“It’s just that… well, it seems impractical, given the information now available to us.”
Ramallah, April 15 – A central sticking point of the Arab-Israeli conflict may well disappear, observers say, because one side had realized the insurmountable financial hurdle its fulfillment would present: property values in Israel’s commercial and financial capital have reached such heights that any aspiration of “reclaiming” it for the descendants of 1948 Arab refugees will prove beyond the means of even the wealthiest ones.
Reviews of Tel Aviv real estate prices have sent Palestinians reeling, witnesses report, as the data hit them with the sobering realization that they will never, even in another four generations, be able to afford to live there.
“The Right of Return is the Holy of Holies,” declared Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. “It’s just that… well, it seems impractical, given the information now available to us. Tel Aviv is the most desirable land to seize from the Zionist usurper, of course. What we must also take into account, however, is the day after that seizure, what that means for a sustainable way to live…”
“What I’m saying is, never mind about that Right of Return,” he continued. “Let’s talk about our other demands.”
Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled British Mandate Palestine in late 1947 and early 1948 as Jews and Arabs fought for control of population centers and farmland. Governments of the surrounding Arab countries urged their brethren to move out of the way to enable a swift Arab victory over the poorly-equipped, outnumbered, besieged Jews of the territory, after which the Arab residents could loot their fill, and many complied. Several cases of Jewish fighters chasing out Arabs occurred in strategic areas where those villages controlled access to Jewish communities, but the vast majority of the 1947-48 Arab refugees never saw a Jewish fighter. Israel declared statehood in May 1948 and mounted a successful war of survival, holding on to significant territorial gains and preventing the Arab refugees from returning.
The international community has kept those refugees and their descendants in perpetuity in a state of stateless limbo, unlike all other refugee populations that are resettled in new countries within years of displacement – thus nurturing the hope of reversing the shameful defeat in 1948 at the hands of the lowly Jews. The promise of that return has long sat at the very core of Palestinian demands for any final-status agreement with Israel.
But one gander at real estate prices in Tel Aviv put the kibosh on that.
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