Palestinians want right of return status

JERUSALEM, May 22 (UPI) -- Palestinian officials said Friday no political plan for peace in the region will be accepted without the right of Palestinians to return to their homelands.

Hatem Abdel Qader, minister of Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian National Authority, said the right of return, as defined in U.N. Resolution 194, cannot be removed from the Arab Initiative without jeopardizing potential long-lasting peace in the Middle East.

The Palestine News Network said Abdel Qader also suggested the loss of the right to return home would leave Palestinians unable to protect a possible independent state with their own army.

The so-called right of return is an internationally accepted individual and collective right for refugees in regards to the lands they consider to be their homeland, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

Meanwhile, Ghassan Khatib, director general of the Jerusalem Center for Media and Communication, said a successful peace plan for the region must also allow Palestinians to retake lands occupied by Israeli forces for more than four decades.

"Any peace plan must include a full end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands occupied in 1967 and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty," Khatib said.