MACRO Center

We heard today from the founder of the MACRO Center, a Think Tank that develops suggestions and information about real estate issues in the Israel-Palestine Conflict. A major project of theirs involves looking at pre-1948 (founding of Israel) land ownership and calculating what the land is worth now. They use records from the British Mandate and the Jewish National Fund to develop numbers for what economic compensation might look like for Palestinians who had to flee or whose land was expropriated. It is hoped that this will be used as an alternative to the full implementation of the right of return for Palestinian refugees (would result in a Palestinian majority in the Jewish state). Paying for the land (from which Palestinians fled or were expelled and that which was expropriated) with what it was worth in 1948 and adding interest, the total compensation required they’ve developed is around $10 billion. This is much less than the value of what Palestinians seem to think, based on some comments by Arafat.
He also looks at settlements and the infrastructure made there. They hope perhaps this might be used as a place to resettle Palestinian refugees. The total investment in settlement infrastructure was more than $17 billion in 2008.