time passes but the issues remain... any dispassionate views anyone? seems to me there are ways israel could implement a right of return / fair buy out trade for instance, in a way which takes into account understandable Israeli demographic concerns, and puts an end to this disgrace and grave humanitarian problem of palestinian refugee camps cost? 1) not much compared to the costs of war, military and security expenses etc... 2) even i would be happy to donate for a just settlement, think about it ;-) but more seriously i believe the Old Powers could & would pick up part of the tab if the US leads benefits? 1) remove the teeth off a lot of extremism supporters, gradually empowering palestinians etc and incentivizing them to control their own 2) make open-air restaurants a bit safer around the world i mean, we had the red brigades, the red army fraction, the IRA etc etc, still got the ETA but not as much... these things DID find a solution... where there is a will... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3629923.stm "Right of return: Palestinian dream By Heather Sharp BBC News Online About 300,000 Palestinians fled the 1967 war US President George W Bush's comments on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan included tough words on one of the thorniest issues in the Middle East conflict - Palestinian refugees. The fate of the estimated four million Palestinians living in refugee communities scattered around the Middle East is highly controversial. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were displaced from their homes during the Israeli-Arab wars in 1948 and 1967. They and their descendents live, many crammed into overcrowded enclaves, mainly in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The Palestinians have long asserted that the refugees have a moral and legal right to return to what was once Palestine - including land which is now Israel. Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date UNGA resolution 194 Some of the refugees still retain old deeds and keys to homes now occupied by Israelis. But for Israel, granting the right of return would be tantamount to surrendering the country's identity. With a population of 6.6m, of which 5.4m are Jewish, opening the door to a potential 4 million returnees would threaten the demographic balance - and thus the very nature - of the world's only Jewish state. Legal debate In his statement, Mr Bush said that once a Palestinian state is created it should provide space for the Palestinian returnees: "A solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel," he said. Life Lebanon's overcrowded camps offers few pleasures But to many Palestinians, the right to return is an inalienable basic human right to each individual refugee, and is therefore not for Palestinian negotiators - or anyone else - to bargain with. The Palestinians base their claim to the right to return on United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 194, which was passed in 1948. It states that Palestinian "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date". Click here for a map of Palestinian refugee populations Further UNGA resolutions have since been passed, and arguments are also drawn from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Opponents point out, however, that UNGA resolutions are not binding in the way that UN Security Resolutions are. They also question whether the language used in resolution 194 amounts to a "right" to return, and raise their own human rights fears that returnees would be hostile to Israel. Arafat says Palestinians will never give up the right of return There is also debate over the number of refugees who initially left in 1948, and whether it was Arabs or Jews who caused them to go. In 1951, Unrwa, the UN agency established to care for the welfare of the Palestinian refugees, established a list of 860,000 people who were considered to have lost homes and livelihoods in Palestine. After the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, another wave of Palestinians were displaced. As Israel expanded its territory, an estimated 300,000 Palestinians left the West Bank and Gaza, most of them to settle in Jordan. Final status issue The Israelis have long called for the refugees to be absorbed into their Arab host countries, arguing that that is what Israel did with large numbers of Sephardic Jews expelled from Arab lands after 1948. But most the Arab nations have refused, wishing neither to capitulate to Israeli demands nor to upset the demographic balances of their own populations. The burgeoning Palestinian refugee population lives mostly in poverty Jordan has granted temporary national passports to Palestinians, but in Lebanon they are denied access to education and health services, while they are subject to strict political control in Syria. The intractable problem has been considered a "final status" question in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, left until last along with other thorny issues such as the status of Jerusalem. There was talk of a "broken taboo" when it was discussed at the Camp David talks between Yasser Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000. Although the talks collapsed, Mr Barak for the first time allowed a small number of Palestinians back into Israel for "family reunifications". Pragmatic proposals While the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian militant groups maintain that the right of return is non-negotiable, some prominent Palestinians have taken a more pragmatic attitude in recent years. In 2002, Sari Nusseibeh, an academic and former representative of the PLO in Jerusalem controversially proposed a settlement where Palestinian refugees would only be able to return to a Palestinian state. Also, the unofficial "Geneva Accord" peace framework, proposed by former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo in 2003, relinquished the full right of return. It would have allowed Israel to determine the number of Palestinians who would be allowed back into Israel as part of a deal securing the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has declared in response to Mr Bush's statement that Palestinians will never give up the right of refugees to return to their homeland. He has also previously said that the right of return should be implemented in a way which takes into account Israeli demographic concerns. How this could ever be possible - and how many refugees would actually return to Israel given the chance - remains far from clear. "
Israel does NOT want peace! The last 50 years has proven that. They practice a radical, extreme, violent isolationist policy. Why would the 'chosen ones' really care about anyone else? You'd also best ask that of all the jewish politicians who run the USA government an dmedia.....who do they work for...keep believing your myths...
The right of return? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! It's actually funny to have this issue brought up today when they are murdering the Lebanese in Lebanon and each other in Gaza. Yeah, great idea to resettle these murderous fanatics in Israel. The right of return is a non-starter and the entire world including the arab countries knows that full well. In 1948 the UN partitioned Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It did NOT partition it into two arab states and Israel will never agree to become the 23 arab state. Of course the refugees should be allowed to return to Gaza and the West Bank - fun places to be nowdays, especially Gaza which clearly proves that they are medieval savages who if left alone will keep murdering each other for generations to come. The idea of a two-state solution is officially dead, it's either a three state solution - Israel, Fatahland (aka the West Bank) and Hamastan (aka Gaza) or the WB should be annexed by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt.
Was reading some stuff today on the situation, one group was complaining they hadnt received any orders from PAKISTAN, (was it fatah, the elected ones?)the other complaining they hadnt received official blessing from egypt, or name your psychopathic proxy middle eastern government. That would be hamas, maybe. Who fucking cares, its evident that if israel is a problem to these psychos, it clearly isnt their biggest problem.
UN Resolution 194 In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 which declared (amongst other things) that in the context of a general peace agreement "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so" and that "compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return." The resolution also mandated the creation of the United Nations Conciliation Commission. However, parts of the resolution were never implemented, resulting in the Palestinian refugee problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab-Israeli_War
well, sorry to trouble your dinner mate... there's a couple million people living in utter misery over there, in a total war zone...no choice of their own... and it's been going on for 2-3 generations... see, not everybody is a hamas/fatah fighter... bon appetit http://1158munich.blogspot.com/2007/05/al-jazeera-english-airs-exclusive.html
Screw UN resolutions (especially non-binding ones) and absurd international laws, they are not worth the paper they are written on. If they mandate a nation to commit national suicide and the nation refuses to oblige - there is something wrong with these laws and resolutions, not with the nation. General Assembly resolutions are especially ironic, when 100 muslim countries keep voting against Israel no sane person takes them seriously. The UN was DOA to begin with and at any rate, given that the arab world refused to comply with the resolution partitioning Palestine (and they are still not in compliance) and has broken all international laws thousands of times, their demands that Israel complied with resolutions and laws requiring Israel to self-destruct are a tad hypocritical to put it mildly.
Hmm, but everybody voted for either hamas or fatah during their last elections. If they voted for a "Peace with Israel" party....Oy vei, what am I talking about, there is no such party, organization or movement not only in Palestine but in the entire Arab/Muslim world.
It is so funny that the same organization who supervised the creation of your illegal entity is now being attacked by you. At one point of time, the UN was your US! when it became irrelevant, you found it convenient to walk all over it and its resolutions. zionist back stabber. By the way, I heard that the Arabs broke UN resolution millions of times not thousands as you claimed! UN Resolutions violated by Israel, 1955-1992 . Resolution 106: "... 'condemns' Israel for Gaza raid" 2. Resolution 111: "...'condemns' Israel for raid on Syria that killed fifty-six people" 3. Resolution 127: "...'recommends' Israel suspend its 'no-man's zone' in Jerusalem" 4. Resolution 162: "...'urges' Israel to comply with UN decisions" 5. Resolution 171: "...determines flagrant violations' by Israel in its attack on Syria" 6. Resolution 228: "...'censures' Israel for its attack on Samu in the West Bank, then under Jordanian control" 7. Resolution 237: "...'urges' Israel to allow return of new 1967 Palestinian refugees" 8. Resolution 248: "... 'condemns' Israel for its massive attack on Karameh in Jordan" 9. Resolution 250: "... 'calls' on Israel to refrain from holding military parade in Jerusalem" 10. Resolution 251: "... 'deeply deplores' Israeli military parade in Jerusalem in defiance of Resolution 250" 11. Resolution 252: "...'declares invalid' Israel's acts to unify Jerusalem as Jewish capital" 12. Resolution 256: "... 'condemns' Israeli raids on Jordan as 'flagrant violation"" 13. Resolution 259: "...'deplores' Israel's refusal to accept UN mission to probe occupation" 14. Resolution 262: "...'condemns' Israel for attack on Beirut airport" 15. Resolution 265: "... 'condemns' Israel for air attacks for Salt in Jordan" 16. Resolution 267: "...'censures' Israel for administrative acts to change the status of Jerusalem" 17. Resolution 270: "...'condemns' Israel for air attacks on villages in southern Lebanon" 18. Resolution 271: "...'condemns' Israel's failure to obey UN resolutions on Jerusalem" 19. Resolution 279: "...'demands' withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon" 20. Resolution 280: "....'condemns' Israeli's attacks against Lebanon" 21. Resolution 285: "...'demands' immediate Israeli withdrawal form Lebanon" 22. Resolution 298: "...'deplores' Israel's changing of the status of Jerusalem" 23. Resolution 313: "...'demands' that Israel stop attacks against Lebanon" 24. Resolution 316: "...'condemns' Israel for repeated attacks on Lebanon" 25. Resolution 317: "...'deplores' Israel's refusal to release Arabs abducted in Lebanon" 26. Resolution 332: "...'condemns' Israel's repeated attacks against Lebanon" 27. Resolution 337: "...'condemns' Israel for violating Lebanon's sovereignty" 28. Resolution 347: "...'condemns' Israeli attacks on Lebanon" 29. Resolution 425: "...'calls' on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon" 30. Resolution 427: "...'calls' on Israel to complete its withdrawal from Lebanon' 31. Resolution 444: "...'deplores' Israel's lack of cooperation with UN peacekeeping forces" 32. Resolution 446: "...'determines' that Israeli settlements are a 'serious obstruction' to peace and calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention" 33. Resolution 450: "...'calls' on Israel to stop attacking Lebanon" 34. Resolution 452: "...'calls' on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories" 35. Resolution 465: "...'deplores' Israel's settlements and asks all member states not to assist Israel's settlements program" 36. Resolution 467: "...'strongly deplores' Israel's military intervention in Lebanon" 37. Resolution 468: "...'calls' on Israel to rescind illegal expulsions of two Palestinian mayors and a judge and to facilitate their return" 38. Resolution 469: "...'strongly deplores' Israel's failure to observe the council's order not to deport Palestinians" 39. Resolution 471: "... 'expresses deep concern' at Israel's failure to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention" 40. Resolution 476: "... 'reiterates' that Israel's claims to Jerusalem are 'null and void'" 41. Resolution 478: "...'censures (Israel) in the strongest terms' for its claim to Jerusalem in its 'Basic Law'" 42. Resolution 484: "...'declares it imperative' that Israel re-admit two deported Palestinian mayors" 43. Resolution 487: "...'strongly condemns' Israel for its attack on Iraq's nuclear facility" 44. Resolution 497: "...'decides' that Israel's annexation of Syria's Golan Heights is 'null and void' and demands that Israel rescind its decision forthwith" 45. Resolution 498: "...'calls' on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon" 46. Resolution 501: "...'calls' on Israel to stop attacks against Lebanon and withdraw its troops" 47. Resolution 509: "...'demands' that Israel withdraw its forces forthwith and unconditionally from Lebanon" 48. Resolution 515: "...'demands' that Israel lift its siege of Beirut and allow food supplies to be brought in" 49. Resolution 517: "...'censures' Israel for failing to obey UN resolutions and demands that Israel withdraw its forces from Lebanon" Continued on the next post;