Faisal Abu Khadra, a member of the PLO’s Palestinian National Council (PNC) and a columnist for the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds, wrote in a July 5, 2022 column that the Palestinian refugees’ right of return is a “divine right” that the Palestinians will never relinquish. Palestine, he added, is the Palestinians’ homeland, whereas the Zionists originate in northern Germany and are therefore “Aryan, rather than Semitic, in origin.” He criticized the countries neighboring Israel for signing the armistice agreements with it in 1949 without making this conditional on allowing the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes. This is a historic mistake no less grave than the Nakba itself, he said.
Faisal Abu Khadra (Source: Al-Quds, East Jerusalem)
The following are translated excerpts from his column:[1]
“The Palestinians cannot conceivably agree to be settled anywhere except in their cities and villages in Palestine. The logic of this is acknowledged throughout the world… No matter what the material and moral incentives, the Palestinians will never accept any [other] proposal, [no matter how] generous, for a very simple reason: Their land is in the grips of an occupation that has no historical roots in it.
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“Many Palestinians are nationals of [countries] other than Palestine, but this does not in any way mean that they have forgotten their country, their homeland, and their historical roots in that blessed soil.
“The Zionist leaders said that [the Palestinians of] the Nakba generation will die and their children and grandchildren will forget [Palestine and the right of return]. But those ignorant people discovered that no person of Palestinian origin can conceivably forget his homeland. The Palestinians, thank God, both the refugees and elsewhere, have not forgotten and will never forget their country, Palestine. Successive [Israeli] governments tried and are still trying, along with their ally, the U.S., to abolish UNRWA using every possible trick, thinking that, if they do this, it would eliminate the most important element in the right of return. [But] the Palestinian people, including all its sectors… has never and will never give up the right of return, by any means.
“The Palestinian people respects all the international resolutions [on the Palestinian issue] and will never relinquish them, chief of them the one about the right of return. This is a divine right, and the mere thought of an alternative homeland or of [the Palestinians] living outside historical Palestine is an illusion that exists [only] in the mind of the occupiers and their supporters.
“Every people in the world is entitled to live in its land. So why do the occupiers and their supporters want the Palestinians to live on foreign soil that is not the soil on which their forefathers lived since 5,000 BCE and where they still live today? The ones who built the harbors of Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and Ashdod are our forefathers, the Canaanites.
“[As for] the Zionists, none of them originate in Palestine. Rather, they come from Ashkenaz, which is northern Germany. They are Aryan rather than Semitic in origin. That is why we see that they are all nationals of [the countries] from which they emigrated to Palestine. The notion of the Promised Land is a Zionist invention.
“It is accurate to say that the countries surrounding [Israel] committed a historic mistake against the Palestinian people when they signed a permanent armistice [agreement with Israel] without making it conditional on [actualizing the Palestinians’ right] of return. This is especially [grave] considering that [UN] Resolution 194 was issued in 1949, and in that very same year these countries signed the ceasefire agreement [with Israel] – which is equal [in its gravity] to the Nakba of the Palestinian people.”
[1] Al-Quds (East Jerusalem), July 5, 2022.
