ABSTRACT
The question of the Palestinian refugees is probably the thorniest aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It involves a wide spectrum of issues ranging from the legal right of return, as a basic human right, to the technicalities of estimating the refugees’ material losses and sufferings. And it inevitably triggers memories of the tragic experiences of exodus, relocation of families, disintegration of communities, and intolerable suffering over half-a-century of refugeehood. For many people, a solution which fails to undo the historic injustice and to point a finger at who was morally responsible is not worth consideration. For the Israelis, on the other hand, the ‘return’ is a concrete threat to their national existence and the material, let alone the moral, responsibility is the last thing they are ready to assume. Repatriation, return and restitution are extraordinarily charged terms, politically and psychologically, on both sides of the divide. And in addition to all of this the issue of refugees involves not only the two parties directly affected, the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also a number of other countries currently hosting the refugees.
