mw, unless your husband reads a lot of the palestinian press, he won't pick up on this either. however, believe me, anyone who discusses the i/p question for any length of time is familiar with accusations of "genocide", "imperialism", "nazism", "ethnic cleansing", aimed at everyone and anyone. it does nothing to help anyone concerned and just polarises debate.
nonetheless, in the interests of honesty and transparency, suffice it to say there are a small number of parties in the israeli political system that advocate what they call "transfer", basically methods of ensuring a jewish majority inside the israeli borders, whatever they turn out to be. there's a spectrum, from the few loonies on the right who want to forcibly expel all non-jews from the west bank to those who try and influence the route of the security wall to put arabs outside and jews inside (known in the anti-israel lexicon as a "land grab") to those who advocate a wholesale border alteration to, say, include large west bank enclaves like gush etzion in exchange for the "triangle" region which is almost entirely populated by arabs, but inside the 1967 "green line". however, suffice it to say that there is at least 50% of the israeli population that would *absolutely* not permit such actions; they are not without morals or memory.
on the other side, there is a similar code for the ethnic cleansing of jews, which is termed, depending on who's speaking to whom, as "liberation of the *whole*of palestine" (ie, including the bits jews live in, which tends to be the line taken by pan-arabists and radical secular groups like the PFLP and DFLP) "liberation of islamic land" (ie, everywhere that's ever been part of a caliphate, from tel aviv to seville, popular with hamas and islamic jihad) or fatah's "soft" version, "the inalienable right of return of the palestinian refugees", which would necessarily involve a couple of million arabs moving to israel proper, which would be unlikely to be painless or peaceful.
needless to say, almost everyone in this debate appears to the other side to be negotiating in bad faith. like bob says, the palestinians seem to be the only group of the C20th that have maintained their refugee status (largely due to the rest of the arab world using them as a whipping boy for israel) and actually attempted to pass it on to their children rather than making the most of a bad job, like the germans of east prussia, the ulyensk cossacks, the jews of spain, the arabs of al-andalus, the turks of salonika and the greeks of constantinople who do not see return as feasible, workable or even particularly desirable and certainly not worth dying or killing for.
as i said to our clever friend farhan above, a just and equitable solution must necessarily involve the entire transferred population - not just the palestinian refugees, but the jewish refugees from arab lands who almost all live in israel now - which includes several hundred thousand egyptian jews, who lost everything when they were forced to leave after living there for more than 2,000 years. have you heard of philo? he was from alexandria, where there was a huge jewish community in the C1st BCE. is the egyptian government going to give them back their houses and property? i doubt it. could they compensate palestinians in place of this? you bet they could. but this is precisely how the palestinians are held hostage by the rest of the arab world. in fact, the fact that the israelis never seem to mention this issue of the jewish refugees from arab lands makes me think that either they're not interested in a real, equitable solution or they're saving it for such time as the palestinians are prepared to get serious and be realistic. it depends whether i'm feeling cynical or not.
in case you're interested, here is a site that commemorates the 1941 (note, before the establishment of israel) pogrom that marked the beginning of the end for the 2,600 year old jewish community of baghdad:
The Farhud (Farhoud). MIDRASH ben ish hai lecture.
there are, in short, two sides to every story and i don't see the baghdadi community (to which i myself belong) queuing up to demand compensation and a return to iraq - so you'll understand why the ideological refugee-ism of the palestinians sometimes rings a little hollow with me, despite the undeniable, terrible and unjustifiable injustices that have been inflicted on them by israel among others, so don't think i am insensitive to this or dismiss it in any way, shape or form.
b'shalom
bananabrain
