Fortress Israel 
Ilan Pappe
The right of the Palestinian refugees expelled in the 1948 war to return home was acknowledged by the UN General Assembly in December 1948. It is a right anchored in international law and in accordance with notions of universal justice. More surprisingly perhaps, it also makes sense in terms of realpolitik: unless Israel agrees to repatriate the refugees, all attempts to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict are bound to fail, as became clear in 2000 when the Oslo initiative broke down over this issue. Yet only a handful of Jews in Israel are willing to support it, in part because most Israeli Jews deny that ethnic cleansing was carried out in 1948 by Israel.
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Ilan Pappe is chair of the history department at the University of Exeter and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine came out in 2007.
Other articles by this contributor:
As long as the plan contains the magic term ‘withdrawal’, it is seen as a good thing · Israel heads for disaster
The Geneva Bubble · the prehistory of the latest proposals
Dummy or Real · Gaza
Ingathering · the Israeli election and the ‘demographic problem’
The Disappointing Trajectory of Amir Peretz · Will Peretz make a difference?
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