What is the right of return and why is it important to Palestinians ?
Under customary international law, refugees have the right to return to their homes and homeland regardless of the circumstances of their initial flight, and to receive restitution of their properties. This right was affirmed for Palestinian refugees by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1949, and has been re-stated on numerous occasions since.
Despite this, Israel turned over the homes, businesses, fields, and personal property of Palestinian refugees to Jewish settlers, and razed as many as 600 Palestinian villages. Israel violently repelled any attempts by Palestinians to return across armistice lines, killing thousands in the early years of the state, and hundreds more in the recent Great March of Return that began in 2018 from Gaza.
While a Jew from anywhere in the world can immigrate to Israel, Palestinians are still prevented from returning. Israel violates the right of return each and every day that it continues to bar Palestinians from their homeland.
To Palestinians, the original Nakba and the forced displacements that have followed since 1948 represent the essential injustice that they have suffered at Israel’s hands. Elected officials should follow the lead of American Jewish commentator Peter Beinart, not to mention decades of Palestinian speakers before him, and insist that the Palestinian right of return be justly addressed.