Canada funds brochure for Palestinian right of return

MONTREAL -- Canadian officials have confirmed that their government financed a brochure calling for Palestinians to realize the "right of return" by taking back homes and property lost inside Israel during Israel's 1948 War of Independence.

An official with Canada's Foreign Affairs department, however, denied charges that the Canadian government took a leading role in producing "Witness to History: The Plight and Promise of Palestinian Refugees."

The brochures were printed by a non-governmental organization run by prominent Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, which receives funding from the Canada Fund for Local Institutions, the official said.

The 56-page, illustrated brochure calls for Palestinians to repossess the homes they lost in 1948. The Palestinian insistence that refugees and their descendants -- some 3 million to 4 million people in all -- have the right to return to homes lost in the fighting that surrounded the birth of the state of Israel was a sticking point in the peace talks under the last Israeli government.

Israel sees acceptance of the right of return as demographic suicide; hard-line positions refer to it as a veiled call to eliminate the Jewish state.

An article that ran over the weekend by the Israeli journalist David Bedein in Canada's conservative National Post newspaper, claimed that the brochure was "published and distributed by the Canadian government."

According to Bedein, the inside page of the brochure states that the Canadian government was responsible for publishing and distributing the document through its Canadian Representative Office in Ramallah.

The brochure features an introduction by Ashrawi calling for the Palestinian return to 531 villages lost during Israel's War of Independence, many of which no longer exist.

Carl Schwenger, a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Ottawa, stressed that "our take is different" than Bedein's.

Schwenger noted that Canada has been a consistent backer of U.N. Security Council Resolution 194 -- which recognizes the Palestinians' "inalienable right of return" -- yet supports attempts to solve the Palestinian refugee problem by settling them elsewhere in the world.

Canada remains the gavel-holder for the working group established under the Oslo process in 1993 to negotiate the future of Palestinian refugees, Bedein notes.

"To imply that this office" in Ramallah "handed the brochure out is incorrect," Schwenger said.

"And they also did not advocate the positions in the brochure." In fact, Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley "was burned in effigy by pro-Palestinian protesters for suggesting that some refugees might wish to come to Canada," Schwenger added. The brochure was published by Ashrawi's Palestinian Institute for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, Schwenger said, which received "between $1,000 and $10,000" toward publishing costs from the Canadian fund.

Ashrawi's stated proposal was to promote United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, Schwenger said.