Might Give Up ‘Right of Return’ for Compensation by Israel : Key Palestinian Talks of a Compromise

Palestinians are willing to discuss giving up their demand to return to homes in Israel, abandoned during earlier Middle East wars, in exchange for compensation, a top local Arab leader aligned with the Palestine Liberation Organization says.

Taking compensation would mean that Palestinians would relinquish the “right of return,” a hallowed dogma of the PLO, which insists that Arabs must be permitted to go back to their places of origin throughout Israel.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are scattered in refugee camps, not only in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip but also in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The squalor of many of the camps nourishes the dream of a return, even among people too young to have seen their families’ original homes.

The local Palestinian leader, Faisal Husseini, spoke of compensation during an interview at his Jerusalem home. Husseini is considered to be a leading PLO operative in the West Bank. He was freed Jan. 29 after spending 18 of the past 21 months in jail on charges of inciting Arabs to rebel against Israeli rule.

‘We Can Have a Negotiation’

Said Husseini: “We have the right of return. The question is, how to fulfill this right? Israel says to us, ‘We don’t want to endanger our security by letting Palestinians return.’ So, we say we can have a negotiation.

“It can be through compensation. This we can go and talk about.”

PLO officials abroad have insisted that the right of return is an unalterable principle; they avoid speaking publicly about how it might be modified in eventual talks. Compensation has been mentioned, but only as an adjunct to return, not as a substitute.

Israeli officials have pointed to the Palestinian insistence on return as proof that the PLO is an impractical partner for peace talks.

Last Sunday, Foreign Minister Moshe Arens told members of the American Jewish Committee visiting Israel that talks with the PLO would mean accepting the return of Palestinians because many PLO leaders come from places now inside Israel. The PLO wants “the right of return . . . to Haifa, Ramle, Jaffa and so on down the line,” Arens said.

Compensation Problems

The idea of compensation carries with it several financial and political problems. It is not clear how much it would cost and who would pay: Israel is cash-strapped, the United States is in a budget crunch and the Arab oil countries may not want to pay for peace. Agreement by Israel to a principle of compensation would imply that the Palestinians have at some time been wronged; Israeli leaders say that if the Palestinians are victims, they are victims only of their Arab cousins who made war on Israel.

“Anyway, we can talk,” Husseini insisted. His words are widely considered to be in harmony with the opinion of Arabs who live under occupation and whose influence in the PLO has grown because of the 14-month-old uprising against Israeli rule.

Husseini said he gave his view on the right of return to Shmuel Goren, an Israeli representative of Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Goren visited Husseini in jail just before his release and tried to persuade him to take the lead in peace talks and bypass the PLO, according to Husseini’s account. Israel brands the PLO a terrorist organization and rules out negotiations with it.

Husseini refuses to consider such an option. “All the time, Israel tries to start with this thing--that they are ready to talk to you, but not PLO, that they are ready to solve problems of only people who live in the West Bank and Gaza,” he said.

It is against Israeli interests to talk to anyone but the PLO, Husseini said he told Goren. Only the PLO holds the allegiance of the vast majority of Palestinians and can make an accord stick, he asserted.

He hinted also that an independent Palestinian state could remain unarmed, a major concern of Israel, only if it were protected by international guarantees.

“We must develop agriculture and services . . . the same thing you are doing,” he said he told Goren.

He also said he told the defense minister’s representative: “Now, if we have no money and are not going to buy tanks . . . who will protect us from you? Because of that (question), we must either reach a solution, of you and us without arms, or if you don’t like that, we need international guarantees so you can’t come and threaten us in the future.

“So we are insisting that (an) international conference (be held) because we need international guarantees.”

Husseini is one of the few identifiable local Palestinian leaders within territory controlled by Israel. He fulfills the qualifications for prominence on several counts: He belongs to an old, well-known Jerusalem family whose members have fought and, on occasion, died for Palestinian independence. And, although he carefully avoids saying so publicly, he is considered a member of the PLO, which distinguishes him from leaders whose position depends purely on wealth, influence and tradition.

Finally, he has recently spent time in jail, a confirmation of his militancy and distance from the Israelis.

Husseini, 48, recalls his imprisonment as an opportunity to meet the youths who have made the intifada, as the uprising is known in Arabic, a key factor in Middle East affairs.

He says that the rebels of the intifada are different from the youths of his day because they have grown up under Israeli rule. Before the 1967 Six-Day War, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan, the Gaza Strip by Egypt.

“When I was young, I felt like them; I wanted a state,” he said. “But life has given them more. I knew about the Palestinian problem from books, but they know from daily experience.”