Monday, April 20, 2009

The next time you hear the phrase "the Right of Return"

Ha’aretz is carrying a report issued by the World Bank on the woefully inadequate water infrastructure within the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip and calling for Israelis to give it up rather than direct the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip to start drilling deeper wells and spend their budgets on improving water infrastructure rather than on ‘security’ needs.

Regardless of the cause, this is one of the primary reasons why if a Palestinian state where to be established the Palestinian refugee camps throughout the Arab world will never be emptied. The land cannot maintain an influx of several million people nor will any Palestinian government allow the return of several million Palestinians to lands under its control. It would be national suicide.

One of the major hurtles in negotiations of the Palestinian leadership is the refusal of the leadership to admit it and give up the whole “right of return”. Now, if the Palestinian end game was the establishment of a Palestinian state whereby the Jews were really driven from the land into the sea - then there’s room for the ‘right of return’ -it just has no place given current realities. T’is but one of many ironies which abound in this conflict.

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