The Right of Return of the Palestinian Refugee in International Law and Politics

In 1949 at Lausanne, the United Nations Conciliation Committee urged Israel to permit Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war to return home. Initially, Israel admitted 8,000 refugees based on family reunification, and offered to admit 100,000 additional refugees of the 600,000 to 750,000 who had left. When the U. N. urged Israel to admit more, Israel withdrew the offer. The Palestinian struggle to realize their "right of return" has lived on ever since. Palestinian refugees were caught in a struggle between a new State of Israel, which saw the Palestinian Arabs as a threat to national identity and security, and their Arab neighbors, who for the most part, refused to assimilate the Palestinians on the position that it would mean recognizing a state that they wished to annihilate and giving up on the dreams of hundreds of thousands of refugees who wished to go home.