One can always dream…

Note: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) defines a "Palestine refugee" as a person "whose normal place of residence was Mandatory Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli conflict". Per the UNRWA website: 

“When the Agency began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services. Nearly one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

This plan does allow Palestinian refugees a right to return to Israel. But a West Bank survey some years ago revealed that only 5% of Palestinians were interested in returning to Israel if they could. In order to develop a budget for my plan, I’ll assume that 10% of Palestinian refugees would opt for a return to Israel. On a related note, ABC News reports that just 5,500 of the hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani civilians who used to live in Nagorno-Karabakh want to return, now that the Armenians have been kicked out.

The challenge was to come up with something that Israelis might actually go for. Israeli is a democracy, after all. This agreement must pass muster with the voters. My budget is actually rather stingy, but would still require a substantial tax increase to fund. I doubt Israeli voters would agree to spending more. Note that, as a rule, Palestinian children would not receive funds from Israel - just adults 18 and over who register to return to Israel within a certain time period. Also, Palestinians would not be allowed to return to Israel without confirmed housing, so Israel is not about to be overrun by non-Jewish citizens. Israel has a housing shortage as it is, so lots of new homes will have to be built first.

Per the budget below, I’m estimating around 39,000 Palestinian adults would return to Israel per year, on average.

If anyone wants to provide something more generous to the Palestinians, I challenge them to present a feasible funding plan.

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A fleshed-out plan would include a vetting process for returnees: Hamas militants need not apply! There would also be a trial period before the ten-year plan officially begins, to work out the bugs, e.g., allowing a few hundred Palestinians to return to Israel and then following up on them for a couple years. Initial payments to forfeiters would take place over a five-year period and paid in monthly installments for five years.