Don't you think 1400 years is a bit long? If you considered 'native people' to go back that far, you could get all sorts of really strange 'native lands'.
Normally, right of return is for people who were living somewhere, or have parents or grandparents who live somewhere. So it's obviously very strange when that applies to jewish people, who potentially have some ancestors in biblical times that were living in Jordan, but doesn't apply to Palestinians, who had grandparents living there.
To be honest, I have more sympathy for the argument that, yes, Israel is a typical colonial enterprise, but it's also been a while (70+ years), and people have made their lives there, so 2SS makes sense. It seems more consistent with how words like 'native', 'colony', and 'original inhabitants' work everywhere else.
Any threshold you set is arbitrary and then tends to be motivated by personal politics. I have some difficulty with setting any specific threshold since if you say the threshold is 1,000 years for example, then it follows that you have set a rule on how it is morally achievable to set or expand your territory; You take some place by force and then hold it for 1,000 years and then no one is allowed to contest it, which means that Israel should be allowed to take whatever land it wants as it is merely following the proper procedure you have set (and of course, Palestine and Iran are equally allowed to follow this procedure ;)).
> Normally, right of return is for people who were living somewhere, or have parents or grandparents who live somewhere. So it's obviously very strange when that applies to jewish people, who potentially have some ancestors in biblical times that were living in Jordan,
Much of the original push for the creation of Israel originates in world wide persecution of Jews, so it makes sense to me to allow all of them into Israel where they can band together. I also think that limitations on "parents or grandparents" are meant to imply some sort of test of "are they really still French if they left France two generations ago and haven't tried to come back since then?", whereas for Judaism many communities have been rather insular and managed to maintain their Jewish identity going back all the way to their original exile, so it is easier to see that they are still part of the same people. I do somewhat agree though in thinking that there eventually has to be some limit and the right to return should be drastically altered/reduce/abolished and replaced with more "normal" immigration controls. Maybe something like "You have a right to return by default if you are the grandson of a Jew who lived during the Holocaust. If you are the son or grandson of such a Jew (i.e. grandson of grandson) then follow this procedure, beyond that you are considered to have waived your right to return". Though this is off-the-cuff random internet talk and not a sound opinion :)
If talking specifically about Jordan, where Jews do not have a right to return, I'll add the other countries of the Middle East and North Africa where Jews who left (often but not only to go to Israel) are definitely not welcome back. It seems like morally you'd expect such a thing, though in practice I'd be surprised if there were any Jews willing to use such a right.
> but doesn't apply to Palestinians, who had grandparents living there.
Since you mentioned Jordan specifically, I'd just say that it is up to the Jordanians to provide that right to return (which I don't think they do).
For a Palestinian state (in a hypothetical 2ss) it will certainly make sense to have a right of return for Palestinian people, but I don't think it makes sense to have a right of return for Palestinians into Israel or Jews into Palestine, since the whole point of such an agreement would be to draw lines on what is Israel and what is Palestine, and drastically mixing the populations would just blur those lines and reignite conflict.
> To be honest, I have more sympathy for the argument that, yes, Israel is a typical colonial enterprise, but it's also been a while (70+ years), and people have made their lives there, so 2SS makes sense. It seems more consistent with how words like 'native', 'colony', and 'original inhabitants' work everywhere else.
Indeed I feel that is what follows from your initial statement, and I'll agree that your views are self-consistent and sound. Ideologically I don't fully agree with your thoughts, since I feel it incentivizes war-making as I mentioned.
Of course, as I said in my previous comment, in the real world I don't think it is practical or entirely fair to pursue something like a 3,000 year reversion, so a two state solution is a reasonable compromise, and it will require some strong guarantees to make sure such an agreement is kept and war-making is deterred.
I guess my intuition for how a 'right-to-return' should work would be, if you have your property stolen and you are driven out of the land, and it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that it is yours by inheritance, then you should be able to get it back.
It's to the eternal shame of Poland, Germany, and many other countries in Europe, that this is not what they did after the war. It's frankly shameful that this is rarely enforced anywhere.
If you do 'right of return' without the implicit return of property thing, it's pretty hollow if you've actually had your house/farm stolen, but it also becomes just a way of having an immigration policy that discriminates on an ethnic or religious basis.
I feel like people are generally pretty fine with accepting colonial borders: basically the whole world outside europe is divided by them. As long as they have a chance to live in peace, build businesses, live normal lives, I don't think people get that exercised about these things, on the whole. If you look at the lives of Palestinians, they look pretty humiliating. If I lived that life, had no chance to build anything or hold onto anything, I expect I would be pretty angry about it.
Normally, right of return is for people who were living somewhere, or have parents or grandparents who live somewhere. So it's obviously very strange when that applies to jewish people, who potentially have some ancestors in biblical times that were living in Jordan, but doesn't apply to Palestinians, who had grandparents living there.
To be honest, I have more sympathy for the argument that, yes, Israel is a typical colonial enterprise, but it's also been a while (70+ years), and people have made their lives there, so 2SS makes sense. It seems more consistent with how words like 'native', 'colony', and 'original inhabitants' work everywhere else.