Examining the development of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinian refugee issue, this book spans the period following the first Arab-Israeli War until the mid-1950s, when the basic principles of Israel’s policy were finalized. Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Issue outlines and analyzes the various aspects that, together, created the mosaic of the "refugee problem" with which Israel has since had to contend. These aspects include issues of repatriation, resettlement, compensation, blocked bank accounts, internal refugees and family reunification. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book uses documents from Israeli government meetings, from the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and files from the office of the Prime Minister’s advisor on Arab affairs to address the many diverse aspects of this topic, and will be essential reading for academics and researchers with an interest in Israel, the Middle East, and political science more broadly.

Provides an overview of the key dimensions of the Palestinian refugee problem.

This book offers diverse perspectives on the Palestinian refugee problem and the possible ways to facilitate its resolution. It contains contributions of Israeli, Palestinian and other scholars, and its main goal is to initiate an informed dialogue that will bridge the "knowledge gap" between the different camps. The book provides a comprehensive picture of the various aspects of the problem and of the possible means of its resolution.

This book is the first full-length study of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem. Based on recently declassified Israeli, British and American state and party political papers and on hitherto untapped private papers, it traces the stages of the 1947-9 exodus against the backdrop of the first Arab-Israeli war and analyses the varied causes of the flight. The Jewish and Arab decision-making involved, on national and local levels, military and political, is described and explained, as is the crystallisation of Israel's decision to bar a refugee repatriation. The subsequent fate of the abandoned Arab villages, lands and urban neighbourhoods is examined. The study looks at the international context of the war and the exodus, and describes the political battle over the refugees' fate, which effectively ended with the deadlock at Lausanne in summer 1949. Throughout the book attempts to describe what happened rather than what successive generations of Israeli and Arab propagandists have said happened, and to explain the motives of the protagonists.

Analyses Israeli policies towards Palestinian refugees from 1948 to the present.

Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group—unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts—has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf—both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution—reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees - gave in to Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. They argue that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal or moral basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. A runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.

The Palestinian refugee question, resulting from the events surrounding the birth of the state of Israel seventy years ago, remains one of the largest and most protracted refugee crises of the post-WWII era. Numbering over six million in the Middle East alone, Palestinian refugees' status varies considerably according to the state or territory 'hosting' them, the UN agency assisting them and political circumstances surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict these refugees are naturally associated with. Despite being foundational to both the experience of the Palestinian refugees and the resolution of their plight, international law is often side-lined in political discussions concerning their fate. This compelling new book, building on the seminal contribution of the first edition (1998), offers a clear and comprehensive analysis of various areas of international law (including refugee law, human rights law, humanitarian law, the law relating to stateless persons, principles related to internally displaced persons, as well as notions of international criminal law), and probes their relevance to the provision of international protection for Palestinian refugees and their quest for durable solutions.

After the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, Palestinian refugees fled over the border into Jordan, which in 1950 formally annexed the West Bank. In the wake of the 1967 War, another wave of Palestinians sought refuge in the Hashemite kingdom. Today, 42 per cent of registered Palestinian refugees live in Jordan. As a result of this historical context, one might expect Palestinian refugee camps to be highly politicised spaces. Yet Luigi Achilli argues in this book that there is in fact a relative absence of political activity. Instead, what is prevalent is a desire to live an 'ordinary life'. It is within the framework of the performing and creating everyday life – working, praying, relaxing, watching football matches, surfing the internet, or idling in barber shops – that Achilli examines nationalism and identity. Palestinian refugees have been traditionally depicted by the Western media as inherently political beings, ready to fight and resist all attempts to quash their nationalist struggle. But except for occasional political demonstrations and events, neither the political turmoil in Gaza and the West Bank, nor the uprisings throughout the Middle East of 2011, have roused refugees out of what they described as the ordinary course of daily life in the camp. Achilli argues instead that refugee daily life in many ways revolves around the practice of suspending the political. The performative and reiterative dimensions of ordinary activities have not, however, precluded refugees from feeling an affinity for many of the meanings, ideals, and values of Palestinian nationalism. Achilli holds that it is through the desire for an 'ordinary life' that these Palestinian refugees are able to assert their own meanings and understandings of national identity against the more inflexible interpretations provided by the political systems in Gaza and the West Bank. Examining the concepts of 'everyday' Islam as well as the construction of masculine identity in the camps, Achilli offers vital analysis of the complexities and ambiguities of camp-dwellers' experience of the political in ordinary times.

A critical examination of the history of US-Palestinian relations The United States has invested billions of dollars and countless diplomatic hours in the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution. Yet American attempts to broker an end to the conflict have repeatedly come up short. At the center of these failures lay two critical factors: Israeli power and Palestinian politics. While both Israelis and Palestinians undoubtedly share much of the blame, one also cannot escape the role of the United States, as the sole mediator in the process, in these repeated failures. American peacemaking efforts ultimately ran aground as a result of Washington’s unwillingness to confront Israel’s ever-deepening occupation or to come to grips with the realities of internal Palestinian politics. In particular, the book looks at the interplay between the U.S.-led peace process and internal Palestinian politics—namely, how a badly flawed peace process helped to weaken Palestinian leaders and institutions and how an increasingly dysfunctional Palestinian leadership, in turn, hindered prospects for a diplomatic resolution. Thus, while the peace process was not necessarily doomed to fail, Washington’s management of the process, with its built-in blind spot to Israeli power and Palestinian politics, made failure far more likely than a negotiated breakthrough. Shaped by the pressures of American domestic politics and the special relationship with Israel, Washington’s distinctive “blind spot” to Israeli power and Palestinian politics has deep historical roots, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate. The size of the blind spot has varied over the years and from one administration to another, but it is always present.

7. Scope of the study