The Myth of the “Right of Return”

29 October, 2025

For over seventy-five years, Palestinian leaders and their supporters have invoked the “Right of Return” as a sacred entitlement — the supposed right of millions of descendants of Arab refugees from the 1948 war to “return” to homes inside Israel.
Yet the claim has no grounding in international law, no precedent in global refugee practice, and no compatibility with peace or self-determination.

The slogan is not about humanitarian redress but a political strategy designed to reverse Israel’s creation. Its perpetuation has kept generations of Palestinians in stateless limbo — victims not of Israel, but of a policy of deliberate rejection and manipulation by Arab governments and Palestinian leadership.

Below we will examine the historical origins, legal distortions, and political exploitation of the “Right of Return,” arguing that it remains one of the chief obstacles to genuine peace.

1. The Origins of the Refugee Issue (1947–1949)

When the United Nations voted on Resolution 181 in November 1947 — the Partition Plan — it envisioned two states: one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish leadership accepted the plan; the Arab leadership rejected it outright and launched a war to destroy the nascent Jewish state.

As a result of that war, an estimated 700,000 Arab residents of Mandatory Palestine fled or were displaced. The causes were mixed and complex: some left voluntarily following Arab broadcasts promising a swift military victory; others were displaced by the chaos of war. A small number were expelled from militarily sensitive areas.

At the same time, a parallel refugee crisis unfolded in the opposite direction: approximately 850,000 Jews were expelled or forced to flee from Arab countries such as Iraq, Yemen, and Egypt — losing homes, property, and citizenship. The world largely ignored their plight.

Israel absorbed these Jewish refugees. The Arab world, by contrast, refused to absorb their own brethren — keeping them in camps, stateless and dependent.

2. Resolution 194: A Recommendation, Not a Right

The supposed “Right of Return” is often traced to UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), passed on 11 December 1948.

Paragraph 11 of that resolution states:

“… the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date…”

This statement is recommendatory, not binding. Under the UN Charter, General Assembly resolutions have no force of international law unless adopted by the Security Council under Chapter VII. Resolution 194 was not.

Moreover, the clause includes two explicit conditions:

1. Refugees must wish to live at peace with their neighbours.
2. Return should occur only when practicable.

Neither condition was ever met. Arab states rejected the resolution outright, opposed the establishment of Israel, and continued hostilities. They did not accept Israel’s existence — let alone the idea of peaceful return.

As historian Efraim Karsh notes, “By rejecting Resolution 194, the Arab world forfeited any moral or political standing to claim its benefits later.”

3. The Legal Reality: No Perpetual or Hereditary Right

International law recognises no right of return that passes to descendants. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 13) affirms only that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
That refers to nationals returning to their own state, not foreign nationals claiming entry to another sovereign state after wartime displacement.

The Fourth Geneva Convention and Refugee Convention (1951) make no provision for multi-generational refugee inheritance. Indeed, the global norm is precisely the opposite: refugees are resettled, integrated, or repatriated to a successor state — not kept stateless for political leverage.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defines a refugee as an individual displaced “owing to a well-founded fear of persecution,” but that status ends when they acquire citizenship elsewhere. Their children do not inherit it.

The Palestinians are the only exception, due to the creation of a separate agency — UNRWA — in 1949. UNRWA’s mandate has perpetuated refugee status indefinitely, creating a self-replicating population that has grown from 700,000 in 1948 to over 5.9 million today.

By contrast, the UNHCR considers around 43 million refugees globally, and has resettled tens of millions since 1950 — including far larger populations displaced in India–Pakistan, Bosnia, or Syria — none of whom claim an endless “right of return.”

4. Refugees as a Political Weapon

UNRWA’s unique structure was born of Arab states’ refusal to integrate Palestinians. In Jordan^1,2, citizenship was extended to many (while also maintaining unique ‘Palestinian refugee’ status), but in Lebanon^3,4,5,6, Syria^7,8,9, and beyond^10,11, Palestinians were barred from numerous professions, land ownership, and even access to higher education.

This was no accident. As King Hussein of Jordan said in 1960:

“Since 1948, Arab leaders… have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal.”¹²

The PA’s current prime minister, Mahmud Abbas wrote in the PLO journal “Palestine a-Thaura” (March 1976):

‘The Arab armies, who invaded the country in ‘48, forced the Palestinians to emigrate and leave their homeland and forced a political and ideological siege on them.’”¹³

According to a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, however, ‘the majority ‘ of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, and ’68%’ left without seeing an Israeli soldier.”¹⁴

Khaled Al-Azm, who was Syria’s Prime Minister after the 1948 war, deplored the Arab tactics and the subsequent exploitation of the refugees, in his 1972 memoirs:

‘Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees… while it is we who made them leave…. We brought disaster upon …Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave…. We have rendered them dispossessed…. We have accustomed them to begging…. We have participated in lowering their moral and social level…. Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon… men, women and children — all this in the service of political purposes….’”¹⁵

Lt General Sir Alexander Galloway, a noted British soldier-diplomat who was then UNRWA director in Jordan said, in 1952:

“It is perfectly clear that the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”¹⁶

That weaponisation persists today. Rather than resolve their displacement, Palestinian leaders have elevated “return” as a political absolute — a euphemism for Israel’s dissolution through demographic inundation.

The Palestinian Authority continues to claim that every descendant of a 1948 refugee — no matter where born, no matter their citizenship — has an inalienable “right” to move to Israel. That would mean importing over 5 million non-citizens into a state of fewer than 10 million people. The goal is transparent: not coexistence, but replacement.

5. The Double Standard of Refugee Treatment17

While the UN has passed more than 100 resolutions addressing Palestinian refugees, it has never passed one recognising Jewish refugees from Arab lands^{18,19,20,21,22} — whose losses were comparable in number and magnitude.

Israel, a poor and fragile state in the 1950s, absorbed them all without complaint or perpetual victimhood. Arab regimes, wealthy with oil revenues, did the opposite — trapping Palestinian refugees to maintain grievance.

No international movement campaigns for a “Right of Return” of Jews to Baghdad, Cairo, or Sana’a. Nor should it. Because the moral and legal principle is the same: refugees from wartime dislocation do not possess the power to reverse history generations later.

6. The Demographic Agenda Behind the Slogan

In diplomatic language, the “Right of Return” sounds humane. In practice, it would be catastrophic. Implementing it would erase the Jewish majority and end Israel as a Jewish and democratic state — precisely the goal articulated in the PLO Charter (1964) and by Hamas to this day.

As Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed in 2004:

“We promise you [Arafat] that our heart will not rest until we achieve the right of return for our people and end the tragic refugee issue.”

This maximalist demand is incompatible with every peace framework since Oslo. Both the Clinton Parameters (2000) and Geneva Initiative (2003) recognised the need for a limited humanitarian solution — compensation, family reunification, and resettlement in a future Palestinian state — not a literal “return” to Israel.

Every serious negotiator, from Rabin to Olmert, understood that accepting the demand would mean the end of Israel by demographic means.

7. Toward a Genuine Solution

Real peace requires moral and political honesty. It means confronting the reality that Israel will not, and cannot, absorb millions of descendants of its wartime enemies.
Instead, the international community should focus on what it has refused to do for decades:

Reform UNRWA to bring its refugee definition in line with UNHCR standards.
Encourage Arab states to naturalise and integrate Palestinians as they do other populations.
Provide compensation and resettlement assistance — as envisioned in multiple peace proposals — rather than sustaining dependency.
Promote mutual recognition: two states for two peoples, not one state for one people and no state for the other.

As long as the “Right of Return” myth persists, Palestinian politics will remain anchored to the impossible dream of undoing 1948 rather than building 2025.

8. Conclusion: Ending the Politics of Perpetual Refuge

The “Right of Return” is not a humanitarian cause. It is a political illusion — a euphemism for the erasure of Jewish self-determination.
No other refugee population in history has been told their exile is permanent until another people ceases to exist.

Seventy-five years later, the only true “return” the region needs is a return to realism, to historical truth, and to the principle that peace comes not from denying the past but from building a future.

References

https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/who-are-palestines-overlooked-refugees
https://dpa.gov.jo/En/Pages/Jordan_position_on_Palestinian_Refugee_issue
https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/6590/palestinian-refugees-lebanon
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“The Refugee Issue,” Shraga Simmons, Dec 31, 1969
“The Refugee Issue,” Simmons, Dec 31, 1969
Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial (Harper & Row, 1984).
Khaled Al-Azm, Memoirs [Arabic], 3 vols. (Al-Dar al Muttahida lil-Nashr, 1972.) Quoted in Peters, From Time Immemorial, p. 16
“UNRWA and the Code of Silence,” Alexander H. Joffe, Asaf Romirowsky, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 7, 2010 https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/UNRWA-and-the-code-of-silence
https://jcpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Kiyum-urman.pdf
https://www.jimena.org/about-jimena
https://justiceforjews.com
https://fpa.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries-forgotten-or-never-acknowledged
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2019-06-19/debates/F75D29CB-C4C8-447D-A028-1FA05CD3594D/JewishRefugeesFromTheMiddleEastAndNorthAfrica
https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Jews-from-Arab-Muslim-Lands.pdf