Palestinian Refugees
Gila Svirsky
Coalition of Women for Peace, Women in Black
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ [My long term vision is] very similar to the Geneva Accords: a two-state solution, the '67 line should be more or less the border, there should be a mutual exchange of equal amounts of territory that will be negotiated. The refugees will have to be negotiated on a level that Israel can live with and Palestine can live with, Jerusalem has to be a shared capital and divided and open. It's a vision that says Palestine and Israel are here, embraced forever in a way they never wanted to be, but they can never be released from each other, and therefore let's figure out a way to make it work for us both.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Shlomi Daskal
The People's Voice, Realistic Religious Zionism
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Interview Highlights »
“ The project [The People's Voice] is a civilian, joint Israel-Palestinian initiative that is an attempt to achieve peace. The initiative states a very simple thing. All the former initiatives failed for a simple reason, because we never set a target. For the first time we’re saying that we aim to arrive at a certain place. The document includes six principles. It was drafted by Israelis and Palestinians together, not by only one side. It is based on six ideas: two states for two peoples, accepting the pre-1967 borders, and evacuating settlements, Jerusalem as a free city; Palestinian neighborhoods will be governed by Palestinian rule and Jewish neighborhoods will be governed by Israel. The right of return will apply only to the Palestinian state, just as Jews will have the right of return to Israel. The Palestinian state will be a demilitarized zone. After all this happens comes the sixth clause, which pronounces the conflict over and the mutual claims fulfilled.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Shlomi Daskal
The People's Voice, Realistic Religious Zionism
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Interview Highlights »
“ The most difficult thing, on the Palestinian side, is the right of return. It’s the most difficult because the right of return is a dream, and what we’re saying is, relinquish it. Relinquish that dream for a more realistic one; that’s the hardest aspect for the Palestinians. They are doing it because they say that the bottom line is that they know it’s a dream too. It’s a trump card in the negotiations, but nothing more. At the end of the day we know we’ll need to settle and our estimation is that there won’t be a return. For the sake of the dream of having a state we have to settle.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Dr. Khuloud Dajani
People's Campaign for Peace and Democracy
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Interview Highlights »
“ The people working for peace need to be able to give the Palestinians back their legitimate rights. If you work for peace and do not achieve anything, you will never be remembered in history, or you will be remembered negatively. People are for peace, but for a just peace based on international legitimacy, including the 1967 borders, compensation and return of the refugees to the Palestinian state, return of Israeli settlers to Israel, etc.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Nasser Laham
Maan News, Bethlehem Television
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Interview Highlights »
“ Failure [to achieve peace] is the result of someone having a vested interest in war. When Palestinian refugees see that every settler received half a million while they lack food, what are they supposed to think about themselves and about the world?” [Source in Complete Interview]
Riyad Faraj
Parents Circle-Bereaved Families Forum
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Interview Highlights »
“ We are not asking for the right of return, the one negotiating the right of return is not a refugee himself. No refugee is speaking for himself because I'm sure that if there was a survey among the refugees, then I guarantee 100% would accept compensation and get to a solution with the lands of '67 and stop asking for the lands of '48, all for the sake of having a good life.” [Source in Complete Interview]
The Late Professor Dan Bar-On
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East)
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ We definitely think that part of the problem [with the refugee issue] is the big numbers which are depressing for everyone and require a kind of total solution. We believe the opposite has to be done, that you have to break it down into small facets... to look at it locally... to see the situation of the refugees in Lebanon as the worst, so you have to help them first of all.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ihsan Turkiyyeh
Arab-Hebrew Theatre in Jaffa
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Interview Highlights »
“ There was something my husband told me before he was shot. He said, "If Palestine becomes established, take my children back. Go home. My country is very beautiful." Because I was raised in Lebanon, even though I'm Palestinian, I didn't know Palestine, and I didn't have those emotions like him. He was raised here. I said, "Eh, when Palestine becomes established, god willing, in about a hundred years, we'll go then." That's what I said to him. I was never convinced that we would go to Palestine. The first time I came they took me to Tel Aviv. I couldn't believe it! I said, slap me. Weee, from Beirut to Jordan to Tel Aviv. Nothing is impossible in the world. This teaches you that there is nothing impossible. The impossible became possible. If we believe that, then I also believe that there is no eternal enemy.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Nasser Laham
Maan News, Bethlehem Television
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Interview Highlights »
“ Once I thought about translating something connected to what the Germans, the Nazis, did to the Jews. I thought about this two years ago, and I said to my friends here, “What's the harm in this? Let the Palestinians know that Jews suffered too and that Hitler committed many crimes against them." My friends said to me, “Do you know what you’re saying?! That this won't happen?" It won’t happen here, God willing. I thought about my people, I am proud of who they are, I am proud to be an Arab Muslim, proud to be Palestinian. I am proud of being a refugee, of living in a refugee camp in Deheishe, but I support peace.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Riyad Faraj
Parents Circle-Bereaved Families Forum
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ I am a refugee of 1948. That year my family came to Deheishe Refugee Camp. That's where I grew up. My family was one of the most harmed by the conflict. It was our fate to resist the occupation in the period starting in 1978. I grew up to find my older brother in jail, and my other brother as well. I was arrested when I was 14. The first intifada started in 1984, and we spent that period in and out of jail. I don't recall a day between 1984 and 1990 in which we, the six brothers, were gathered in the same place. We are six brothers and a sister. We didn't all see each other between '84 and '90 outside of jail.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka
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Interview Highlights »
“ I was born in Tira. My family on my father's side is from a village that was uprooted in 1948, from a small village, Miske, near Tira. I think it all began from that. That is, I couldn't have known from the age of one that my family was uprooted, but while I was growing up I began to understand. My family also got involved because of this. I'm also the daughter of two pretty involved activists. My mother is very, very active.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Professor Sami Adwan
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East)
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Interview Highlights »
“ It is remarkable to see how the reference to a single term or event can provoke such an intense emotional response. To this day, Israelis continue to claim that the Palestinian refugees simply picked up and left their homes. Nearly 70 percent of Israelis believe that the Palestinians were not forced out, but rather emigrated. About ten percent of Israelis say that the Palestinians were indeed forced out. According to the Palestinian narrative, however, Palestinians were uprooted, killed, robbed of their land, and so on. The question of whether Palestinians emigrated or were forced to emigrate, therefore, is treated very differently in the two narratives.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ [The most serious issues that come up in dialogue are] for example, if we're talking about the refugees, the mess we have here now. Or when we talk about the military-- even now that I'm living with Jews in a different environment, I can't understand someone who tells me, "I'm enlisting," now, in this situation. The issues of the refugees and the military are what I'm very passionate about. Maybe I'm so passionate about the refugee thing because I have relatives who are refugees, and it's something that's never been solved.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Salwa Abu Libdeh
Dialogue On The Road
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Interview Highlights »
“ I was raised in a very conservative home, I learned that the land equals the soul, and my brother died for that cause. Our dream is to go back to our home. My father died here, but he always used to tell us about his house and the fields of orange trees. We have carried on his dream to this day and in turn I tell my children about the house of my family in Jaffa. We will pass it from one generation to the next; this is something that will never be forgotten.” [Source in Complete Interview]
The Late Professor Dan Bar-On
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East)
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Interview Highlights »
“ The Palestinian refugee issue is the issue that from the psychological point of view has been most neglected among all the other issues. All the other issues have been tested to some extent, but there is a total denial and repression of the Palestinian refugee problem […] [Addressing the refugee issue] demands that Israelis recognize their partial responsibility for its creation, and the Israelis are afraid that once they provide this recognition, it may delegitimize their own existence in this space.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Melisse Lewine-Boskovich
Peace Child Israel
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Interview Highlights »
“ Cross-border folks [people working together from opposite sides of the Green Line] who work in this field have pretty much arrived at an agreement: two states for two nations, a two-state solution. The ones who are still talking or doing peace building agree on that. They agree. They may not totally agree on the refugees and right of return, but basically most of them agree to two states. There are many people inside the country for whom that is not a solution. For Arabs and Jews inside Israel who are working on bi-lateral processes with adults or kids, I can say for sure, there hasn't been a reality check to see if we're on the same page. What do we want to see at the end of the day? The reason there hasn't been one is that they're afraid that if they had that process, everything would fall apart, and it probably would.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Ihsan Turkiyyeh
Arab-Hebrew Theatre in Jaffa
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Interview Highlights »
“ In the end for me he [my husband] was killed, and he sacrificed his life fighting the Israelis. He wanted to go home. The last thing he said to me was, "I love you, I love my kids, but I love Palestine more. I want my children to live in dignity. I don't want my children to live as refugees like us. It's very hard. We lived without dignity. We were humiliated by Arab regimes, and by the Israelis. We have the right to live as people. If I die I will die for this cause." That's what he said. What shall we do? That is our life.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Sarah Karajeh
Bereaved Families Forum
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Interview Highlights »
“ People who were forced off their land and homes, whose land was confiscated, trees cut down and children killed should get their rights back. All these are lost rights that should return to their owners. […] The new generations of Palestinian refugees don't forget, rather they remember that they have land that was taken from them and that they are living where they live temporarily until they return to their land. When these issues are solved and people get their rights back, there will be nothing to fight about.” [Source in Complete Interview]
Gershon Baskin
IPCRI (Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information)
Portrait »
Interview Highlights »
“ The biggest thing that struck me was that for six hours I was talking to a group of young refugees from Deheishe Refugee Camp [during the first intifada] and not once did I hear "right of return." What I heard from these young, mostly young men, in Deheishe in March of '88 was, "end the occupation, create the Palestinian state, and let's live side by side in peace." And this was very different than everything I had heard from Palestinians before, like the gentleman in the United Nations in New York, who said, "No two-state solution, only the secular democratic state."” [Source in Complete Interview]
