Return narratives of Palestinian refugees in the west bank: A generational perspective

The Right of Return is arguably one of the central aspects preventing a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and certainly one that stirs debate. Critiques centre on the two-state solution, and, more specifically, on arguments which understand the Oslo Accords to mean that refugees must be settled within the 1967 borders (see e.g. Badil 2001). Such approaches, justified by its advocates as ‘pragmatic’ and exemplified, for instance, by the Nusseibeh-Ayalon Agreement (Nusseibeh-Ayalon 2002), consider the full implementation of the Right of Return utopian. These positions have been contested, by, for example, Abu-Sitta (2001) who has statistically shown that space, in fact, is not a problem: all refugees could return. Moreover, the Right of Return is a legal right enshrined in a number of United Nations resolutions and international human rights instruments, most importantly United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.