Okay now we plunge in the deep end. What is expected in the Right of Return? It doesn't have to be we hand over Israel and hand over the keys and go back to Poland etc right?
It can mean many forms of returning property...returning individual land parcels...compensation...right? It can mean many Palestinians go home but not that Israelis have to vacate en masse right? I mean -- now that we have opened this door -- could this not be something that could be worked out per... international law and the result is a complex multiethnic state where people who can claim specific title to land...get it back? How is that...so terrible? The land was not densely populated before 1948...would that not mean that people who can show title get their land back...and those who can't get reparations or compensation...and there is some movement of existing populations? Is this the end of the world?
Right of return does not mean I don't get to live here/no Israelis get to live there, right? It means more like what they have in Canada yes..where native people are compensated and have rights to resources land etc?
.... Also don't people who fled Berlin etc in the 1930s ask for their property back under international law -- I see news stories about that every week in the US -- so where land exchange is not realistic could there not be monetary settlements? And aren't we talking about reparations for slavery in the US? I have lived in Israel. It is not like "the native Americans" from many centuries ago, vexed as that legal situation is.
It is the day before yesterday, the nakba...historically...There are literally whole neighborhoods and quarters in Jerusalem, in Haifa in Ashdod, that are Palestinians' homes from one generation back. They are chic upscale houses and bistros now and they have that distinctive Palestinian architecture. The grapevine arbors...the half-spheres on the rooftops...there is no way those are not individual traceable people's homes as of recently the way that Germans taking in the property of fleeing Jews were appropriating others' recent property....how do we pretend otherwise...
I am having a harder and harder time not looking at/investigating why on earth they would not get their property back...let alone their legal property that settlements are being built on. But educate me....

As the sun begins to sink over the Mediterranean, groups of Israelis gather each evening on hilltops close to the Gaza border to cheer, whoop and whistle as bombs rain down on people in a hellish warzone a few miles away.

Old sofas, garden chairs, battered car seats and upturned crates provide seating for the spectators. On one hilltop, a swing has been attached to the branches of a pine tree, allowing its occupant to sway gently in the breeze. Some bring bottles of beer or soft drinks and snacks.

On Saturday, a group of men huddle around a shisha pipe. Nearly all hold up smartphones to record the explosions or to pose grinning, perhaps with thumbs up, for selfies against a backdrop of black smoke.

Despite reports that millions of Israelis are living in terror of Hamas rockets, they don't deter these hilltop war watchers whose proximity to Gaza puts them within range of the most rudimentary missiles. Some bring their children.

A house with a war view may even command a premium price these days.

Soren wrote on Jul 27^th, 2014 at 5:22pm:


Then I have literally no idea what constitutes a blockade then.

Written by Naomi Wolf who spent much of her childhood in Israel:

Quote:

Soren, the gaza wall was completed in 1996. Rockets from gaza started in 2001

...just let that sink in for a bit...

Now, please enlighten us all as to how people can be walled in, and completely at the mercy of those who built the wall regarding what is allowed in or out - can be described as anything other than a blockade?

Winners are grinners.