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30/07/2008
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For the first time in Israel's 60-year history, a cross-party parliamentary caucus dealing with the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees was launched in the Knesset on Tuesday.
The move came amid a groundswell of parliamentary activity around the world, including in the US and Canada, to reroute funding from UNRWA - the UN body that deals with Palestinian refugees and their descendants - toward the resettlement of some of the refugees and their descendants in other countries.
The new lobby, which is chaired by MKs Amira Dotan (Kadima) and Benny Elon (NU/NRP), is made up of parliamentarians from across the political spectrum, including lawmakers from Labor, the Likud and Shas. No Arab MKs have joined the caucus so far, although all non-ministerial members of the Knesset were invited to do so.
"I am not trying to change the Palestinian narrative, but to alter the state of mind of the refugees and their descendants," Dotan said at the inaugural meeting of the Caucus for the Rehabilitation of Palestinian Refugees. "We have to see how we can work with UNRWA - not against UNRWA - on this issue," she said.
"This is the first time that the Knesset is formally and openly dealing with the issue of Palestinian refugees not in a reactionary manner or as apologists, but out of Israeli interests," said Elon, who advocates dealing with the issue head-on for humanitarian reasons. "Without the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees, no peace will come," he said.
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21/07/2008
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Marking another milestone in a long legal battle for Jewish rights in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood of Jerusalem, the Supreme Court has ordered yet another eviction of Arab squatters and the return of a home to its Jewish owners. The home in question is located in the renewed ancient Jewish neighborhood built around the 2,000-year-old gravesite and tomb of the Tannaitic Sage Shimon HaTzaddik.
The neighborhood comprises the Nachalat Shimon area, populated through the 1940's by individual Jewish families, and the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood, owned by the Vaad HaEdah HaSfaradit (Sephardic Congregation Council). Both were abandoned in light of Arab attacks during the War of Independence, and later became populated by Jordanian Arabs. The latest court ruling recognizes the Jewish ownership of houses there, and orders the Arab squatters removed.
This past Thursday, far-left MK Yossi Beilin of Meretz indicated that the tricky problem of "Arab refugees" would have to be solved, at least partially, by European countries. Speaking in a closed session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Beilin took the unprecedented step of telling a group of European ambassadors that their countries must announce how many refugees, and their descendants, they would be willing to absorb as part of a future Israeli-Arab peace agreement
Elon is the author of the "Right Road to Peace" plan, also known as the Israel Initiative, which he has long promoted as an alternative to the accepted Roadmap two-state solution. "The establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza will only prolong the Arab-Israeli conflict and exact a heavy toll in human life," Elon has often explained. "The establishment of such a state will not solve the real problems that perpetuate the conflict: The Palestinian demand for the right of return of refugees to areas within the State of Israel, the rehabilitation of the refugees, the status of Jerusalem, and the nature of the Palestinian state and its borders. Within a short time, these unresolved problems will resurface and draw the region into yet another war."
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20/07/2008
Nofia Vered blog
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I found an interesting new website (new to me anyway) regarding a solution to the Arab refugee problem in Israel. The website is informative and valuable and I suggest placing it in your Favorites/bookmarks file and sharing it with friends.
Our whole country is being held captive by this problem and it is the source of the Arab claims on Israel and the "Palestinian" Authority
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17/07/2008
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Meretz MK Yossi Beilin on Thursday called on European countries to declare how many Palestinian refugees and their descendants they would be willing to absorb as part of any future peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
"It is important that we know now how many Palestinian refugees [third] countries are willing to absorb, so that when we get to the critical moment [of a peace agreement] we will be prepared for such an eventuality, and be able to carry it out," Beilin said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.
The super-sensitive issue of dealing with the Palestinian refugees, has been largely untouched in Israel for years, due to the Palestinian demand for the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees to Israel which the Jewish State flatly rejects as a move which will indelibly alter the character of the country.
"We want to put this issue on the table, and not keep it under the table, and deal with it not tomorrow but today so that we can work on an agreed upon solution," said MK Amira Dotan of the ruling Kadima Party, who co-chairs a Knesset committee on the issue together with MK Benny Elon of the rightist National Union-National Religious Party. "We want to push the buttons so that the dynamics can begin," Dotan said.
In contrast to Beilin, who shares the view of the international community that a solution to the refugee problem can only happen after a peace accord is reached between Israelis and Palestinians, Elon believes that the issue of Palestinian refugees can - and should - be dealt with now, especially since no peace agreement is in sight in the foreseeable future.
"It has been a big mistake not to deal with the issue of the Palestinian refugees," said Elon, who advocates dealing with the issue head-on for humanitarian reasons.
A cornerstone of the hawkish parliamentarian's recent diplomatic initiative includes dismantling the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the mammoth UN body that deals with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and resettling the Palestinian refugees into countries outside of Israel, in keeping with long-standing Israeli government policy that an influx of refugees would demographically damage Israel's character as a Jewish state.
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24/06/2008
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Jordan is in an uproar over the revival of the "Jordanian option" - the thesis that Jordan is the true home to the "Palestinians." Reports that a top advisor to US Presidential candidate John McCain is promoting this idea have led to a flurry of press reports in the Arab media, as well as a denial from Jordan's King Abdullah himself. Some officials in Israel and the United States, however, feel it's the only way to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state.
Though Arabs today call Israel "Palestine," MK Benny Elon (National Union) told IsraelNationalNews that in this case, "the words 'Palestinian homeland' can mean Jordan as well... Certainly Abdullah himself remembers that the original Palestine includes Jordan - but perhaps he assumes that everyone else does not." Elon was referring to the fact that the area of Palestine, as recognized by the League of Nations and the British rulers nearly 100 years ago, includes what is today Israel and Jordan. King Abdullah's remarks, therefore, can mean precisely the same idea that Elon has been promoting: The Arabs of Judea and Samaria should be "annexed" to Jordan.
For years, Elon has been promoting a peace plan called The Right Road to Peace, or the Israel Initiative, as an alternative to the accepted Roadmap two-state solution. "The establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (the West Bank) will only prolong the Arab-Israeli conflict and exact a heavy toll in human life," Elon explains.
Elon explained that Jordan is very wary of having on its western border a Hamas state, which a future Palestinian state is likely to become. "Jordan also has an increasingly extremist-Muslim Iraq to contend with on its eastern border - a very uncomfortable situation for King Abdullah," he continued. Elon noted that the Jordanian monarch dispatched his former Prime Minister Abdel Salam al-Majali to discuss the plan with the Israelis.
"If Jordan knows that the plan is serious, and has the support of the United States, and that it can work, it will support it," Elon said.
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