Right of Return Conference at Boston University: Realizing Return In Practice

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May 28, 2013 Palestine-Israel
[Image of Noura Erakat at Right of Return Conference at Boston University. Crop of Screencap from Video Below.] [Image of Noura Erakat at Right of Return Conference at Boston University. Crop of Screencap from Video Below.]

Right of Return Conference at Boston University: Realizing Return In Practice

By : Jadaliyya Reports

On 6-7 April 2013, activists, scholars, and community members converged at Boston University to participate in the Right of Return Conference at Boston University.  The last Right of Return Conference took place in Boston more than a decade ago, and featured the late Edward Said as its keynote speaker. This Conference is especially critical at this juncture as the Oslo Peace Accords turns twenty, and in the direct aftermath of President Barack Obama`s first visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory in his two-year term.  

The Oslo Accords sought to establish two ethno-nationally homogenous states as a remedy to Israel`s settler-colonial regime. Not only did the Plan fail to deal with the root cause of conflict in the region but it also failed to thwart the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians both within Israel Proper as well as the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In the shadow of the Peace Process, for example, Israel has accelerated its Judaization campaign of East Jerusalem, where it administratively revoked the residency rights of 4,800 Palestinian Jerusalemites in 2008 alone.  

Oslo excluded refugees from its consideration all together when it relegated the fate of 6.6 million Palestinian refugees to final status negotiations—which remain elusive. Since then, Israeli officials—like Avi Dichter—have made clear that the return of refugees is a red line in any negotiated solution. In response to a PA official’s mention of refugees in 2011, Dichter declared  “The `right of return` will not be included in the peace process.... Talk about the `right of return` is meaningless. Everyone understands that there will not be a solution that includes `return,` no matter who says what.”  

The right to return, however, is not only a political matter. It is a humanitarian one governed by international law and precedent. Those precedents include the return of, restitution to, and compensation of refugees to East Timor, Bosnia, and South Africa. In particular regard to Palestinians, and universal one to all refugees, those laws include: 

  • UN Resolution 194 (passed on 11 December 1948 and reaffirmed every year since 1948):

    “…the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
 
  • Article 13 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”   
  • Article 5(d)(ii) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination: 
“…State Parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination on all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, color, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of…[t]he right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country.”  
  • Article 12 (4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: 
“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.”

Narrow political discourse in the United States in particular, has made it nearly impossible to discuss the right of return in meaningful ways. Instead, activists, pundits, government officials, and often scholars, invoke the right of return as a banner indicative of a political position rather than a humanitarian consideration. The Conference this weekend is remarkable specifically for transcending this political grandstanding and for grappling with the innards of the right of return and the possibilities of its practical implementation. 

This speaks volumes to the vision of Conference`s organizers  who have remained on course despite significant political pressure. In an article published days before the conference on Mondoweiss, two of these organizers, Zena Ozeir and Jamil Sbitan explained:  

As aptly argued by Edward Said 13 years ago, this failure on the part of official channels precipitates the urgency that these matters be taken into the hands of non-governmental actors through independent planning and organizing. This is the framework from which the current upcoming Right of Return Conference at Boston University emerges; from an impetus to plan rather than debate the realization of the Palestinian Right of Return. Through examining the legal, cultural, discursive and spatial dynamics of a political order that facilitates this Right, this conference asserts the applicability of this goal, thus countering those who voice its supposed inapplicability.

The Right of Return must continue to be demanded as a practical means for healing the historical wounds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rather than keeping it an abstract notion. Indeed, a future that allows for the realization of the Right of Return and equal rights for all is a future that will see a possible end to the conflict as we know it. 

The full conference schedule is available below the video. In this video, Liat Rosenberg discusses Zochrot`s work among Israeli society and beyond. Noura Erakat, representing Badil, shares some of the findings of Badil`s comparative study tours that it has conducted in furtherance of the effort to begin implementing the right of return in practice. 

Conference Schedule 

Saturday, April 6th 9:00

OPENING REMARKS

9:15 PANEL: “Discourses of Return and Resistance Among Palestinian Refugees”

Moderator: Sa’ed Atshan

Charlotte Kates & Khaled Barakat: Return and Liberation, Liberation and Return: The Palestinian National   Movement and the Implementation of Return

Ziad Abbas: Palestinian Refugee Youth and the Legacy of Right of Return

Sarah Marusek: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon: Somewhere in between Rights and Resistance

11:00 PANEL: “Identities on Display: Collective Identity and Daily Practice”

Moderator: Amahl Bishara

Joseph Greene: The Palestine Archaeological Museum: Disentangling Cultural Heritage “After the Return”

Riccardo Bocco: Collective Memory and Dreams of Return: A Journey through Documentary Films Portraying Palestinian Refugees

12:30 LUNCH BREAK 

1:30 Keynote Speech: Dr. Salman Abu-Sitta

2:30 PANEL: “Paradigmatic Shifts: Jewish Identity, Theology, and Liberation Post-Return”

Moderator: Eve Spangler

Bekah Wolf: Re-Visiting Self-Determination

Cory Faragon: Meusharot, Knafonomics and the Right of Return

Yakir Englander: “Choose Life”: The Imperative of a New Jewish Theology of Return

4:30 PANEL: “Deconstructing Colonial Narratives: Navigating Space, Peoplehood, and Origins”

Moderator: Heike Schotten

Alborz Koosha & Lila Sharif: Land and Peoplehood(s): Countering Zionist Settler Origin Stories for a Post-Return Palestine

Linda Khalil & Sarona Bedwan: Negotiating Space: Deconstructing Palestinian Identities & Illuminating Ways of Being

6:00 CLOSING REMARKS

Sunday, April 7th

9:00 OPENING REMARKS

9:15 PANEL: “Disappearing and Reappearing: Refugees Between NGOS, Legal Status, and Return”

Moderator:  Susan Akram

Anne Irfan: Handing Back the Keys: UNRWA and the Right of Return

Jinan Bastaki: Disappearing Refugees and the Legal Gaps: The Implications of Third Country Citizenship for Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return

10:45 PANEL: “Imagining Spaces of Return & Mapping Palestinian Liberation”

Moderator: Salim Tamari

Linda Quiquivix: Liberation or Independence: Palestine as Land or Palestine as Territory?

Einat Manoff: Counter-mapping and the Geographical Imagination: Mapping Spatial Scenarios of Return

Thomas Abowd: The Return of Homes and the Restitution of History in Jerusalem

12:45 LUNCH BREAK

1:45 Keynote Speeches: Noura Erakat (Badil) & Liat Rosenberg (Zochrot)

3:30 PANEL: “Rehabilitating the Body Politic: Palestinian Politics and Models for Return”

Moderator: Leila Farsakh

Sadia Ahsanuddin: Restitution in the Land of Milk and Honey: Implementing the Palestinian Right of Return via Israeli-Palestinian Federalism

Sarah I.: Who Is A Palestinian? Political Representation of the Shatat in the Homeland

5:00 Keynote Speech: Dr. Joseph Massad 

6:00 CLOSING REMARKS

[This introduction was originally published on Noura Erakat`s blog]


[Noura`s contribution begins at 34:46]
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412