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Page last updated
May 7, 2007
Understanding the conflict
The refugees
General: The website PalestineRemembered provides a comprehensive database of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages and cities from which the over 700,000 refugeees originated.
10. Forced Migration Review 26: Palestinian displacement: a case apart?
The September 2006 issue includes a major feature on Palestinian displacement. Twenty-eight articles by UN, Palestinian and international human rights organisations, Palestinian scholars in the diaspora and Jewish and Israeli activist groups examine the root causes of the displacement of Palestinians, the consequences of the failure to apply international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Palestinian entitlement to protection and compensation.
9. Jewish Voice for Peace responds to Benny Morris
Jewish Voice for Peace has reproduced the original Ha’aretz interview and provides links to a number of responses to Morris, as well as to a reply by him.
See also Joel Beinen's long (c.5,200 words) review of Morris's work No more tears for Merip.
Ari Shavit
An interview with Israeli historian Benny Morris about his two new books Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 and Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited with an account of Israeli atrocities in 1947/8 and a highly disputable justification of the expulsion of the Palestinians. Ari Shavit is an Israeli writer and journalist.
7. Palestinian Thoughts on the Right of Return
Memri Special Report - No. 4, March 30, 2001 No.4
Yotam Feldner and Aluma Solnik
'The Oslo Agreement's mutual recognition as a basis for a solution to the conflict was inscribed in the Israeli consciousness in a way that allows for the continuation of the existence of Israel as a Zionist state with a Jewish majority. In the Palestinian consciousness, however, Israel's Jewish majority and its Zionist character are not sacred, and certainly not more important than the Right of Return.'
Subsequent to adding this reference I received the following comment:"This site as I am sure you know [I didn't] is basically sponsored by Israeli intelligence. While I know of no reason to question its translations, its selection is obviously skewed and this is an example of it. It does not mention except indirectly the position taken by Palestinian negotiators at Taba and ignores or downplays subsequent statements by Arafat and other Palestinians that the implementation of the right would have to take account of Israel's legitimate demographic concerns. Nor does it mention the position of Sari Nusseibeh [see entry 3 below] who explicitly calls for the right to be confined to return to the Palestinian state.
"What is true and the MEMRI piece establishes it is that the Palestinian position is unclear and ambiguous and any attempt to openly and explicitly abandon the maximalist definition of the right of return would provoke furious debate and accusations of betrayal - as has already happened to Sari Nusseibeh. But an Israeli government that was serious about peace would exploit this opening not just claim that the Arabs want to swamp israel with millions of returnees. Certainly, as the piece does indicate, Arab governments would not bust a gut for the full right of return as long as they got the chance to dump the refugees in the Palestinian state."
Selective Memri is an independent investigation by Brian Whitaker, the Guardian, 12th August 2002
6. A historical controversy: the causes of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
Philip Mendes
Australian Jewish Democratic Society website
A comprehensive and informative overview of changing interpretations of the refugee problem since 1948.
c. 7,200 words
6a. The Forgotten Refugees: the causes of the post-1948 Jewish Exodus from Arab CountriesPhilip Mendes, 2002
c.4,200 words'This paper explores the question of the other Middle Eastern refugees - the Jews who fled or were expelled from Arab countries between 1948 and the mid 1950s [especially Iraq... It] acknowledges the role of both anti-Jewish hostility, and the attraction of Zionism and the newly-created State of Israel.'
5. The Palestinians' Right of Return
Robin Miller, a freelance writer in New Orleans focusing on social justice issues.
An uncompromising, lavishly referenced, account of the creation of the refugee problem - from an anti-Zionist perspective.
c. 3,100 words
4. Principles and Mechanisms for a Durable Solution for Palestinian Refugees
Published by BADIL Resource Center,November 2001
This is the submission of the PLO at Taba, together with a 'private' Israeli response. There is also a 3000-word summary and analysis of the proposals by the BADIL Resource Centre
3. Opening the Debate on the Right of Return
Sari Hanafi
Middle East Report 222, Spring 2002
c. 3,300 words
Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian Authority's diplomatic representative in Jerusalem, challenges an absolute right to return...
2. Palestinian Right to Return: Sacred, Legal and Possible
Second Revised Edition
Dr. Salman Abu Sitta
The Palestinian Return Centre, London, May 1999
A substantial c.15,000 word analysis of the issues at stake.
1. Critical Analysis Of The Birth Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem
Extracts from Righteous Victims, by Benny Morris, pp. 252-258
