3. Mr Minto falsely claims Arab Palestinians have a “right of return” to Israel
One of the official demands of the BDS campaign is to promote the “right of return” for Arab Palestinian refugees. Activists claim all Arab Palestinians have such a “right” based on UN General Assembly resolution 194. However, even if a UN resolution were to constitute legislation, which it doesn’t, there is nothing in Resolution 194 which would grant Arab Palestinian refugees any “right to return” to Israeli territory and there is no such right in any international law.
In 1974, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Greeks were not entitled to “return” to Northern Cyprus because “Some 35 years have elapsed since the Greeks lost possession of their property… Generations have passed. The local population has not remained static.”
The Palestinians claim they have a “right of return” for not only the Arabs who fled in 1948 but all their descendents, despite the Arab-Israeli conflict lasting more than twice as long as the Turkish-Greek conflict and the local Israeli population certainly not remaining static.
As well as there being no “right” in international law to bestow on Arab Palestinian refugees, the demand is a pretense, whose practical implementation would likely be Jewish genocide or at least the end of Jewish self-determiniation. This is because the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has invented a unique definition of refugees that includes citizens of other countries and all their descendents, and insists that all these people, who now number more than five-and-a-half million, should be allowed automatic entry into Israel.
The very idea that Israel, a country with only 9m people (including 6m Jews) should be forced to accept 5.5m Arab Palestinians with a unique refugee status, especially given that most of them have been taught that Israel is illegitimate and violence is justified, is a certain way to extinguish Jewish self-determination (or half the world’s Jewish population).
Mr Minto’s call for a single, secular state “from the river to the sea” might sound appealing. However, the reality is that Jews would be a minority once again and another Arab state would emerge. There has been no Arab nation to date that provides equal rights for all citizens and has a secular constitution. Israel has all that, but will only be able to maintain it as long as there is not a majority of people who seek another Islamic state.