Despite ongoing discussions on the re-construction of Gaza – after Israel has fully achieved the stated goal of de-constructing it – there is a subject that I have not seen or heard mentioned once in any medium: The Palestinian ‘Right of Return’ – to those territories illegally taken from them. It would appear that we have forgotten, or prefer to forget, that a whole two-thirds of the Palestinian population of Gaza first sought refuge there as a consequence of the original dispossession of their lands in 1948, during what has come to been known as the ‘Nakba’ (‘The Catastrophe’).

On 11 December 1948 – at the behest of the UK – the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted resolution 194 which declared that:

“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, 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.”

Many international law jurists argue that the ‘Right of Return’ of the Palestinian Nation/people has since become an established principle of ‘customary international law’, given that resolution 194 has been referenced in subsequent UNGA resolutions – on an annual basis – ever since 1948. Most recently, on 10 December 2024 – some 76 years later – the UNGA adopted resolution A/RES/79/81 which outlined the ‘Modalities’ for this month’s international “Conference for the … Implementation of the Two-State Solution”, as well as – yet again – ‘Calling for’: “A just resolution of the problem of Palestine refugees in conformity with its resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948”.

On 10 December 1948 – a day prior to its adoption of resolution 194 – the UNGA had already adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), in which it was similarly declared that: “Everyone has the right to leave any country [not ‘state’, but ‘country’], including his own, and to return to his country” – with no UN members voting against its adoption. The United States was amongst those that voted in favour of the UDHR, thereby creating an interesting legal ‘estoppel’, should they now wish to argue that the Palestinians are to be excluded from those same legal rights that they endorsed – for all other human peoples – under Article 13 (2) of the UDHR.

Returning to opening theme of this Article: Why is it that we only hear about the – possible – future reconstruction of Gaza by the international community (rather than “by the Governments or authorities responsible”), and never about the ‘Right of Return’ of at least two-thirds of Gaza’s inhabitants, to their rightful territories? Despite their established ‘Right of Return’ being declared “inalienable” by the UN, why is it that the international community has remained completely silent on the enforcement of this legal right? What must by now be very clear to the Palestinians, is that the ‘community of nations’ never seriously intended to uphold this fundamental Palestinian right: without which their concomitant legal ‘Right to National Self-Determination’ can likewise never be honoured.

Israel – along with several other ‘well-meaning’ States – consistently rail against any Palestinian ‘Right of Return’ to those same territories taken from them by force, arguing that to let them do so would represent the end of the Jewish majority in the State of Israel, and thereby the end of Jewish Self-Determination: which must instead be defended at all costs, but most essentially through the denial of the Palestinian Nation’s own Right to Self-Determination. However, not only are no clear legal arguments presented as to why a Jewish majority in the Israeli State must be held to be primary over and above the Palestinian’s own legal rights, any such suggestion represents a direct attack upon the first sentence, of the very first Article of the UDHR: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. Although Israel and the USA will certainly argue against the binding nature of the UDHR, in 1971 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared that:

“Although the affirmations of the Declaration are not binding qua international convention within the meaning of Article 38, paragraph 1 (a), of the Statute of the Court, they can bind states on the basis of custom through a general practice accepted as law… One right which must certainly be considered a preexisting binding customary norm which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights codified, is the right to equality”

As already stated, two-thirds of the population of Gaza – including their descendants – are refugees, as a direct consequence of the ‘Nakba’. As such, the return of approximately 1.6 million Palestinian refugees (out of Gaza’s total population of 2.4 million) – from 1948 alone – in addition to the existing 2 million Palestinians that always remained within the proclaimed borders of the Israeli State (referred to instead as “Israeli-Arabs”, in order to deny the existence of any “Palestinian Nation”), would quickly see up to 3.6 millions Palestinians living within Israel’s State borders: versus 5.9 million Israeli Jews.

However, we can no longer afford to forget the other 4.3 million Palestinian refugees wasting away within any of the UN’s 58 – recognized – Palestinian refugee camps; also situated in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Should their Right of Return also be respected – as it must, if ‘international law’ is to survive the 21st Century – then we arrive at a total Palestinian population of 6.9 million, living within the professed borders of the State of Israel: a full million more than the number of Israeli Jews.

It is perhaps partly for this reason, that 56% of Israeli Jews favour the expulsion of the remaining 2 million Palestinian-Israelis that have always lived within “their” borders. That said, when we consider that 82% of Israeli Jews also favour the complete expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza, as well as the recent announcement of 22 new Israeli Settlements in the Palestinian West Bank – where there is no Hamas – we must finally acknowledge that Israel’s criminal attacks on Gaza – which have destroyed 92 percent of all residential buildings (ignoring hospitals and places of study) – have nothing to do with Hamas: they are about the expulsion and/or extermination of all remnants of the Palestinian Nation.

Irrespective of uncomfortable ‘demographics on the ground’, there is clearly no moral or legal argument that can possibly justify denying the Palestinian Nation its Right of Return, in deference to the Nation that stole its historic lands via the unauthorized use of force: in violation of a separate principle of international law, dating back at least to the USA’s 1932 ‘Stimson Doctrine’ (another estoppel). Yes, the State of Israel still makes the same claim it made in its 1948 ‘Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel’, that by adopting UNGA resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, “the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution” (which is manifestly afactual), but that very same resolution 181 states clearly that the UN Security Council (UNSC) must “determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression … any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution”. In other words, any use of force by (Arab or) Jewish militias that went beyond “the settlement envisaged by this resolution”, was to be immediately reversed by action from the UNSC, given as it would necessarily represent “a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression”. Despite the ‘Partition Plan’ having accorded (an already very generous) 56 percent of historic Palestine to the future Israeli State, “On the termination of the Mandate, Jewish forces moved to occupy further territory beyond the boundaries specified by the Partition resolution”, instead taking control of 77 percent of historic Palestine, including “the larger part of Jerusalem, meant to be internationalized under the partition resolution”. In 2025, it can be easily argued upon the basis of international law that ‘Jewish forces’ – including violent settlers in the West Bank that are armed and subsidized by the Israeli government – now occupy 100 percent of historic Palestine.

In addition to everything that has already been discussed, it is indisputable that the ‘Partition Resolution’ of 1947 was adopted ultra vires by the UNGA (i.e. beyond its legal powers): it utterly trampled upon the Right to Self-Determination of the Palestinian people – a significant portion of which still resided within the 56 percent of their historic lands, gifted to an as-yet-unborn Israeli State, by no more than 33 – largely European – UN Member States (13 Members voting against). Indeed, the Palestinians at that time represented 68 percent of the population of historic Palestine; only 32 percent identifying as Jewish. In any case, had the same draft resolution been voted upon in the post-colonial era, rather than during colonialism, resolution 181 would never have been adopted: it barely passed as it was (with only 1 of the 3 African Member States at the time, voting against). The UNGA’s ‘Partition Resolution’ of 1947 is consequently, a putrid legacy of colonialism that should be revoked.

As already mentioned, the UN will shortly be hosting a “Conference for the … Implementation of the Two-State Solution” – at the initiative of the French. If there is to be any positive outcome resulting from this June 2025 Conference, it will surely be a realization by today’s ‘community of nations’ that those original 33 UN Member States got it badly wrong on 29 November 1947, when they voted to carve out the lands of historic Palestine: in violation of the legal rights of the Palestinian people. If there is to be any positive outcome at all, it must be a universal recognition that there is no such thing as a legitimate “Two-State Solution” – grounded in international law – given that the very existence of one of those two ‘States’ is predicated upon – and always was predicated upon – the denial of the “inalienable rights” of the Palestinian ‘Nation’.