What if the Israelis had not stolen Palestinian homes & property in 1948?

[brentspeak]

How do you think the Middle East would have turned out had the Jews, after beating back foreign Arab armies in 1948 and claiming that part of Palestine as their own -- as a new state of Israel -- had allowed the Palestinians who had fled under cover of war to return to their homes and businesses? What if the Israelis had said, back in 1948, "You can all come back. Your homes are your homes; your private property is still your private property. But now you are Israeli citizens, and you are now residing in what is now the state of Israel"?

[bravenak]

1. Things would be better for everyone.

Letting civilians return home is a rule. No following proper procedure leads to militias and oppression.

[4now]

2. It was never Israels intention to return the stolen land.

Even way back then.

[Scootaloo]

3. Underlined n 1949...

When Israel tried to use the refugees as blackmail to force the UN to grant Israel ownership of occupied territory - basically , "we'll let some refugees back, if you let us declare all this territory legally ours.
http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/fd807e46661e3689852570d00069e918/c96e0252e7710bce85256d95006bc157?OpenDocument

The response was, of course, denial of the proposal:

3 September 1949 addressed to Mr. Reuven Shiloah, Head of the Delegation of Israel, by the Chairman of the Conciliation Commission, Emphatically dismisses the notion. referring Israel back to the armistice agreements. “2. The Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question”
http://domino.un.org/pdfs/AAC25IS37.pdf

Israel's apologists have since tried to turn this into "Israel offered to let the refugees back, but they refused!"

[ieoeja]

4. Very few Palenstinians owned any land.

They were predominiately share-croppers. The land was owned by wealthy sheiks in Damascus, Cairo and Istanbul before they sold it to the Jews.

So they would have come back to ... nothing.

[brentspeak]

5. Link?

[Big Blue Marble]

6. How ridiculous.

It all the millions of renters in the United States were forced out of their homes and driven from our
country, but later allowed to return, would you say they had no claims to return and make a
new life for themselves even if under a new government?

[JI7]

7. are there other examples we can use ?

[Avalux]

8. So because they were too poor to own the land, they have no right to be there?

Regardless of whether they could claim ownership, it was their home. That means something to people, to families. There was a better way.

[countryjake]

10. Wearing their keys...

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/1104/Why-the-Palestinian-president-shocked-his-people-over-right-of-return

"Palestinians wear keys to symbolize ownership to property left behind during the 1948 war that gave birth to the Jewish state and displaced hundreds of thousands of Arabs. For them, the right of return is sacrosanct acknowledgement of decades of displacement and injustice. Israeli Jews, however, see the right of return demand as threatening a massive influx of refugees – tantamount to refusing to recognize Israel’s character as a Jewish state. Many Israeli critics of the Palestinian president have alleged in the past that his refusal to concede on the right of return indicates that he is not serious about making the concessions necessary for a deal.

But Ghassan Khatib, a professor at Bir Zeit University and a former spokesman for the Palestinian government, says that the sides have discussed a solution to the right of return by granting the Palestinians several forms of compensation that would ultimately limit the number of refugees repatriated to Israel proper."

[oberliner]

9. What if the Palestinians had agreed to the UN Partition Plan?

Then there would have been two independent states formed for both peoples.