It would be helpful if you could say what your point is rather that just point me at a 22 page PDF. I didn't even realise you were disagreeing with me until I looked at it. Is your point that no such people exist? Or that they had displaced other people before them in just the same way? Or something else?
i will suggest you to read pdf anyway, it's a wonderful peace showing how things were in 1961 and how things are same today.
back to the point.
Journalist traveled to refugee camps in lebanon/gaza and then to israel to see how arabs that decided to remain are doing.
(following are more or less exact quotes from memory)
He describes how somebody were telling him in great details about giant house that he had had, with veranda surrounding it. how he will sit there in shadow of the orchard and the fertile soil that he had.
when journalists was visiting israel he decided to stop by this location. all what he found is shack barely suitable for cattle, 2 fruit trees and rocky soil that will be really hard to work.
also, while been in refugee camp in lebanon he had a meeting with somebody who managed camp. this person told him that most of those who tell him that they had untold riches actually had nothing: they were workforce for hire and were renting from landlords both housing and in some cases soil to work. he adds that most of them in a heart beat will give up on "right of return" in exchange to $10k and place to settle "anywhere".
additional nice touch in article it's description of UNRWA school (it's 1961) where they teach children that one day as soldiers they will come back kill jews/liberate their country
For the record, I was really just looking for a couple of sentences so I understood your point. But I do appreciate the extra effort you went to for an internet stranger, thank you.
I have to say though, it's pretty unconvincing. It reads very similarly to saying: their right to stay where they are, or even not be killed by someone else that wants their land, is less because they're poor and renters (yuck!). I know that's an ungenerous characterisation of what you've said but it's really the core of the objection.
It does seem a bit low for some refugees to exaggerate their past wealth or to accept (essentially) a bribe to forget about atrocities committed against them and their families. But it's a totally incomparable to what was done to them in the first place, and certainly doesn't justify it.
I've never been in anything like that situation, and I imagine you haven't either. If I was totally destitute, forced to live in some camp (and still not safe), could I honestly say I do something similar (lie or take cash to run away)? It's hard to say but I don't think I could rule it out. But I like to think that I can rule out ever forcing people out of their homes, from land that I have no living ancestral claim to, and murdering the ones that don't run quickly enough, on religious (i.e., invented) grounds.
