What We Talk About When We Talk About the Right of Return
Fatima was born in a village called Isdud, close to what is now the southern Israeli city of Ashdod. She was about 5 years old when the Israeli military closed in on the village in October 1948. My mother-in-law fled with her parents and thousands of neighbors to Gaza. Shortly after occupying Isdud, the Israeli military expelled its remaining residents and demolished the village.
After the war, my future mother-in-law became one of more than 700,000 Palestinian refugees prevented from returning home as part of the nascent state's goal to maintain a Jewish majority in as much of historic Palestine as possible.
The Israeli government is now advancing plans to forcibly displace more Palestinians, mostly in Gaza but also in the West Bank. In early July, Defense Minister Israel Katz said he ordered the military to prepare a 'humanitarian city' on the ruins of Gaza's southern city of Rafah, which the Israeli military has almost entirely destroyed.
Everyone in Gaza would eventually be concentrated there, he explained. They would not be allowed to return to their homes in other parts of the strip.
Mr. Katz said international humanitarian organizations — as yet unnamed — would be charged with managing the area. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also said he's working with the United States to find third countries to resettle displaced Gaza residents.
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