#right of return

[muffinlevelchicanery]

Poster by Josh MacPhee

[prickly-porcupine-memes]

[sayruq]

[phobic-human]

We Will Return to Palestine

May 15, Day of Palestinian Struggle

Artist: Marc Rudin/Jihad Mansour

Circa 1981

[indecisiveavocado]

sooo sorry we were raped and genocided and ethnically cleansed from our land and prevented from returning. totally our fault.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Repost from @key48return

Credit: Image and caption above from @key48return (this is a great account to follow — has been banging the drum on right of return for years)

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Ramallah, April 10 - 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.

[fairiedance]

Palestine Designs

My best friend is an absolutely brilliant scientist and all around amazing person. He genuinely tries to help everyone he meets. He'll interrupt a lunch to go buy lunch for the homeless people too. He's been involved in activism for more causes than I can count, often for things (like LGBTQ+ issues) that don't affect him personally, just because it's the right thing to do. He takes care of everyone else even when he doesn't have much for himself.

He is Palestinian, and a lot of his friends and family all around the Levant are being hurt either directly or financially by the war. Those of you who have been following this account know that for a little over a week now I have been adding Palestine related designs to my Redbubble shop. ALL PROCEEDS from these will go first and foremost to helping his girlfriend afford to join him in America safely, and after that helping his other loved ones weather this war.

Thank you to everyone who has helped out so far!

Click Here to See All Designs

(available on shirts, bags, stickers, pins, etc.)

[agentfascinateur]

Ireland, Spain & Norway to recognize the State of Palestine 🇵🇸 on 28.05.2024

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼💜💜💜

[alyfoxxxen]

Trump says no right of return for Palestinians under his Gaza proposal | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

[concidineart]

“There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with.” ― Refaat Alareer, Gaza Writes Back

your daily click

[eretzyisrael]

In response to action from CAMERA’s Israel office, the Associated Press has removed fallacious reporting wrongly claiming that “International law gives Palestinian refugees and their descendants the right to return to their homes.” As a result, several dozen secondary media outlets across North America have likewise corrected.

As reported by CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal last week, the egregious invention about international law appeared in the Oct. 31 article, “Banning UNRWA will lead to a vacuum and more suffering for Palestinians, the agency’s chief says,” by AP’s Baraa Anwer and Sara El Deeb.

In fact, there is nothing in international law which gives Palestinian refugees and their descendants “the right to return to their homes.”

The non-binding U.N. Resolution 194, passed by the United Nations’ General Assembly, does not “give” Palestinians “the right to return to their homes.” Moreover, its language — “should be permitted” — denotes a suggestion, not a guarantee. The section of the resolution dealing with refugees states:

RESOLVES that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible; INSTRUCTS the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation, and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate organs and agencies of the United Nations;

Arabs fleeing in the Galilee, 1948 (Israel’s Government Press Office)

As CAMERA’s Alex Safian has previously detailed, the resolution conditions the return of refugees (Palestinian refugees are not specified, and therefore the resolution equally applies to Jewish refugees from Arab countries) on their willingness to “live at peace with their neighbours,” a condition that was not accepted by the Palestinian leadership or the vast majority of the refugees themselves who invoked Resolution 194. Furthermore, the resolution placed repatriation, resettlement and compensation on equal footing; meaning that return is one of several possible options.

Finally, the main part of the resolution called for the establishment of a Conciliation Commission, which convened in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1949. While both the Arab states and Israel attended, the former declined to negotiate directly with the Jewish state and rejected any agreements.

On Nov. 7, AP editors republished the article with amended language. The more accurate formulation now states:

Palestinians say they should be allowed to exercise the right generally recognized under international law for refugees to return to their home countries under certain conditions. International legal experts have debated how that right applies to the Palestinian refugees. Israel says it does not and has refused their return, arguing it would end the country’s Jewish majority. The issue has been a stumbling block in past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Notably, AP entirely removed the reference to descendants having a Palestinian “right of return.” The Palestinian insistence that an untold number of future generations ad infinitum should be allowed to “return” is a glaring anomaly in refugee situations globally.

In addition, editors appended the following note to the bottom of the article:

This story was first published on Oct. 31, 2024. It was updated on Nov. 7, 2024 to make clear that Israel disputes that the right of return for refugees, generally recognized under international law, applies to Palestinian refugees.

Compared to the new language in the article itself, the appended note, which AP refrained from labeling a “correction,” contains significantly more muddled language. It’s not only Israel which disputes that the “right of return” applies to Palestinian refugees. Plenty of international law scholars do as well, as the improved article now notes.

Moreover, it’s a stretch to assert that the right of return for refugees is “generally recognized under international law.” 

[edgarthepooh]

About right of return

People are laughing about Americans who support passionately in the Palestinian right of return while they themselves are colonizers living on a stolen land. But now I want to talk about Europeans supporting it.

Because European had themselves to deal with people asking for the right of return-and those people were jews, coming back after the holocaust, demanding their houses and property. And while some did acknowledge the wrongs of the past and gave back citizenship and stolen property, too many of them didn't.

When jews wanted to come back to their houses in Poland, they were massacred. People in those countries became much less tolerant to jews the moment they had to pay a price for it.

Those are the same people who fetishize decolonisation and land back. That say right of return of someone's great great grandchildren's to Haifa and Jaffa is justified, when there is no historical precedent to such thing.

This is how racism and double standard towards jewish people looks like. This is what white privilege looks like.

[phobic-human]

15th of May

Arabic translation: May 15th, day of Palestinian struggle

Artist: Claude Lazar

Circa 1978

[fairiedance]

A new Palestinian key design featuring poppies, found here. The key is a common symbol for the right of return.

As usual ALL PROCEEDS from my shop go to my Palestinian best friend to help him support his girlfriend in remaining safely in America until things calm down and to help his other loved ones around the Levant who are being hurt directly and/or financially by the attacks on Gaza, the raids in the West Bank and the collateral damage in surrounding countries. He will donate anything his family doesn't need to the Palestinian charities he works with.

Some product examples:

You can find all my designs here. Redbubble will display them with a random product, click on each to see all product options (shirts, stickers, bags, hats, etc).

Thank you to everyone who has helped so far!