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The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace Paperback – April 28, 2020

by Adi Schwartz (Author), Einat Wilf (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 275 ratings
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Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return."

In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group—unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts—has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region.

In The War of Return, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf—both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution—reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees - gave in to Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. They argue that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal or moral basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

A runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.
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  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    St. Martin's Griffin
  4. Publication date
    April 28, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    6.42 x 0.64 x 9.47 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1250364841
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1250364845
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

ADI SCHWARTZ is an Israeli researcher and author. His work focuses on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli history and current affairs.

EINAT WILF is a former Israeli politician who served as a member of Knesset for Independence and the Labor Party. She is one of Israel's leading public intellectuals.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Griffin (April 28, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250364841
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250364845
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.42 x 0.64 x 9.47 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 275 ratings

About the authors

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  1. Adi Schwartz

    Adi Schwartz

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    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Mr. Adi Schwartz is a researcher, lecturer and author, focusing on issues relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is the author, together with former Member of the Knesset Einat Wilf, of The War of Return, a Hebrew bestseller which will appear in 2020 in English by St. Martin's Press (Macmillan).

    Schwartz is an expert on two of his main research topics - the Palestinian refugee problem and the history of Jews from Arab countries (Mizrahim). He is currently writing his PhD dissertation at the department of Political Science in Bar-Ilan University on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has a BA in European History from Tel Aviv University, and an MA (with distinction) in Political Science from Bar-Ilan University. He is a Fellow at the Center for International Communications in Bar-Ilan University.

    Mr. Schwartz is a published author in both English and Hebrew. A former staff writer and senior editor for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he has published articles in the Israeli press, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The Forward, The Tablet and The Jewish Chronicle.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Einat Wilf

    Einat Wilf

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    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Dr. Einat Wilf is a leading intellectual and original thinker on matters of foreign policy, economics, education, and Israel and the Jewish people. She is considered one of Israel’s most articulate representatives on the international stage. Her opinion articles are regularly published in international publications and she is frequently interviewed for television and radio programs around the world. She was a member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010-2013 on behalf of the Labor and Independence parties.

    Dr. Wilf has a BA in Government and Fine Arts from Harvard University, an MBA from INSEAD in France, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge. Born and raised in Israel, Dr. Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces.

    Dr. Wilf’s past experiences include Chair of the Education, Sports and Culture Committee, Chair of the Knesset Sub-Committee for Israel and the Jewish People, and Member of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the 18th Knesset. She served as the Baye Foundation Adjunct Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and a strategic consultant with McKinsey & Company.

    Dr. Wilf is the author of six books that explore key issues in Israeli society: “My Israel, Our Generation”, “Back to Basics: How to Save Israeli Education (at no additional cost)“, “It’s NOT the Electoral System, Stupid”, “Winning the War of Words”, and her two most books are “Telling Our Story” - a collection of Wilf’s essays on Israel, Zionism and the path to peace, and “The War of Return” on the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee issue.

    See more on the author's page
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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
275 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

glen i.
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstandingly accurate
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2024
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This is an extremely well documented record of facts of a regional struggles that has at least twice brought the world to the brink of a much greater conflict. Kudos to the authors. Brilliantly researched and well documented positions. The origin of everything happening in Post 10-7-23 Israel can be understood by reading this.
2 people found this helpful
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Laura Magid
5.0 out of 5 stars Crucial book to understanding the Israeli-Arab conflict
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2023
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Especially these days, one can drown in narratives.
Tiktok, Instagram and Twitter can convince people that the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th were somehow an essential and expected response the Israel's actions...

This book, which was written a decade ago by two left wing writers, dug into the conflict in pursuit of an explanation to "what happened", or "what did Israel do wrong while seeking peace with the Palestinians".
They were surprised by what they found....

They found the root essence behind the chant "From the river to the sea..."

If you ever chanted that during a protest, this is a must have book.

If you're smart enough to understand that Tiktok and Instagram vids are trying to trick you, and you're smart enough to understand this is not something you can understand through a 30 second vid, this book is for you.

If you support Israel but can't understand "why can't they just agree to give the Palestinians what they want?", this book is for you.

Most important book you'll ever read about the conflict.
24 people found this helpful
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NJ
5.0 out of 5 stars relatively even handed
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2024
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Makes a good case of pointing out that the right of return would mean elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. Which is its whole point.
5 people found this helpful
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B. Levenson
5.0 out of 5 stars Timely book
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2024
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This is a very good read and timely book for those who want a deep understanding of the current conflict.
6 people found this helpful
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Alexander Joyner
4.0 out of 5 stars The Case for Ending UNRWA
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2020
A few years ago, as I was researching a book about Israel and Palestine, I visited a refugee camp in Nablus on the West Bank. Named Balata, it was home to about 25,000 people, all living cheek by jowl in one of the most densely populated places on earth. What had begun in 1950 as a collection of tents for Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation was now a claustrophobic jumble of tall apartment blocks overlooking streets so narrow that when someone died the body would have to be carried across rooftops to remove it. Posters of teenagers with Kalashnikovs looked down from the walls.
At the entrance of the camp there was a mural featuring a key, symbol of all the hopes for return, not so much for the original residents, who have mostly died, but for their descendants to the third generation who have grown up with the belief that their true home was not in Balata, where you can barely see the sky, but in the sunny beachfront city of Haifa and other villages in what is now Israel. I thought to myself as I walked through the streets, my shoulders brushing against buildings on either side, “Peace, whatever it looks like, has to deal with this.”
In their well-researched and closely argued new book, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, two figures of the Israeli Left, agree, but the dose of realpolitik they offer involves a total break with the mythos that pervades Palestinian refugee camps like Balata. Their title tells you that their focus is narrow and pointed: The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace. And if that doesn’t make clear their unequivocal stance, the image on the cover underlines it: the key on the mural in Balata (and every other camp wall), broken.
The camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are one of the longest-running U.N. undertakings. The camps are dotted around the Mid-east from the West Bank and Gaza, two areas under nominal Palestinian control, to Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Millions of refugees are registered in these camps, although many no longer live there, having sought opportunities wherever they could from Kuwait to Chile. But the work of UNRWA goes on.
Most internationally-recognized refugee situations are short-term operations and are usually addressed by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The goal in these situations is to resettle populations displaced by war and conflict, either in their home country or in other receiving nations. This was the situation of millions of Jewish refugees after World War 2 and again after the 1948 war when they were forced out of Arab countries around the Middle East.
Palestinian who fled the land that became Israel were ultimately given a status that no other refugees have, and their own UN agency to ensure its perpetuation. The goal for most of the displaced Palestinians was not resettlement but return. Wilf and Schwartz recount the tension between Western and Arab understandings of UNRWA’s purpose as the 1950s progressed.

“It was clear then from UNRWA’s birth and in the following months that two different godparents with competing intentions had been appointed for the same child: the international community, which saw economic rehabilitation and resettlement of the refugees as the only realistic way to end the problem on the one hand; while on the other hand, the Arabs were striving to perpetuate the problem by maintaining an ever-increasing roster of Palestinian “refugees” and keeping the hope of return alive and very present. (78)
Eventually that hope of return became institutionalized, with UNRWA camps nurturing a return ideology. Children and grandchildren were granted refugee status, unlike any other UN-recognized displaced groups. The educational system in the camps reinforced the message. “The Palestinians’ position was actually highly coherent,” the authors say. “Their supreme concern—above any humanitarian considerations—was not to recognize the state of Israel.” (91)
There are a lot of blind spots in this book. The most obvious is the inevitable self-interest that two Israelis have in explaining Palestinian issues. And anyone looking for a balanced look at Israeli and Palestinian approaches to peace will not find it here. Israeli settlements, which are at least as big an obstacle to a two-state solution as the Right of Return, get barely a mention. But then again Wilf and Schwartz don’t pretend to objectivity.
Their concluding chapter is an extended argument for dismantling UNRWA and confronting the Right of Return directly. The authors feel that we are long past the time when Western diplomats could pretend that the Palestinian claims to a sacred right to the homes they left were a bargaining chip in peace negotiations. “The West needs to craft a clear message and ensure that all its policies and actions are aligned with it. There can be no legitimacy, no support, and no fuel given to the Palestinian demand for return; only full legitimacy, support, and fuel for a moderate Palestinian vision that does not entail the erasing of Israel under any guise.” (181)
It’s tempting to write off Israelis like Wilf and Schwartz as hardliners with no sympathy for the Palestinian situation. But they actually represent a very moderate position within Israel, one that is not heard from often enough. They are realists who believe that a two-state solution is still possible, but only if the clear obstacles to peace are dealt with and not down-pedaled in an attempt to reach a fuzzy peace plan.
Given that Israel seems to be moving ever closer to discouraging options like the annexation of lands that would be part of a future Palestinian state, theirs is a message that deserves a larger platform, even if it treads in uncomfortable territory. But it’s no more uncomfortable than the narrow confines of Belata, constrained as it is in a never-ending narrative of despair.
45 people found this helpful
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Carol B
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read to help understand the conflict
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2024
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My book group read this and we all felt it was essential reading and well researched.
6 people found this helpful
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Kathleen S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good and informative book about why there is a current war in Israel
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2023
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This book is insightful and very understandable concerning the current and past wars in Israel.
3 people found this helpful
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Gisela G.
5.0 out of 5 stars Book
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2023
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Excellent, present liked
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Hendrik van der Breggen
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book that should be in all Western university libraries
Reviewed in Canada on April 22, 2024
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Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf do an excellent job of showing that the so-called Palestinian "right to return" to Israel (after losing the 1948-1949 war which Palestinian Arabs started) is not a right and that pretending it is a right (with UNRWA's help) fuels the false Palestinian view that Israel is not a legitimate state. This book should be placed in universities throughout the West. (I've donated copies to a couple of my local libraries.)
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Gerry King
5.0 out of 5 stars Why there can be no One-State solution
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2024
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After reading James Barr’s ‘A Line in the Sand’ which tells the shabby history of Anglo-French rivalry in the Middle East following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WW1 a friend of mine who has worked in Gaza mentioned ‘The War of Return’. He found it unbearably one-sided. At times, I felt the same because the authors do not dwell on the horrors the Israelis have visited on the Palestinians.

Instead they painstakingly document (28% of the book is reference materials) the creation of the Palestinian Refugees as a result of Arab rejection of the 1947 UN plan to partition the British Mandate into two states and their subsequent defeat in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Over 700,000 Palestinians fled the newly established State of Isreal to the lands of the defeated Arab nations (Eygpt, Trans-Jordan, Syria and Iraq). The authors do not muddy the waters by talking about the 800,000 Jews who fled Arab and Muslim countries.

Instead, they talk about the millions of refugees who were resettled in foreign lands after WW2 without a right to return; the tenants that guide the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the failure of UNRWA which was supposed to be a temporary agency solely concerned with Palestinian refugees. The UNHCR does not seek to return refugees to lands from where they were forcibly evicted or have fled in fear. Instead, they seek to help them resettle in so-called donor countries and get on with living.

UNRWA does nothing to dispel the Palestinian desire to return to a land that they and most Arabs seek to wipe off the face of the earth. Instead, they add more names to the list of Palestinian refugees many of whose parents and grandparents are citizens of other countries. In conclusion, the authors identify UNWRA as the problem and an obstacle to peace that needs to be disbanded before a Two-State solution can be implemented. After reading this book I agree.
7 people found this helpful
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Peter Herold
4.0 out of 5 stars Shocking Palestinian "permanent, 'refugee' status with supposed right to return to Israel"
Reviewed in Germany on December 24, 2023
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This book explains very well why a supposed "right to return" - to where their ancestors lived 75 years ago in what is now Israel - passed down from one generation to the next for Palestinian "refugees" is inconsistent (1) with "the way things work for everyone else in history", (2) unique (and uniquely distorted) compared to treatment of refugees by UNHCR, (3) a major obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

As Bill Maher points out in "New Rule: From the River to the Sea | Real Time" on 16 December 2023, after wars in the 20th century were ended by peace treaties, many millions of people were or remained displaced, and with international support, e.g. from UNHCR after 1951, made new lives. They got on with things. This doesn't apply to the people displaced from what is now Israel. Neighboring Arab countries didn't want to accept the Palestinians and they (or more exactly their descendants) are still classed as "refugees", even if they live permanently in e.g. Jordan or the USA and hold citizenship of these countries. UNRWA gets funding from donors for all these "refugees", even if they have made new lives elsewhere. Instead of helping refugees integrate where they are living now, as UNHCR does, UNRWA works to reinforce this refugee mentality with a supposed (no basis in international law or UN resolutions) "right to return". The number of such "refugees" has increased from 700k in 1948 to 5,5 million today. This means more jobs for its Palestinian workforce, including for school education which reinforces the sense of refugee identity and hatred of Israel.

Even if you don't agree with the political positions, the fact that this unique "permanent, passed down to successive generations, 'refugee' status with right to return to Israel" exists and is promoted by UNRWA with Western donor funding should be a major wake-up call for all those interested in peace in the Middle East.
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DAVID
5.0 out of 5 stars Ottimo libro
Reviewed in Italy on June 18, 2020
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Questo è un ottimo libro lo consiglio. Molto dettagliato e ricco di fonti. Scritto in maniera semplice e comprensibile. Davvero ottimo.
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Richard
5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a book that explains what has stopped the conflict being settled
Reviewed in Australia on January 22, 2022
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This should be compulsory reading for all those involved in diplomacy, politics, and the media, but also for all those that follow the conflict, and would like to finally see real peace between the sides, may that day come soon!
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