Mr. Harold Buchwald states: " Dr. Zayid's thesis [ re. my article: " The Right of Return: An Inalienable Right"] has a fundamental flaw as its very foundation. There would certainly never have been the movement of resident Arabs who became "refugees" as a consequence of the 1948 Israeli War of independence if there hadn't been a war." This statement is fallacious. Every statement I made is factual and historically accurate. The leaders of the Zionist movement, from Herzl to Ben Gurion, stated their plans to expel the native Palestinians. Furthermore, refugees in all wars are entitled, under international law, to return to their homes after a war, and this has been the historic experience. Professor Erich Fromm, a noted Jewish writer and thinker, had this to say about this Zionist argument: " It is often said that the Arabs fled...Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property and being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations?"

The Palestinians rejected the 1947 UN Partition Scheme because it is unjust. It apportioned to the Jewish minority, constituting 31% of the population and owning 5.6% of the land, the right to establish a Jewish state on 56% of the land of Palestine. The claim that the Zionist leaders accepted the scheme is also false. Menachem Begin, the leader of the Herut Party, stated: " The partition of the homeland is illegal. It will never be recognised." Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister , when announcing the creation of Israel on May 14,1948, refused to define its borders, stating :" We are announcing the creation of a state in in the western part of our country." He later wrote in his diaries; " To maintain the status quo will not do. We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion."

The statement that had there been no invasion by Arab armies, there would not have been an Arab refugee problem, is totally false. Before a single Arab soldier entered Palestine on May 15,1948, the Zionist forces had already committed many massacres and driven out 350,000 Palestinian refugees, and occupied many cities, like Jaffa and Acre, and many towns and villages, that were apportioned to the Arab state in the Partition scheme. The Arab armies entered only the portion allotted to the Arab stae to prevent the complete expulsion of Palestinians and complete occupation of Palestine. Ben Gurion enunciated, in his diaries, this expansionist plan : " The Achilles heel of the Arab cooalition is the Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian state ought to be set up there, with the southern frontier on the river Litany. We would sign a treaty of alliance with this state. Thus when we have broken the strength of the Arab Legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Transjordan; after that Syria would fall. And if Egypt still dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war and would have put paid to Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors."