Over the past 50 years, the right of return -- the international standard for the solution of refugee problems in general -- has been treated as inapplicable when it comes to the question of Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian refugee problem is the oldest and largest one in the world today, with U.N. figures putting the number of registered refugees at nearly 4 million, with countless others not registered. Israel's historical hard line against offering the option of repatriation to these refugees has now been bolstered by President Clinton's latest "peace plan," which essentially seeks to sign away the human rights of over three million people. It's a mockery of human rights and social justice everywhere that this issue is even open for negotiation.

Israel's refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and lands which they were forced to leave in 1948 largely rests on three arguments: (1) Arab states are responsible for the exodus of 1948; (2) There is a lack of physical space in the territory of the Israeli state to house these refugees; and (3) Concerns for Israel's security. However, these arguments have been shown to either be demonstrably false or cases of special pleading that need to be weighed in the balance against the possibility of real peace in the Middle East. The fictional claim that Arab states were responsible for initiating the attack on Israel in 1948 is grasped at by the pro-Israeli side in order to argue that these states -- many of whom have already assimilated into their societies the maximum number of refugees possible -- absorb an additional four million. This is what is unrealistic. There are over 1.5 million Palestinian refugees already living in Jordan and 400,000 in each of Syria and Lebanon. How will these Arab states -- all of whom are still developing -- be able to sustain such a massive influx of people? And the more central question, why should Arab states be held economically and morally responsible for a situation that Israel created?

Many people -- including many Israelis -- concede the justice of the Palestinian refugee claims, but describe them as unrealistic and impractical. It is now time to challenge this notion. It is time to raise the fact that politics aimed at the exclusion of a group of people based purely on their ethnicity overrides international law and the aims of social and political justice and peace. The right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland is legal.

Since 1948, the U.N., with the backing of the international community, has provided sustained and firm consensus on the right of dispossessed Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. It has been affirmed over 100 times. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 13), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 12), and U.N. Resolution 194, adopted in 1948 and reaffirmed almost every year for the past 52 years, all confirm the right of refugees to return and assert that no one can be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country. International law demands that neither occupation nor sovereignty diminish the rights of private ownership. Hence, the land and property of the refugees remains their own and they are legally entitled to return to it. There is simply no room for negotiation on this.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland is feasible.

Contrary to the longstanding myth that the repatriation of Palestinian refugees would be tantamount to "demographic suicide" for Israel, repatriation is in fact possible if examined in light of the relative distribution of Israelis and Palestinians in Israel. Demographic research has shown that, right now, 78% of Israelis are living on only 14% of the land, while the remaining 22% of Israelis live on 86% of land from where many Palestinian refugees originate. In 86% of Israel, the population density is just 82 per square mile. Given the abundance of empty land, is there any logic to having 4,400 refugees on one square mile in Gaza? Something that is also overlooked is the fact that the vast majority of current refugees will choose to resettle in the future Palestinian state, and the most recent estimates of the number of refugees who may try to go back home into what is now Israel is actually only about one million.

It is unrealistic to expect that peace will be durable without dealing with the refugee situation as one of human rights and not of negotiation. Dealing with it does not mean sweeping it under the table at President Clinton's plan does. The inalienable rights of refugees simply can't be left to "negotiations" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as any agreement that deprives civilians of recognized human rights -- including their rights to repatriation and restitution – will be like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. Try to imagine if the President's plan (or a similar one) prevails in the coming weeks, and the Palestinian Authority is forced to impose an unjust solution on the refugees in a contrived sort of agreement with Israel. This will affect only 29% of refugees who live in Palestinian territories, leaving 71% to respond to this agreement as they please. The plain fact is that when human rights are tampered with, there can never be a lasting peace, anywhere.

The idea that refugees have an inalienable right to return to their homes should not be a foreign concept to Americans. After all, we fought a war with Yugoslavia in the name of the right of Kosovar refugees to return to their homeland. President Clinton's latest plan, by denying the right of return of over three million refugees, undermines the world's commitment to fundamental human rights. Do we want to build a world community based on a single and equitable standard of justice for all people, or would we rather dispense with the human rights of a select few whenever it is convenient for others? As Americans, we are bound by our great Constitution to support human rights and freedom in Palestine and elsewhere. There is no more elemental human right than the right to go home.