The Palestinian Right of Return is recognized in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which states that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors 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.”
Common Ground endorses the Palestinian Right of Return, which refers to “the principle of international law, codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, giving any person the right to return to, and re-enter, his or her country of origin.” — Right of return – Wikipedia
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return (2013), signed by Israeli and international Jews , promotes Jewish support for the Palestinian Right of Return.
Adam Horowitz, co-editor of Mondoweiss, writes: “I signed the following statement because the ongoing displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people remains at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For this reason, honoring, and advocating for, the rights of Palestinian refugees is the key to any just outcome in Israel/Palestine.” (http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/palestinian-right-return/)
Signatories to Jews for Palestinian Right of Return include:
Max Blumenthal, Journalist and author
Jeff Halper, Director, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
Prof. Ilan Pappé, Israeli historian and socialist activist
Adam Horowitz, Co-Editor, Mondoweiss.net
Barbara Lubin, Executive Director, Middle East Children’s Alliance
Miko Peled, Author of The General’s Son
“For Palestinians, the right to return home and the right to live in dignity and equality in their own land are not any less important than the right to live free of military occupation.” – Prof. Saree Makdisi
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return Salutes Movement for Black Lives — August 8, 2016
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return ~
For more than a century, Zionists have sought to construct a ‘Jewish state’ through forced removal of the indigenous Palestinian people.
In 1948, this state was established through the Nakba (Catastrophe): erasure and occupation of more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages, dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians, and a terror campaign of which the massacre at Deir Yassin is but the most infamous example.
Since 1967, Israel has also occupied and colonized the remainder of historic Palestine. Today, this relentless ethnic cleansing continues — armed and financed by the U.S. and its allies — on both sides of the 1948 ‘Green Line.’
As a cumulative result, seventy percent of Palestinians are in exile, the world’s largest refugee population.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Gaza, where Israel inflicts particularly brutal collective punishment on 1.7 million people — most of them refugees — for defiantly resisting expulsion from their homes throughout historic Palestine.
‘Pick a point, any point, along [Gaza’s] 25-mile coastline,’ writes Gaza City resident Lara Aburamadan, ‘and you’re seven or so miles — never more — from the other side. The other side is where my grandparents were born, in a village that has since become someone else’s country, off limits to me….’
As it is for all colonized peoples, liberation means reversing dispossession. ‘The Palestinian cause,’ writes Dr. Haidar Eid in Gaza, ‘is the right of return for all refugees and nothing less.’
Return — one of the key demands of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign — is affirmed in U.N. resolution 194, but derives from the principle of universal human rights and, as such, cannot be renounced or abandoned by any body or representative; it inalienably attaches to Palestinians, both individually and collectively….
The moral response is clear: ‘There is one geopolitical entity in historic Palestine,’ writes Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah. ‘Israel must not be allowed to continue to entrench its apartheid, racist and colonial rule throughout that land.’
As Jews of conscience, we call on all supporters of social justice to stand up for Palestinian Right of Return and a democratic state throughout historic Palestine — “From the River to the Sea” — with equal rights for all.
The full measure of justice, upon which the hopes of all humanity depends, requires no less. (www.jfpror.wordpress.com)
The New York chapter of Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (Al-Awda is Arabic for “THE RETURN”) declares several points of unity, including:
1. This Coalition affirms that the Palestinian Arab people, regardless of their religious affiliation, are indigenous to Palestine. Therefore, they are entitled to live anywhere in Palestine which encompasses present-day “Israel”, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This Coalition regards the “Israeli” definition of Jewish nationals, granting exclusive rights to citizenship and land to any Jew from anywhere in the world, as part of the racism and discrimination inherent in Zionist ideology which underlies the policies and laws of the settler state of “Israel.”
2. This Coalition unequivocally supports the rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their original towns, villages and lands anywhere in Palestine from which they were expelled. This Coalition also unequivocally supports the rights of all Palestinian refugees to compensation for damages inflicted on their property and lives, and to restitution of all destroyed and confiscated property. All Palestinians are entitled to the rights to self-determination, to political, economic and civil equality, and to live in a single democratic state for all its citizens in all of Palestine. The Palestinian national identity encompasses more than 5.5 million people living in exile, more than 2.5 million living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and more than 1.2 million living within the areas of Palestine controlled by “Israel” since 1948. (www.al-awdany.org)