from temporary to seemingly permanent is one of the most contentious issues on the negotiating table. In Palestinian public discourse, a large-scale return is still portrayed as the main goal. Each refugee has the right to choose his or her fate, including return or resettlement in a state of Palestine. But Palestinian officials have also hinted at flexibility in the context of a final peace deal, an accommodation that should allay Israeli fears of a mass return which would dilute the state's Jewish majority. While Palestine recognized Israel's right to exist starting from 1988, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's promotion of a “nationality bill” asserts that Israel is a Jewish nation-state, even though the concept of an exclusively Jewish state naturally entails the denial of the Nakba. It is another way of asking the Palestinians to deny their existence. No people should be asked to do that. No Palestinian should be portrayed as an immigrant or an intruder in his or her own land. They were there in 1948, and for centuries before that. Rather than accepting historical responsibility, rather than acknowledging the truth about the birth of Israel and addressing it as a step toward peace, the Israeli government attempts to wipe out the event from history. In Israel, it is forbidden by law for higher education institutions to promote or celebrate the Nakba. If you can erase the narrative, you can erase its people. This Israeli government, in particular, is taking extraordinary measures to achieve this. No wonder negotiations fell apart. Palestinians live under military control in the West Bank, under siege in the Gaza Strip, under institutional discrimination within Israel-proper and East Jerusalem, and in heartbreaking conditions throughout the exile. Any solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that does not guarantee the right of return is unacceptable. The right of return for Palestinian refugees to their homes from where they were forcibly transferred is a sacred right that cannot be compromised, a right guaranteed by international law and enshrined in UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Israel's demand to be recognized as a Jewish state is meant to deprive refugees – uprooted and still waiting, with keys still in hand - of that right.
